Yes Way Festival 2010.

Upset The Rhythm’s second Yes Way festival took place a few weekends ago at Auto-Italia, a former car showroom place just off the Old Kent Road that’s been rehabilitated as a big arts project / performance space of some kind. The fest describes itself as “a weekend festival celebrating the best and brightest of the UK's art and music underground”, and I suppose it did at least a fair impression of such, with bands playing alternately in two big rooms throughout the weekend, a ‘non-profit’ bar offering cans of Carlsberg for £2 a pop and some acceptable veggie chow.

Living relatively nearby and having a free weekend, I popped in and out of the festival through Saturday and Sunday, trying to catch as much good stuff as I could.

Here is what I learned;

Glasgow’s Golden Grrrls come highly tipped, but catching the last few minutes of their set, they failed to really grab me. The noise was thick and pleasing, but I found the pace rather sluggish and the compositions a tad offputting. Maybe next time huh guys?

Former Bullies on the other hand, I liked A LOT. An all-male London trio who bear certain traits of that unfortunate ‘90s flannel-angst revival that’s seemingly going down big amongst all-male London trios, they happily rise above via a neat understanding of Velvet Underground ’69 repetition. Their songs are quite long, and minimal, and catchy, and strummy, and feature smart and funny lyrical shout-outs that remind me of Nodzzz. A simple, fun band of quality and substance; watching them was a pleasure!

Temperatures are a salty, brow-furrowing duo proffering free drumming and bulbous, heavily processed high-end bass adventures. Hmm, not really my cup of tea. Seems a good opportunity to step out for some fresh air.

Time is a new project featuring Frances Morgan, former editor of Plan B amongst other things. Beginning their set with a slow, throbbing bass pulse, things gradually build to a pleasing atmosphere of icy, tectonic-plate shifting doom. I disliked the guitarist’s slightly wussy ‘crystalline’ tone at first, but it all made sense when he hit his big fuzz pedal, launching sheets of screeching, Denudes style treble that pushed things toward the hallowed ‘earplugs level’ for the first and only time this weekend. I’d imagine they would ideally like to hear this coupled with thunderous sub-bass, but the acoustics and amplification on offer here stifles their cosmic grandeur somewhat.

Overall, I thought Time’s loud bits were excellent, but the transitions between their different ‘sections’ seemed quite jarring, and the quiet bits, well… needed work, let’s say. Guess I’m just not feeling that whole Opeth/Neurosis thing right now. Or indeed, ever, thus far in my life.

Emerging I think from the same Brighton-based noise collective whose members I once saw subjecting a restless Sonic Youth audience to the sounds of a busy crisp factory, Blood Stereo seem to have moved on but slightly from that ideal, offering up a horribly irritable palette of sounds that puts me in mind of a frustrating day spent sawing pipes to size at a sewage works.

Perhaps unwisely, some people seem to have brought their kids to Yes Way, and my main memory of this part of the day is seeing the wee ones making a swift exit from the room where Blood Stereo were performing. The adult world must have seemed like a very frightening place to the children at this point.

Next up, a group of young men called Chora set up some wallpapering tables and show off their pedal collections. I don’t want to make this review seem like an outright diss on free electronics/noise type stuff, because there’s a lot of music in that vein that I enjoy, and I am heading into each set open-minded I’d like to think, but we really do get some morbidly uninspiring examples of the form this afternoon. No real dynamics here that I’m able to appreciate, no tonal interest or invention, just grim-faced boys and a blare.

I know it can be fun to make this stuff, and on record it can be a good palette cleanser, but oft-times it just seems obnoxious to rinse it out in front of audience in social circumstances, looking at a stage, dontcha think? I just can’t get with it, anyhow.

School Tours, a solo electronics guy, is actually doing some really cool stuff, but suffers similar presentation problems in a live context. Drifting over the heads of the crowd, I hear songs that sound akin to a more upbeat, male-voiced Zola Jesus merging into lengthy slabs of euphoric avant-disco. Real nice, but too slow to inspire movement, and by now we are weary and the age-old ‘dude staring at a laptop’ problem is foremost in our minds.

I’ve been spending a lot of quality time recently with some of this new ‘witch house’/ ’80s necromancy / haunted electronics kinda music, and whilst there is some of it I like a great deal, much of the rest reveals itself as disappointingly lightweight fare, making me wonder whether the whole thing is on track to turn into this decade’s trip-hop – tepid ‘deep listening’ for terminal stoners, or a jumping-off point for theory-minded critics who want to appear cutting edge without having to stick anything uncouth or attention-grabbing on the stereo.

With marijuana leaves stamped all over the front of their near-anonymous debut LP and a full page commendation in last month’s ‘Wire’, London duo Hype Williams are doing little to allay my fears, but thankfully they’re ready to counter the inevitable kneejerk dismissal of their chosen aesthetic, simply by virtue of being really bloody good, channelling the ubiquitous washed out, rootless synth-haze of their sound into music of convincing beauty and substance.

There is something compelling about what they do that’s hard to quite define at a time when so many faceless acts seem to be groping around in the same closet without a flashlight, but I’m gonna take a leap of faith and say that the way Hype Williams do business essentially reminds me of Boards Of Canada. Although wisely bypassing the rotting carcass of ‘90s ‘IDM’ that lurks always beneath those Boards*, they’ve got that same winning mixture of insistent pulse, rich, inviting melody and darkly unsettling undertones; garbled voices, melted ghosts of pop hits, crying children marching over the hill in the distance. It draws you in, it keeps you sedated with increasingly familiar games of fuzzy-headed audio-nostalgia, and it’s only then that you notice the nasty tricks, the sudden lurching stabs into the unknown. Very good stuff indeed.

Friends with whom I was earnestly discussing what a dead end live electronica can be can be half an hour ago are now head-nodding, happily entranced as the duo crouch over their gear on-stage, if you’re willing to take that as any barometer of quality.

Ghost Hunter by contrast sounds like a man playing his ambient techno DJ set. At least he’s considerate enough to keep the volume sufficiently low for us to sit down in the corner and have a chat.

Pass the word, the rock is back! Hope I won’t sound like too much of a rockist lug if I say that after all the above, there’s a heady feeling of anticipation when Slowcoaches, from “up north”, tramp on stage and start bickering with each other, plugging in bass and guitar, checking mics and hitting drums etc. Kicking off with an unheimlich outburst of Mars/Red Transistor style dissonance, Slowcoaches proceed toward slightly more formal waters with goofily dissolute, watch-me-give-a-fuck abandon. The guitarist’s tone is just plain sick, and their songs are shambling, boisterous, broken-backed Basketcase things. Kids! Making a racket! I love it! The bassist says she’s pissed that they’ve come all the way down to London and nobody’s invited them to any parties after the gig. That’s the spirit.

I didn’t think much of Please when I saw them supporting Thee Oh Sees and Brilliant Colors earlier this year – kinda had ‘em down as blandly proficient maths-rocky twiddle. They win me over here though – found myself enjoying their set quite a lot. There are a lot of really great melodies worked into their gtr/gtr/drums sound, touches of classic ‘60s instro rock amped up via post-punk musician dude bombast, and a really bouncy feeling that the audience respond to by, well, bouncing.

Much the same can be said of Fair Ohs, a group I’ve never happened to catch before, who don’t sound at all like I expected them to sound. Given their ubiquitous support slot presence on bills w/ Male Bonding, Pens et al, I’d have guessed more sloppy reverbed junk-punk would be the order of the day (and that would have been just fine), but no, Fair Ohs are off on some other stuff entirely, and very good shit it is too, mixing a heavy, propulsive rhythm section with dense Afrobeat/Tropicalia inspired guitar work and repetitive, party-time “oh oh oh”/”awo-wayo” type singalong choruses. Under other circumstances, there might be a temptation here to say something sarcy and uncomfortable about the idea of a white band playing African-influenced party music to a practically all-white audience in the middle of an area with a majority black population, but there’s something so instinctive and un-showy, good-natured and downright groovy about the way Fair Ohs merge their various influences, any knotty dialogues about cultural appropriation seem woefully out of place, surplus to requirements in the face of some straight up good times tunes, performed by these guys in an off the cuff manner that makes the mixture of high-life rhythms and punk distortion seem like the most obvious and effortless thing in the world.

Sunday at Yes Way, I didn’t see so many bands, but the ones I did see were all great, so that’s a result I guess.

Jelas from Bristol take the whole post-Huggy Bear self-taught riot grrl no wave shred vibe about as far as a three quarters male band reasonably can, stabbing forward toward an exciting variety of noise-fucked homemade prog. It’s really great! These guys must be friendly with the Corey Orbison, right…? It would seem almost obscene that two bandfs with such complimentary methods and goals could live in the same city and not at least invite each other round for tea on a regular basis. Jelas basically rock a power trio set up, with a wildcard fourth member who adds saxophone on a few numbers, and otherwise sits cross-legged next to the drummer with a spare pair of sticks, matching his technique beat for beat. Far me it from me to make assumptions about the personal dynamics within the band, but just sayin’, if I was the drummer, I’d keep an eye on him.

I really wasn’t expecting to see a band who sound like Two Wings [no myspace findable at time of writing] at Yes Way, but holy crap, I’m glad I did. Who are they? Where did they come from? This perfectly formed, non-cheesy, summer festival-ready psyche-folk-rock ensemble, taking inevitable inspiration from the rollicking, all-together-now spirit of pre-beardy ‘60s Fairport, and upping the West Coast ballroom component big-time, sounding like a way-less-wanky Espers, or the best moments of Glasgow’s Lucky Luke, or … Jefferson Airplane? Whoa! Who is this lady strumming a big red Gibson, belting it out like Joanna Newsom trying to be Janis Joplin, only, um, not half as much of a horrendous idea as that sounds? Who is this dapper looking motherfucker with a tucked in shirt, ripping into sweet John Cipollina vibrato/fuzz-addled solos at every opportunity? Oh my sainted lord, this is some superbly style retro-rocking right here, completely out of place in a corrugated iron shed in Peckham, but completely wonderful. It makes me want to get drunk.

(What little info I can drum up suggests that Two Wings are yet another one of those seemingly endless, shifting membership ensembles birthed from the ol’ Glasgow avant-folky-whatever type scene, predictably enough. A lot of that stuff I just can’t stomach, but on occasion they deliver a real knockout, and this is one.)

Like their girl-gang contemporaries Pens, La La Vasquez have come on a long way since their initial recordings, lessening the fuzz and fuck-yous, and drawing deeply from the same well of surf-infused, heavily rhythmic inspiration as Grass Widow and, in particular, Brilliant Colors. At one point I even thought they were playing a Brilliant Colors cover, um, not that I’m insinuating there’s anything underhand going on or anything you understand. Full of tension and rough edges and a dazed mixture of noise and beauty, La La Vasquez are loads of fun to watch on stage, and another fine addition to what future historians of female-led rock n’ roll will no doubt see as a veritable embarrassment of riches emerging in the years 2008-10.

I don’t catch much of Gentle Friendly’s set, but the bit I did see seemed like an extremely pleasing mixture of rolling thunder percussion and euphoric, overblown electronics – sorta like, hey, The Boredoms are a whole genre now. Sounded a bit like I’d imagine Fuck Buttons to sound, having never bothered to listen to them.

I can’t think of anything new so say about Veronica Falls right now, but needless to say, I still love them. You can search via their tag at the bottom of this post, should you be curious re: what I’ve thought to say about this exemplary band in the past.

Pheromoans are a lot like The Fall. Not in the sense that they imitate or aspire to be like The Fall, simply in the sense that they are a bunch of blokes and a lady banging out lumbering, misshapen yet oddly compelling mutant rock music, over which an angry, idiosyncratic man spits out an abstract litany of frustration and disdain, sounds and vocals coalescing into a rousing ritual purging of the anxiety and idiocy of the modern world, an expression of dole queue rage rendered purposefully obtuse to all but the most perverse and sympathetic listeners; the music birthed by the messthetics bands back in the late ‘70s, fried for twenty years into a joyous plate of gristle. Standing near the back of the room, seeing them kick into this gloriously unlikely festival headlining shit as the lubricated crowd hop about and shout requests is a fine site, and the band’s racket is mighty and disturbing and luridly hilarious; a fine time for my to make my exit – I’ve gotta be back at bloody work in the morning.

So that was Yes Way. What can I say, I had a great time. I didn’t see any art students in shiny faux-primitive headgear doing god-awful tribal drum jams, but I did see a shitload of great, wild, imaginative punk rock, and much more besides. For a narrow-minded Londoner like me, it was particularly inspiring to see bands like Slowcoaches and Jelas get invited along – not just great new discoveries for me, but welcome reminder that whatever depressing, suffocating corner of our great land you care to hop on a train too, somewhere, nearby, behind the high streets and the wetherspoons, there’ll be at least some cabal of kids kicking up a righteous, sloppy racket.

*Be thankful I ended the metaphor there – I was seconds away from going on about nails and crowbars and laying down carpet…

Labels: Fair Ohs, festivals, Former Bullies, Golden Grrrls, Hype Williams, Jelas, LaLa Vasquez, live reviews, Pheromoans, Please, School Tour, Slowcoaches, Time, Two Wings, Veronica Falls, Yes Way