SATURDAY

Before we move on, you will doubtless wish to know how the bar at Supernormal holds up before you start queueing to blind-buy 2020 tickets. Well, it may not have the myriad of cask ales offered by more high falutin’ boutique festivals (and the one I sampled was disconcertingly warm), but the fest’s own ‘Super NormAle’ is a richly hopped, super-refreshing keg IPA; a really nice brew if I’m any judge. £4.50 for a refill of your sturdy, reusable pint pot, served near ice cold, and it never seemed to run out. So that’ll do me nicely, thanks very much. (I’ve been passed a note saying that some people like to drink other things at festivals, but I don’t know anything about that.)


Several hours before that becomes an active concern however, Saturday kicks off with a breakfast of camping stove coffee and supermarket croissant, a game of 3 sided football (spectating, not playing), and a disconcertingly early set from Notts bruisers Bloody Head, playing what I imagine must be their first (and quite possibly last) pre-lunch gig.

Featuring two members of nihilistic doom titans Moloch, Bloody Head play an unremittingly filthy brand of downtuned, metalloid thug-punk, somewhat akin to ’82 demos era ‘Flag with a severely bad tummy. On both occasions when I’ve seen them previously, their vocalist has been… a bit ‘off message’, shall we say…? This time however, he’s locked in and engaged, spitting out tales of nocturnal, urban misery in that Sleaford Mods type manner which for better or worse seems de rigour for all midlands-based bands at present.

It’s probably the best set I’ve seen from the band to date but reaction from the crowd is a bit muted, presumably due to the difficulty of having to deal with this sort of thing at such an early hour, as the sun beams down and birds twitter in the trees an’ shit like that.

After a rousing set from the aforementioned Stanfield, who will not be reviewed here as a result of Conflict of Interest regulations, things get considerably more rousing in the shape of Liverpool’s Horse Bastard. Yes, Horse Bastard. I think that calls for a paragraph break, don’t you?


Not only do Horse Bastard play absolutely shit-hot, old school grindcore, absolutely acing that early Napalm Death vibe I love so much (just a bit more relentlessly frenzied n’ trebley perhaps, and shedding some of the remaining rudiments of common-or-garden metal?), they do so with a great sense of humour and bonhomie to boot. Bloody marvellous!

The dreadlocked drummer – who looks as if he was cryogenically frozen at an Extreme Noise Terror gig in 1988 – beats seventy eight shades of super-human buggery out of a single kick drum kit, whilst both guitarist and bassist make inspired use of those ‘total cut off’ pedals that I will never again question the existence of now that I’ve seen what they can do for grind’s ‘short sharp shock’ aesthetic. An extremely endearing fella, Horse Bastard’s vocalist still seems delighted with his band’s choice of moniker (and why wouldn’t he be?), telling us how much his dad was impressed by it. As indeed are the Supernormal crowd - by the half-way point of the set, an impromptu call and response chant of “Horse? BASTARD!” has taken hold. Not bad for 4pm, but by god they’ve earned it. What a top band.

Sadly, we don’t make it into the packed Vortex in time to see The Utopia Strong, depriving us of the no doubt inspiring sight of snooker legend Steve Davis hovering beatifically above his brace of analogue synths, but the sounds he and his cohorts make are clearly audible from outside, and comprise some extremely fine Ash Ra / early Tangerine Dream style kosmische business.

At around this point, my decision to gawk at a table covered in effects units waiting to be wheeled into the Vortex leads me into conversation with a member of Psychological Strategy Board, who are on next therein.


Of course, going in to see them is a no brainer, and it’s nice to discover that – as their name implies – these chaps seem keen to pull the somewhat over-stretched “hauntology” aesthetic back to its more primal roots, using contact miced pieces of metallic detritus (including, I’m told, a little bit of soil from the garden to add a particularly vital crunch), mechanical doo-hickeys and tooth brushes to create a squeeking, grinding, whirring field of sound, expanded into fathomless realms of uncanny wind tunnel atmos via their aforementioned miniature city of LED-flashing delay units.

I’m reminded of some of the earlier, more abrasive, GhostBox releases (Mount Vernon Arts Lab’s revered ‘Séance at Hobbs Lane’ in particular), and I also greatly enjoyed Psychological Research Board’s back projection, which utilised the techniques of a classic oil n’ water ‘60s light show, but drained the images of colour, leaving a muted palette of greys, creams and browns which sometimes resembled a set of tea stains on an old paperback taking on a psychotropic life of their own; and it doesn’t get much more ‘hauntological’ than that, I’m sure you’d agree.

Back outdoors and over to the ‘Red Kite’ tent stage, it proves impossible for those enjoying a late lunch / early supper to avoid Acid Cannibals’ cacophonous sound check.

This Glaswegian duo’s steadfast dedication to the gospel of high energy rock n’ roll may in theory be admirable – and their use of Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’ as intro music is inspired – but I confess I find their set pretty trying once it gets underway. Taking a kind of objection-flattening “hey hey it’s party time” approach to their craft, these guys’ determination to be 100% ON, ALL THE TIME, leaves their music feeling airless, compressing their material into a kind of meaningless mulch of Big Rock Gesture.


It’s theoretically the kind of stuff I should like of course, but a few songs in I find myself desperately wishing that they’d ease up on the gas a bit, drop that snare-hit-on-every-beat crap and lean back on the groove, just to check whether it’s still there or not, cos I can’t really tell anymore. But then, I’m not much of a Party Dude, so what the hell do I know?

(Incidentally, did you know that Winnebago Deal are still going? A friend told me the other day. I had no idea!)

A somewhat more nuanced take on the good ol’ heavy rock white-out can be found back over at the Shed stage, where Japanese quartet Qujaku (that’s “peacock” to us English speakers) have been perfectly scheduled for what I would like to think is the highly-coveted ‘sunset slot’.

Fitting neatly into a lineage of Japanese heavy psyche bands who have reached for the high branches of the elegant / ethereal (think White Heaven or Overhang Party just for starters), Qujaku could easily have found themselves at the forefront of a “third wave” of PSF-type rock bands had they emerged a few years earlier, joining groups such as Shizuka and Up-Tight in their tendency to marry the gnarled intensity of their predecessors with a slightly more accessible, Western-orientated dream-pop/shoegaze agenda.

Would we be getting into iffy territory if I were to suggest that there is something distinctively, nay classically, Japanese about Qujaku’s music that sets it apart from their contemporaries in other corners the globe? Well if so, too late, I’ve done it now. The long song which opens the band’s Supernormal set, with bassist Hiromi Oishi setting aside her thunder-broom aside to play a mournful, repetitive riff on saxophone, feels uniquely evocative of rain and neon splattered Tokyo nights, whilst the ominous, stentorian rolls and marches favoured by drummer Ryo Habuto seem to draw to some extent on traditional Japanese percussion, summoning visions of a blood-thirsty samurai army marching forth in a Kurosawa flick, even as guitarist Shuya Onuki’s rather strained, feminine vocals stretch out syllables, howling and cracking like the cry of some icy-skinned kaidan ghoul.

Naturally, a swathe of reverb covers all, but despite their studied professionalism, when Qujaku rock out, they really go for it, fuzz n’ feedback spiralling into pure noise in the last gasps of sunlight as the feathers fly and the jams run free. It’s fucking brilliant, marking the band out as a worthy addition to the storied tradition I was picking through a few paragraphs ago, and it feels like a privilege to have caught them on such rare form. None of this I daresay is lost on the Supernormal crowd, as they reception they receive is little short of rapturous.


As the applause continues, I’m hoofing my way back up the hill to catch up with Supernormal’s annual drag karaoke showdown – billed as ‘Madonna vs The Stooges’ - and to see whether my wife got her name down on the list in time for a Madonna number. She didn’t, but I did arrive in time to hear Amy from Grey Hairs belting out ‘1969’, having naturally chosen the right side of this particular argument. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like Madonna well enough, but there’s only one way for the pure at heart to go here, y’know?

As you might well imagine, the world according to drag karaoke begs to differ however, and a degree of cultural friction is soon in evidence as the third Madonna song in a row is met with a belligerent shout of “MORE STOOGES” from the contingent of sturdy, band t-shirt men standing impassively at stage right. I stand with you my balding brothers, but this isn’t really our scene, let’s face it. Trip to the bar?


It has now been about fifteen years since I once saw Blood Stereo (or was it one of Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance’s other groups – I forget) supporting Sonic Youth at Brixton Academy, and drew a comic strip review of the gig in which I cruelly wrote off their performance as a boring and desultory waste of time, resembling, as I recall, “the sound of a busy crisp factory”). There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then however; my ears have opened and my tastes widened, and these folks are after all stalwarts of the particular strain of early ‘00s UK underground psyche that I dearly love, so…. it’s high time I gave them another shot, right?

Sad to report therefore that the few minutes I manage to witness of their performance back at the Vortex stage proves just as obtuse and unengaging today as it did back then. Morose, rats-in-the-walls scuffling and squeaking door hinges seem to be the main dishes on offer here, insofar as I can tell from poking my head through the black curtain (I’m reminded of Chris Morris’s “DJ Boiled Mouse” with his “creepy wisp of a noise”). Whatever, man. Sitting by the fire watching gangs of feral kids burn marshmallows proves considerably more rewarding.

A considerably less esoteric prospect, Petbrick comprise the duo of Wayne Adams (Melting Hand, Big Lad, the Hominid Sounds label) on synths, vocals and samples, and Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura) - no less - on drums.

With thick-framed glasses, carefully trimmed goatee and a tasteful short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, Mr Cavalera certainly looks pretty far removed from one’s mental image of “the drummer from Sepultura” this days, but his ‘brick shithouse’ physique nonetheless attests to the kind of muscular prowess necessitated by such a role, and indeed, the intermittent outbursts of cyborg-level hyper-blast he delivers during Petbrick’s set are jaw-dropping.

Taken as a whole, their set is an anxious and rather punishing affair, predicated on “tension and release” principle which sees Cavalera’s onslaughts, together with Adams’ industrial noise white-outs and post-apocalyptic battle-cries (which reminded me more than anything of Alec Empire’s Teutonic theatrics in Atari Teenage Riot way back when), interspersed with murky, brooding passages of hissing abstraction, whirring rotorblades and incomprehensible sample chatter.

The tightly packed crowd react to this… weirdly. There is a wild, unhinged feeling running through the tent, as the unpredictable malevolence of the music leaves would-be moshers uncertain whether they’re coming or going, whilst a number of people meanwhile seem to be peaking on something which I would imagine is probably best avoided, on the basis of the effect it seemed to be having on these poor test subjects.

Through much of the set, a wild-eyed woman dances at the front of the stage, Stacia-style, initially earning looks of alarm from the band, although she seems to be maintaining a greater degree of physical co-ordination than is traditionally maintained be those who are tripping balls. As arms and legs writhe in the front rows, assorted worse-for-wear freaks join her at various points, and the whole thing basically seems a hairs-breadth away from collapsing into chaos. Which suits the music just fine, to be perfectly honest. Slight ‘Mad Max rave’ vibes creeping in around the edges…

After this hair-raising spectacle, a more-or-less headlining set from Belgium pop-punks Cocaine Piss is not exactly what I am looking for, pretty much confirming my knee-jerk suspicion of a band who would willingly name themselves after the two substances which I least wish music to remind me of.

They certainly bring a ton of energy, I’ll give ‘em that, and if they’d popped up six or seven years ago, when I was still working through the queasy hangover from whole 2010 garage- pop wave, I’d probably have loved the little fuckers, blanket barre chord distortion, hectoring air raid siren vox and all. These days though, their music feels like drinking a bottle of tomato ketchup for dinner – a content-free toxic burn of refined sugar and salt that I can well do without.

Thereafter, our evening comes to a traumatic end as we follow an ominous sign-post pointing toward the unlit depths of the woods. Here, we end up selling our souls to Satan, ruining my favourite t-shirt in the process as we are baptised anew in vile, demonic emanations. Which is frankly the last thing you need when you’re camping.




SUNDAY

Keenly aware that I’ve not yet managed to sample the wide variety of activities and events offered at Supernormal beyond the realm of rock bands (and Satanism), I make a relatively early start on Sunday in order to catch some of the festival’s spoken word programme.

Perhaps known to some as a member of ertwhile Pickled Egg records stalwarts Oddfellows Casino, David Bramwell has apparently now won himself a rep as a “master storyteller” (quoth the festival programme), with a number of books to his name, and his audio-visual enhanced lecture ‘The Cult of Water’ indeed supports this contention, presenting a approachable, engaging and rather touching take on the kind of thing that back in my day we used to call “psychogeography”.

Leaning more toward the kind of mythic/romantic magical realism pioneered by Alan Moore (who is indeed consulted and quoted during the presentation) than the gnomic abstraction of Iain Sinclair, Bramwell smooths things out here to the extent that one can almost picture him fronting one of those presenter-focused, “my journey to the heart of…” type documentaries on BBC 4. And indeed, consulting his website reveals he has indeed produced programmes for Radios 3 and 4.

Too mainstream for Supernormal? Well, the content he dredges up for ‘The Cult of Water’ is uniquely interesting, honestly presented and generally legit, losing nothing for the comparative accessibility of its presentation, so no such accusations from me.

Essentially, Bramwell tells the story here of his life-long interest in England’s lost rivers, ranging back to the experiences of his own childhood and re-framing the story of the Industrial Revolution as an extended conflict between the matriarchal power of the pagan river goddess Danu and the masculine forges of Vulcan. Intriguing historical/cultural side-bars and head-spinning gobbets mystic imagery are pulled willy-nilly from the landscape of the North of England along the way, but Bramwell somehow never lets the linear flow of his fanciful yet tangible central narrative slip, making for a rich, rewarding and thought-provoking trip – highly recommended, should he be popping up to perform it near you at any point in the future.

Next up is The Quietus editor John Doran, who has certainly come a long way since the days when he was merely a struggling music journo hosting DJ nights at the Mucky Pup in Islington. According to the Supernormal festival programme, he has attained the status of a “modern seer”, no less. Good on you John.

Its existence justified by the sublime pun in its title alone, Doran’s presentation ‘Selected Ambient Walks’ takes the form of a good-natured ramble through the strange, subterranean mythology of Cornwall, and the myriad ways in which it has informed the work of Aphex Twin over the years.

Whilst the tangible links to Aphex output sometimes become strained, Doran nonetheless makes an excellent case for the age-old traditions and provincial isolation of Richard D. James’ native county have helped define the knotty menace and impish surrealism of musician’s unique aesthetic and public persona. In the process, he delivers a vivid picture of the dark and psychotropic undercurrents of Cornish culture, ensuring that we will never look at St Michael’s Mount, pasties or the ruins of some old tin mine in quite the same way ever again.

Feeling rather like the contents of an old “Haunted Cornwall” paperback ripped apart and soiled with noxious party drugs, sea-side deprivation and ear-rupturing bass, ‘Selected Ambient Walks’ is loads of fun, and again, comes highly recommended should Mr Doran ever pitch up in yr area for a spoken word slot.


Later on Sunday afternoon, I continue to eschew loud music, instead turning up to attend a guided tour of the Brazier’s Park house – essentially a 17th century farmhouse transformed into a nigh-on fantastical monstrosity of Strawberry Hill gothic by a Vice Lord of the Admirality in the 1790s - conducted by a member of the “intentional community” which has abided in the property since it was purchased by social reformers and progressive psychologists Norman & Dorothy Glaister in 1950.

For the sake of brevity, I will direct you both to the house’s Wikipedia page and the community’s website to learn more about this strange and remarkable place, but needless to say, tramping around the building’s cramped and dusty corridors – their vibe pitched somewhere between a stately home, a private psychiatric institution and a destitute rural art school – with a large group of booted, unkempt festival-goers proved an extremely strange experience.

Unfortunately, circumstances (such as work on Monday) dictated that my ride back to The Smoke departed Supernormal only a short while after the house tour concluded. I dearly wish I could have stuck it out to have stuck it out till the end, but hey, such is the fate of us last minute hangers-on.

As we hefted our bags and trudged back to the parking area, Glaswegian duo Verba Mansa were warming up over in the red tent, their wah-wah drenched improvised psych rock reverberated across the rolling hills and fields bordering the festival site. Damn, it sounded good. [UPDATE 12/9/19: It appears this band is actually Yerba Mansa, and their music can be found here. Thanks Jona! - see comments.]

Attending Supernormal last month was an extremely uplifting experience; a rare glimpse of a possible future that temporarily defies the black plummet into dystopian oblivion that our society otherwise seems dead set upon. For all the greatness I’ve duly reported above however, I can’t help but weep for all that I missed. A reportedly great set from experimental guitarist Jon Collins in the beatific back yard ‘Barn’ area; a performance of Eric Satie piano pieces in the Brazier’s Park house; an incendiary late night DJ set from London’s Proteus, and, on Sunday night, electronic Ugandan wedding music from Otim Alpha followed by a closing set from one-off Iron Maiden tribute band Electric Matthew. Just imagine.

Next year, I’ll be endeavouring to make it on-site ASAP and stay put to the bitter end, but so will many others, so… let’s see how it goes, eh? (I hope someone drops me a reminder soon as tickets are on sale.)

Labels: Acid Cannibals, Blood Stereo, Bloody Head, Cocaine Piss, David Bramwell, festivals, Horse Bastard, John Doran, live reviews, Petbrick, Psychological Strategy Board, Qujaku, Supernormal, Verba Mansa

Please note: most of the following festival report was written immediately after the event, at the start of August, but completion & posting was delayed due to mourning. I hope a touch or two of the post-fest glow can still be gleaned at four weeks remove.


Few a few years no, I’ve had a yen to attend the Supernormal festival, but sadly other life responsibilities prevented me from doing so – until last year that is, when the summer calendar was looking free n’ easy, but the fest itself didn’t happen. So, I was thrilled to have finally made it to idyllic environs of Brazier’s Park in Oxfordshire earlier this month, thanks entirely to the generosity of performing rock band Stanfield, who wrangled me a guest pass. Thanks Stanfield!

Eyebrows may have been raised in some quarters when Supernormal’s 2019 tickets entirely sold out months in advance of the line-up / programme being announced, but despite grumbles of cliquery and elitism in some quarters, the reasons for this early sell out became immediately obvious upon our arrival at the festival site late on Friday afternoon. The plain truth is: 1,500 or so ticket-holders plus performers, volunteers and shameless hangers on such as myself have Brazier’s Park packed to capacity.

By the time we arrived, the allotted camping area was already pretty much fully occupied, creating a treacherous labyrinth of overlapping guide-ropes ready to fell late night stumblers, and leaving us splitting the difference between tramping down a nettle-patch in the field’s far corner or scoping out the space surrounding an ominous, buzzing hole on the ground to which some helpful soul had affixed a homemade sign reading “WASPS”.

I should stress that, as with just about every aspect of Supernormal, things turned out great in the end and we all enjoyed a swell camping experience, devoid of chaos, discomfort or noisy neighbours - but nonetheless, it is clear that putting even a few more tickets on sale could have significantly upset the festival’s fragile eco-system, perhaps prompting actual pushing and shoving at the entrances to popular performance spaces, and tipping the site’s peak-capacity composting toilets and locally sourced but somewhat over-stretched fresh water supply over the edge, creating a potential hygiene disaster.

Many festivals of course find themselves wrestling with the tricky issue of upscaling as they build up steam over the years, but in this case, I wholeheartedly commend Supernormal’ s organisers for their decision to stay put, even in the face of greatly increased demand.

As I came to learn first-hand on Sunday afternoon, the Brazier’s Park site itself belongs to an “intentional community” (“commune” to the likes of us) which has maintained itself within the adjacent house and gardens since the late 1940s, promoting what for the sake of brevity I will simply term a set of proto-hippy ideals, which find an echo even today in the inclusive, communal spirit, “live and let live” ethos and admirably high environmental standards which characterise the atmosphere of Supernormal.

In terms of race, age, gender & sexual identity, subculture and social class, the festival was almost certainly the most diverse experimental music event I have ever attended. At any given point, neo-primitive, post-gender freak-flags could be found flying somewhere on the site, whilst elsewhere young (and not so young) parents enjoyed comfortable pockets of domestic, camping stove calm with their offspring. Divisions and generalisations based on any of the aforementioned categories temporarily felt far, far away. I realise this is Festival Cliché # 1, but for a few days here, it was nice to exist in an environment in which everyone seemed to be on the same page in the big book of possible futures.

Moving Supernormal elsewhere would not necessarily change this, but it would inevitably entail higher prices, more formalised security arrangements, more rules, more waste, more stress, fewer pungent aromas drifting cross the breeze, and fewer opportunities for young children to play perilously close to open fires (hey, it builds character, right?).

So… yeah. Just get in early for your tickets next year folks, and rest assured, whatever ends up on the bill, it will be good. Which brings us neatly on to…. I dunno, some music reviews?


FRIDAY

To my great regret, I’m still trying to hammer tent pegs into unyielding ground during David Terry’s allotted set time on Friday afternoon. As a great admirer of the Bong bassist’s solo and collaborative work, I was very much looking forward to getting to see him perform. But hey, it’s fair enough – I’m not here on my own dime, so the timetable for turning up was out of my hands. Just happy to be here, etc.


Thus, the weekend’s music actually begins with Crumbling Ghost, who are holding forth upon Supernormal’s comically small (about 10’ x 6’ maybe?) yet impressively loud & well-mixed “shed” stage, as we sup our post-tent assembly pints.

I have, somehow, remained unaware of this group’s work up to this point, but their mixture of earnest Trad Arr English folk, malevolent doom metal thunder and unapologetic, Bevis Frond-style psyche guitar workouts is nectar to my parched palette. Though the combination of the genres and aesthetics they’re wrangling here could easily emerge as precious, cloying or contrived, the band walk the line with grace, rocking out with a gutsy energy that allows their music to soar and shriek with the Red Kites swooping above the surrounding fields, rather than becoming mere aural comfort food for aging white men such as myself.

A Fairport for the Baba Yaga’s Hut generation, perhaps? Well, maybe not quite, but I really liked it anyway. I’ve got their 5 Songs 12” from 2016 on the turntable right now, and, if the wisdom of recording ‘roided up rock versions of arrangements originating with Shirley Collins, Mike Waterson and Bert Jansch sometimes feels questionable, I certainly can’t deny that vocalist Katie Harnett’s voice does the business, or pretend that listening to ‘Omie Wise’ or ‘Swansea Town’ with additional searing solos and distorted crunch is anything other than an extremely enjoyable prospect.

A heavy paradigm shift next, as we drift into the pyramidal wooden “Vortex” building to catch London-via-Bristol (natch) MC Manonmars, representing the latter city’s Young Echo collective, whose sub-aquatic, perma-stoned and admirably multi-faceted take on UK hip-hop and associated generic terrain is certainly worth a listen.


The two DJ/producer guys lay down an immersive, massively spliffed out backdrop to proceedings here - loping, gravity-defying slo-mo beats, bass hits sinking beneath moss-filled swimming pools of reverb as woozy flute and wurlitzer samples turn to static beneath inches of dust. It rather puts me in mind of that ol’ cLOUDDEAD CD from way back when, but, thankfully, Manonmars delivers a far more convincing flow that that group’s nasal timewasters; indeed, he’s hitting up pretty much the polar opposite of the nerdy/back-packing clichés usually associated with more experimental strains of hip-hop, instead sinking waa-ay down into some ancient, stygian depths, fronting with the kind of repressed aggression and raw, evil-eyed lingo of yr favourite mid ‘90s killers (a youth spent deeply immersed in the Wu is evident here, I’d venture), but blending it somehow into the more anxious, self-doubting currents of the genre’s 21st century underground. Signature line: “I’m from London, shit’s CONGESTED”.

It’s potent brew; sonically, it feels like walking into the wrong dorm room and getting hit with a contact high that’ll knock you on your back, but there’s a weird, fearsome depth here too that demands further investigation.

Heavy duty head-nodding continues, along with the same ineffable balance of aggro and melancholy, as ‘underground’ hip hop mainstays Dälek headline Friday night. A long-running concern whose work I have, up to now, remained largely unacquainted with (perhaps the Ipecac connection put me off?), Dälek is an intense business and no mistake. The blown out, industrial noise-infused maximalism of the group’s backing tracks somehow manages to convey a sense of pure, crushing sadness, even as they simultaneously resemble clouds of orbital detritus raining down on some desolate, nocturnal cityscape. Looming trees glow green and purple against the night sky as MC Dälek spits out twenty years-worth of tributes to fallen warriors, cries for post-human unity and excursions through the blasted hinterlands of urban America. This is heady, heavy stuff, reaching far beyond the aforementioned clichés of the reductive “alt hip hop” tag, and after a solid hour of it, I can scarcely do much more than trudge around a bit and mumble good nights before hitting the sack. To my surprise, I sleep well.

Part # 2 of this review coming within days.

Labels: Crumbling Ghost, Dälek, festivals, live reviews, Manonmars, Supernormal

One of the depressingly small number of female musicians featured at Desertfest (it’s kind of a drag to even feel obliged to draw attention to such distinctions, TBH), Tanya at least seems determined to make an impression as perhaps the single loudest featured musician, running her bass through what looks to be no less than eight full size cabinets (well, they’re all switched on and miced anyway - I suppose we'd have to question the sound tech for full confirmation).

I rarely use ear-plugs for live music, but we’re very much in plugs-or-die territory here, as the sub-bass pummels like an enthusiastic masseur and the drinks shelf screwed to the venue’s back wall buzzes like a chainsaw. The noise kind of makes my teeth hurt, which I think is a first. For once, the plugs work well anyway. They let through most of the treble, and I can feel the bass, so it’s all good.

Though the bottomless depths of Bismuth’s glacial doom matches early Sunn 0))) in intensity, this is far from just a formless drone, with tightly composed sections allowing the band to scale back on the distortion for some passages of glimmering, oceanic beauty. The rise and fall of the noise feels a bit like watching storm surges build up and dissipate in real time across some rain-lashed, Turner-esque landscape perhaps, with crowds of gulls occasionally flying free through patches of blinding sun. It is vast, serious, frightening and impressive music. Highly recommended, although live immersion is not for the faint-hearted.

Shortly thereafter, Notts stalwarts Moloch begin to tear through their hardcore-informed depths-of-human-misery sludge at only marginally lower volume. Airless, grim and defeated, the vocalist favours wordless bellows of pain, and, whilst the guitarist occasionally manoeuvres his fingers through some sweet, Sabbathian riff patterns, you can almost feel his bandmates glowering at him for attempting something so perilously close to being fun. Friends, it’s “heavy”, in the sense that hippies used to use the word as a synonym for ‘difficult’ or ‘threatening’.

Checking bandcamp, I see they did an album back in 2011 based around Andrzej Zulwaski’s ‘Possession’. Word. Next time I feel in the mood for total self-annihilation, I’ve got it cued.

Although I enjoyed Moloch’s set, it feels suffocatingly unnatural to be soaking up such punishment in a blackened basement this early in the day on a sunny Sunday, and as such, it’s with palpable relief that I at this point make a break for the outside, purchasing a really big ice cream to enjoy as I cut through the back streets towards the far more salubrious environs of The Roundhouse.

So – Roundhouse. Pros and cons. Though its pompous ‘historic cultural centre’ branding leaves a bad taste in the mouth with regards to what is still basically a “pack ‘em in / pile ‘em high” gig venue, a festival scenario like this nonetheless makes the advantages of its big bucks refurb (many bars, opens spaces, places to sit, friendly staff) quite welcome. The main room remains a genuinely incredible space too (the next time you’re there, LOOK UP). I was initially a bit miffed that the balcony isn’t open to general ticket holders, but later in the evening it became obvious that this seated area had been put side primarily for older attendees or those with mobility issues, rather than just fenced off for VIPs, which is a genuinely nice idea – no problems there. Sound mix meanwhile is sadly a bit meh (not much better than yr standard Forum/Koko mud-fest at times), and both sight lines and comfort down on the floor could be pretty lacking for a sell-out show (which thankfully this isn’t – Desertfest’s headliners may have a certain pull, but the room is vast).

Despite claiming to have arrived dazed straight from the airport, Elder nonetheless manage to achieve a mix that is louder, and about ten times clearer, than any of the other bands who will perform at the Roundhouse today, making the space a perfect fit for the group’s particular brand of Epic Modern Rock (caps engaged). Not quite ‘psyche-‘, not quite ‘space-‘, not quite ‘progressive’ and not quite ‘metal’, but skirting a little around all of these things, Elder’s music is carefully-wrought stuff, achieving transcendence not through noise and chaos, but through confident playing and unified compositions. Which I realise sound boring as hell, but the band are actually quite compelling… it’s kind of like music for gliding across some bright, vast alien landscape of unknown flora and awe-inspiring rock formations and stuff, I suppose. Did I already say ‘epic’? Yes.

Moving into the final stretch, Desertfest’s Sunday line up seems to have been consciously split between the two extremes of the festival’s remit, with an intimidating line up of total-fucking-doom at The Underworld whilst quasi-mainstream space-rock type stuff hold sway at The Roundhouse. With all three headliners at the latter falling broadly into the category of “bands I have a great deal of fondness for, but am uncertain about the prospect of seeing in 2018”, my decision is to stick with it. Satori meanwhile largely favours The Underworld, and subsequently begins to make me slightly regret my decision via an impressive stream of photos and videos of groups like Fister (BIG FUN?) and Primitive Man (just BIG, and a bit terrifying).

But, I shall not be moved. Roundhouse it is.

Like those long distant formative gigs I began this post talking about, my personal history with Nebula goes back to the early ‘00s. Transcending the rather plastic, mass-produced sound of much late ‘90s Stoner Rock (which at its worst was basically Warped Tour pop-punk for boys with long hair and flares, right?) whilst staying true to its essential sonic ideals, they rose above thanks to a gnarlier recorded sound (courtesy of Jack Endino), song-writing that saw them spread their wings into proper cosmic/psyche territory, and, most of all, front man Eddie Glass’s gloriously OTT guitar heroics (which was/is basically a perfect expression of the sound all gormless Bill & Ted teens wishes they could sound like when they pick up their first strat copy).

Hearing unrehabilitated rockist action like this start to break through into the indie compound was a joyous thing to me at the time (their 2001 Peel session remains magnificent – perhaps the band’s crowning moment), and I recall striving hard to try to make it to a London headline show they were playing at around the same time. I didn’t make it, and the band subsequently fell off my radar, so…. a little delayed, here we are in 2018. As it transpires, this set is actually the first sighting of the band since they split up in 2010-ish, with a line-up comprising Glass and – alarm bells, anyone? – a new, younger rhythm section.

Contrary to his persona on the records, Eddie Glass seems an unassuming sort of fellow, shambling on stage, eyes to floor and just getting down to business with minimal fanfare. Having never caught the band before, I’m not sure if this reflects a lack of confidence after so much time away or if he’s just always been like that. Not that it matters, you understand – after all, this is not the kind of rock music that needs some fist-pounding oaf in the driving seat. It’s all about the riffs and solos, all about the groove, and staying true to the core, shining awesomeness of the rock dream. Which, by-now-expected murky bass sounds notwithstanding, Nebula 2018 do very well.

Ploughing manfully through hits like ‘All The Way’, ‘Sonic Titan’ and ‘Let It Burn’ – truly, songs that legitimately deserve to be described as “joints” – this is a truly sweet time. Disappointingly, the crowd is considerably thinner than it was for Elder, but hey, this band are reborn representatives or a scene that largely slid into creative irrelevance over a decade ago, and, as noted, The Roundhouse is a vast room for them to try to fill. Sipping a beer, reflecting on the notion that this is basically the music that I think should be playing on all car radios all the time (well, either that, or Creedence, or ‘90s hip-hop), I had a nice time.

Sadly, I don't think Glass indulged in his former endearing habit of pausing to announce "geetar!" shortly before he himself plays a solo, mid-way through a song in which he has been soloing more or less continually throughout - but you can't have everything.

A few songs before the end of the set, Glass breaks his G-string and seems somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed. It speaks poorly of the level of camaraderie on this bill that there are no members of other bands rummaging around in flight cases to save the day, but, apparently lacking spares and/or the wherewithal to conduct an on-stage change, Glass opts to see out the set sans G-string, harshing the set’s buzz somewhat with some awkwardly re-worked riff parts and a chronic reduction in the kind of string-bending, sustain blasting action for which that magic third string is, uh, kind of essential.

Like I say, it was a cool set, I’d really glad I had the chance to finally see ‘em, but for a sort-of-legendary band theoretically making their glorious return in front of a crowd of genre die-hards, the reaction seemed… a little muted, perhaps? I dunno, what can ya say.

So -- Hawkwind is a weird one. Which I suppose is exactly as it should be, but still.

I’m sure I don’t need to fill you in on my history with Hawkwind. Simply one of the best bands ever, no caveats required. I’ve been meditating upon their mysteries to the point of near obsession for the past five years or so in particular. Still though, I don’t think I’ve ever consciously listened to anything they’ve done since about 1984, so… there’s that. My understanding has been that, across the past few decades, the band has more or less been truckin’ on in power trio format, with stalwart Dave Brock backed up by a reliable but anonymous rhythm section.



Based on the Desertfest performance though, it seems the ever-shifting sands of Hawkdom have been rearranged once more after these years of relative stability. For a start, who is this large gentleman in a Stetson and cut-off leather jacket, standing centre-stage, reciting Michael Moorcock’s ‘Sonic Attack’ monologue through a megaphone? [As usual, Wiki provides the answer: apparently he is Mr Dibs, and he been in place as de facto frontman since 2011.] In-between twisting knobs for instant, cheesy UFO noises on a portable synth (think Higashi Hiroshi in Acid Mothers Temple), he proceeds to handle lead vocals throughout the set.

In an odd but somewhat inspired move, Hawkwind’s set both begins and ends with songs written by the late Bob Calvert for 1977’s ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’ LP, and fair dos, Stetson-man does a pretty fine impression of Calvert’s distinctive vocal style. ‘Damnation Alley’ certainly emerges as a bit of a banger, with a largely keyboard-led sound nailing a style I’m sure young ‘uns in the crowd would immediately term ‘motorik’ or ‘kosmiche’, though one doubts that even the more recently recruited Hawklords could give a monkeys about that, whilst the closing wig-out on ‘Hassan I Sabha’ transcends the inherent ridiculousness of proceedings to become genuinely sinister and disorientating.

Sad to say however, that is Baron Brock remains the undisputed captain of starship Hawkwind, he was captain in name only on this occasion. Though his disinclination to act as front-man has been a constant since the band's glory days, having single-handedly held the group together for over fifty years in the face of nigh on unimaginable madness, I’ve always imagined he must be some kind of Ginn/Iommi/Johnny Ramone style guitarist-dictator, and the dominance of his “roaring after-burner” proto-punk rhythm guitar style across the years would certainly suggest as much. Tonight though, he’s looking fragile, and feels very much like a marginal figure in his own band.

One of the only guitarists I saw at Desertfest to eschew the temptation of Orange/Marshall stacks, he instead seemed to be plugged into his own strange arrangement of floor-level apparatus with many flashing lights and… this didn’t seem to be working out terribly well, to be honest. He and a sound tech seemed to spend the entirety of the set fiddling with it, and guitar was entirely inaudible for the first few songs, leaving Hawkwind sounding rather like some weird electronic pop band (which at least suits the ‘Quark..’ material, I guess). When it does cut through the mix, his sound is transistor radio tinny – weak fuel indeed for this hulk’s engines.

Nonetheless, the band bash through serviceable reiterations of ‘Born To Go’, ‘The Watcher’ and ‘Upside Down’, but tellingly, the only moment that really sees Brock summoning up much enthusiasm is a number that I think must have been taken from one of their recent sci-fi concept albums (most likely 2015’s ‘The Machine Stops’). Moving closer to centre stage and grinning broadly, this one – which sticks pretty closely to the classic-era Hawkwind template, to be honest - sees Brock dropping some appropriately gnarly solos, whilst the band respond in kind, turning the whole thing into exactly the kind of chaotic, open-ended jam you might reasonably hope to encounter at a 21st century Hawkwind gig.

Charmingly, Hawkwind don’t appear to have updated their video backdrop since the rave era, and ‘Hassan I Sabha’s “hashish, hashish, hashish” chant is accompanied by a head shop screensaver vortex of spinning, VGA marijuana leaves (clearly the band have a good idea of the audience they’re playing for at this fest, although I don’t notice much repetition of yesterday’s ‘smokin in the boy’s room’ antics at The Roundhouse), whilst the band’s dancing girl performs a ludicrous fan dance during an extended, ‘90s techno style interlude. (Beat THAT, Primitive Man.)

Ah, yes. Did I mention that Hawkwind have a dancing girl? And she’s no Stacia either, that’s for sure. Most of the men on the stage are old enough to be her father (please god don’t let that actually be the case), and… it’s all a bit uncomfortable, to be honest, especially given that she is the only woman to set foot on The Roundhouse stage across the whole day.

Still, isn’t this all the kind of thing you’d expect to encounter at a Hawkwind gig? Weird, ramshackle, baffling, uncomfortable, funny, simultaneously grotesquely out-dated and defiantly futuristic, hideously uncool yet undeniably awesome? It’s all a far, far cry from the grandeur of ‘Space Ritual’, of course, but what can we expect – that was literally a lifetime ago by this point. The very fact that such a volatile, self-sabotaging band can still get the motor running at all is worthy of celebration… but I do kind of wish they’d been able to summon up something a bit more substantial than the gig-going equivalent of a “so bad it’s good” b-movie.

Which seems like the perfect juncture at which to move on to Monster Magnet.

I never stooped so low as to recognise that whole moribund notion of ‘guilty pleasures’ that was briefly en vague about a decade ago, but, put a gun to my head and I’d probably have to nominate Monster Magnet for that category.

Combining lumpen riffs, ludicrous, laugh-out-loud lyrics and obnoxious, quasi-ironic rock star machismo whilst waving the remnants of a noble psychedelic/space-rock legacy around like a tattered ragdoll, their existence adds approximately nothing of value to the sum total of human cultural achievement. Checking out the MTV-aimed videos they made during the ‘90s is enough to drain the colour from your flesh and potentially make your hair fall out (please don’t try this at home), and yet… somehow, the obscene beauty of Dave Wyndorf’s maniacal vision of the perfect, ultimate rock n’ roll band still always manages to shine through.

They were, and they remain, fucking Monster Magnet, and, ever since a random second hand CD purchase of their major label debut ‘Dopes To Infinity’ shone a light of new possibility into my teenage years, livening up a grim era in which “psychedelia” remained a dirty word for most critics and musicians, they have had a permanent place in my heart.

Of course, I tracked further back from there, investigating the genuinely heavy, creepy shit they put out before inking their big deal with A&M (lest we forget, ‘Tab’, ‘Spine of God’ and their debut EP remain potent listening to this day for all fuzz-breathing sleaze-fiends), and forward toward to ‘Power Trip’, ‘98’s gloriously flawed attempt at a mainstream breakthrough. Thereafter though…. well let’s just say that all I remember about ‘99’s ‘God Says No’ is sitting in a Uni housemate’s room marvelling at the lyric “..you will swim in the sweat of a thousand orgies”, and after that…. nada. I just had enough Monster Magnet in my life I suppose, and the emergence of Youtube and the ability to watch those videos certainly didn’t help (shudder).

From what I gather, earlier Monster Magnet tours have boasted pyrotechnics, dancers in cages, probably whatever other ridiculous nonsense you could possibly imagine, but, after a few year that seem to have been spent stripping back on their mainstream/stadium-filling aspirations and attempting to reconnect with their ‘core fans’, the band’s 2018 fronting is a bit more down to earth. Tonight, they’re a professional touring rock band playing a headline show to a medium-sized crowd inexplicably inhabiting a large-scale venue – no more, no less. The sound is muddy and unclear, with bass distortion swamping everything, but in spite of everything Dave Wyndorf remains a compelling frontman – his voice is still amazing, his enthusiasm contagious.

I don’t think any other band members have been held over from the ‘90s line-up I’m most familiar with, but both guitarists are happy to do exactly wehat guitarists in bands like this are supposed to do, striding up to the monitors on a regular basis, playing their well-practiced solos with appropriate panache. They’re doin’ their job, and it’s a job they love etc etc… but is that enough?

I never thought I’d say this given that even their best albums tend to melt into undifferentiated, bombastic sludge by the mid-point, but it’s the strength of Monster Magnet’s material that really lets them take flight. With no call-back to the pre-major label era, it’s a “hits plus new bits” set-list, and ‘Dopes To Infinity’s title track still makes for a transcendent opener, it’s drifting, unglued melody about as subtle as Monster Magnet ever get, and it’s elusive wordplay (“..seen your mind on the hood of my car..”) triangulate the band’s contradictory aesthetic of sleaze, materialism and chemical-induced cosmic revelation in fairly sublime fashion.

Other stuff however fare less well. The band’s new single ‘Mindfucker’ is frankly pretty bad, built around a half-hearted bit of reheated misogyny (yes, it’s a “stop fucking with my mind woman” song, like the rest of the world gave up writing in 1974), and suggestive of some middle-aged men’s desperate attempt to try to extract some dollars from rebellious teenagers, a fair few years after the market for this kind of swear-in-the-chorus novelty mosh pit hit packed up and left town. Bogus.

Each time I’m starting to wonder why I’m still standing here though, another fantastic moment crashes in. More than any other song performed by the three headlining bands here tonight, ‘Look To The Orb For Your Warning’ (also from ‘Dopes To Infinity’) really takes flight, Wyndorf wringing shrieks from a table of vocal-mangling electronics as a loop of awesome, Jack Kirby-style comic book srtwork dominates the video screen and the song’s central, monolithic riff hammers down…. for a moment or two there I’m genuinely floating in the rafters, wondering how a group I was snarkily dismissing just a few minutes back suddenly got so mind-bendingly great. Somewhere, some kind of bull-shaped power amulet is being charged.

I even quite enjoyed the inevitable set-closing rendition of the band’s 1998 novelty hit ‘Space Lord’ – a song I’ve always considered a bit of a neutered, shark-jumping farrago in its album version (hilarious lyrics aside), but performed live with Wyndorf working the crowd, the penny finally drops, and the glorious stupidity of hearing upward of a thousand people chanting “SPACE LORD, MOTHERFUCKER!” on cue is both pure Monster Magnet brilliance and as perfect a conclusion to a Desertfest weekend as could be wished for.

Or, I supposed it would be, anyway. Maybe it was just the sheer size of The Roundhouse, or the unfavourable ratio between die-hard fans and random/curious festival-goers in the crowd, but reaction to Monster Magnet’s set felt a bit muted.

The band’s whole bombastic concept would seem to demand either a purely rapturous response or else nothing, but the crowd are less than ecstatic – silence and the occasional wolf whistle after a few moments applause - and the enactment old encore ritual is as robotic as it gets. Always a drag, and a sad reminder that, rather than galaxy-decimating space-lords, these guys are just doing their job, egging out a mixed bag of a career a little bit longer before the fans get too old to turn out and buy tickets – finishing off Sunday, ticking London off the list before they plough on to some draughty barn in Hamburg or somewhere. Which, broadly speaking, is why I tend to avoid going to these big tickets gigs in the first place. Ah well.

I am however extremely glad I finally made it to Desertfest. As was initially promised, the people were lovely, the organisation and logistics across multiple venues was little short of awe-inspiring and I basically enjoyed every single band I heard across the entire weekend. In spite of all my minor gripes and bitching above, it was an f-ing brilliant time that made me feel happy to be alive in a time and place that allows me to experience the pleasures of so much excessively loud rock music. What can I say? As far as festivals go, it hit the spot. Sign me up again for next year.

Labels: Bismuth, Desertfest, Elder, Hawkwind, live reviews, Moloch, Monster Magnet, Nebula

Sloping back to the Electric Ballroom last afternoon after skiving off the day’s earliest sets, I’m just about in time to get a good sightline on Tokyo’s Church of Misery, just as they finish sound check.

Boy, I enjoyed Church of Misery so much. Though I’ve been aware of the band’s existence for a while, I’ve never really made an effort to listen to them in the past, because, well… serial killers. All their songs are about serial killers. I’m not going to try to scale any moral high ground here, but I’m just not very keen on that.

If performing gruelling, sadistic dirges of aural misery inspired by real life crimes is one thing however, what are we to make of a band who sing about them in the context of music that is totally fun and awesome? Ethically speaking, that’s got to be waaay off message, right? Well, regardless. The sound waves hitting my ears are telling my brain to shut the hell up and just enjoy the most exultant set of classic Sabbathian metal they’ve heard in living memory. I mean, it’s not like you can really make out any of the lyrics, y’know? Let’s just spend the next forty-five minutes or so pretending I don’t know about that whole serial killer thing, and enjoy some sweet head-banging.

Something I genuinely didn’t know until I spent some time researching the band prior to writing this however is that, whilst the band’s history stretches back over twenty years, three quarters of the current line-up have only been part of it for about eighteen months, having been recruited by bassist and sole founding member Tatsu Mikami after his former bandmates quit en masse at the end of 2014.

Whilst watching the band on Saturday night, I never would have guessed this. Indeed, with stereotypical Japanese professionalism, these relative newcomers play as if they’ve been carefully honing their material into shape for about a hundred years, hitting that perfect ‘Master of Reality’-into-‘Volume 4’ groove (the very sweetest of Sabbath sweet-spots) with such in-the-pocket conviction it’s impossible not to succumb.

To say Church of Misery are one of the more explicitly Sabbath-derived bands on the Desertfest line-up is… something of an understatement, in spite of the fact that current vocalist Hiroyuki Takano favours a grunge-like growl over an Ozzy yowl. Nonetheless though, they move between ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ boogie and full-on ‘Into The Void’ grind with such obvious love for the instigators of their sound, and whilst taking such care to avoid directly quoting them (something many doom bands could learn from) that…. well basically I’m finding it difficult to avoid finishing each of these paragraphs by just saying “Church of Misery is awesome – end of”. And, in fairness, there’s probably a bit of a Saint Vitus influence in there too, so I can’t accuse them of being too closed-minded.

Also of note here: evidently a man of extremes, Mikami-san appears to be going for a Guinness World Record for the lowest slung bass in history. Seriously, he has the body of his Rickenbacker hanging beneath his knee, meaning he is forced to play with both hands on the neck. How? I don’t know. Why? Probably just because it’s cool. (See the photograph on the band’s Wikipedia page for visual evidence.)

As Church of Misery play, there’s already the hint of a sweet smell in the air, and, suitably emboldened, three guys standing in front of me light up and begin sharing a spliff, Minutes later, security have pounced, escorting them the premises. What a bummer. I mean, I know it’s THE LAW and everything, but given we’re in a crowd within which legalisation of marijuana would probably get about a 95% approval rate, about to enjoy sets by Weedeater and High On Fire, a blind eye or two wouldn’t have gone amiss, y’know what I mean? I’m sure no one present would have lodged a complaint or whatever if a few of the bouncers strategically lost their sense of smell for a couple of hours.

As I vaguely ponder the means by which about twenty guys in arm bands can keep the peace against several thousand concert-goers, a fair number of whom seem to model themselves upon Viking warriors, I realise the Ballroom is swiftly getting pretty packed (far more so that it was for Napalm Death the preceding evening, sad to say), and that as such I’d better skedaddle to the balcony and find something to sit/lean on if I’d going to get a chance of seeing the stage again any time this evening. Even in this modest ambition, I was thwarted by sheer human volume, but thankfully, the upstairs bar was offering some half-decent beer in 500ml cans, so picking up a couple in advance meant I could defend my second row standing position for the next three hours or so. Friends, it was brutal.

(You may consider this dispiritingly nerdy gig-going behaviour, but hey – at least I went to the toilet at some point. The man standing immediately in front of me was there with his elbows on the balcony when I arrived at the venue at 5pm and did not move a muscle or talk to anyone until the end of the show – and believe me, I had my eye on him, coveting his space something rotten.)

Anyway. Weedeater are definitely worth waiting for. I’m aware that, in my writing for this blog in the past, I’ve repeatedly resorted to describing bands’ rhythm sections as “swinging like a wrecking ball” and suchlike, but I really should have held off and saved this terminology for Weedeater, because… they own it, basically, leaving all other potential wrecking ball swinging bands in the shade.

Often feeling like an experiment in how slow and over-saturated you can make a groove whilst still maintaining its integrity AS a groove, their riffs hit you almost viscerally, like a cloud of toxic, bongwater-filtered airbourne filth…. but, they still swing – slowly, fatefully, like watching the walls of your house tumbling in slo-mo.

North Carolina, from whence these bastards hail, may look surprisingly high up the East Coast to those of us on this side of the Atlantic, but Weedeater nonetheless give the impression of having clawed their way up from the very deepest of the deep South – trucker caps and woodsman beards present and correct - though somehow they never fall back on that shit in a way that feels phoney.

Bassist Dave “Dixie” Collins sings in a cracked, hissing croak, like some backwoods boogeyman from a spam-in-a-cabin horror movie, and, though obviously offered up in a spirit of black humour, the unsettling vignettes he intones on songs like ‘It Is What It Is’ (“I’m not quite right / FUCKED IN THE HEAD”) feel down-right terrifying when married to the mulch-thick primordial sludge of the band’s music. (Reading Weedeater’s Wikipedia page today, I learn that the band took a brief hiatus in 2010 after Collins shot himself in the foot “..whilst cleaning his favourite shotgun”, so, make of that what you will.)

Conjuring one of the filthiest, most stomach-churning bass sounds I’ve ever heard from the Electric Ballroom’s long-suffering PA, Weedeater’s music drips with a wild-eyed cannabis psychosis, a feeling of murderous paranoia only barely kept in check by the unbreakable backbone of rock n’ roll that injects a giddy pleasure into even their darkest material.

Much of their set still falls back on their landmark, Albini-produced ‘God Luck and Good Speed’ album from 2007 [if you’re new to the band, that’s the one to go for, I feel], and, as soon as the rousing title track (“mankind is unkind, man..”) tears the lid off the crowd like a fucking can of tuna , our only options are to flee or wallow.

Doom fans being a hardy bunch, the thousand or so folks crowded around me go for the latter. As the riffs reign down, little conflagrations and smoke signals intermittently drift up from the crowd below (never mind the pungent aroma hanging around the Smoking Area behind me), making me reflect that maybe those guys I saw getting busted earlier should just have kept their powder dry a little bit longer. By this stage, security have apparently decided that venturing into the throng every five minutes to pull some sucker out is more than their job’s worth.

The effect of Weedeater’s set is exhilarating and a little sickening. An unsettlingly intense, slightly scary band, I’m unsure whether five minutes in their company off-stage would be the time of yr life, or a trauma that would keep you waking up in a cold sweat for months. But it would be one or the other, that’s for sure – as with their speaker-jeopardising recordings, they provide a vision of life with the mid-range scooped right out.

Right on the final note of their final song, Collins kicks off his shoe, it makes a brief arc through the air, and drummer Travis Owen catches it, exactly on his final beat. So, maybe they’d be fun guys after all…? Jury is out.

“MNER RRAH SMO’ SM FUGGIN’ WEEED” Matt Pike (shirtless, leather wristbands) growls early in High On Fire’s marathon headline set, presumably indicating his support for all those naughty kids in the crowd, although to be honest it’s difficult to tell. He’s considerate enough to bellow the name of each song before the band launch into it, which is a helpful gesture given that I’m over a decade behind when it comes to listening to High On Fire albums, but unfortunately I can’t make out a word.

It’s funny, whilst I’ve always appreciated High On Fire, and own several of their early records, for some reason I’ve never really been able to fully get into them. I don’t know how best to put it really, but it’s as if, by attempting to create a previously undreamed of amalgam of Sleep, Slayer and Mötorhead, they’ve created a sound so monstrously unwieldy that it’s full heaviosity cannot actually be captured or reproduced by conventional recording and playback technology, making their albums difficult to really process or engage with.

I was hoping that, in a live context, their music would finally have room to breath and everything would fall into place as an overpowering cavalcade of AWESOME METAL, but, awe-inspiring though their seventy minute beat-down of a set is on many levels, for me at least, the same issues remain.

If you’ll forgive me for resorting to yet another iffy metaphor, it’s as if High On Fire have built the ultimate, ten wheeled heavy metal juggernaut, and, in the joyous moments when they’re thundering down the highway in it (whenever the drummer shifts into full tilt, Mötorhead-style double-time boogie and Pike shakes out another neck-throttling, synapse-disfiguring solo), it is absolutely mind-blowing, setting hearts racing and fists pumping. To get to those moments though, it takes a hell of a lot of awkward manoeuvring and grinding of gears. In other words, way too much tension, not enough release.

There sometimes seems to be a kind of sadistic impulse at work in their song structures – making us work hard whilst keeping the rewards tightly guarded. And, this evening more than ever, as my numb legs begin to feel like sharpened poles, painfully anchoring me to the ground, I could really go for some sweet release.

By the end of High On Fire’s set, their music has become a formless barrage, rolling over me like pure noise, as my concentration wavers and drifts. This is in no way a criticism of the band, who play comprehensively bad-ass music with tireless energy and dedication, more just some kind of conceptual glitch that occurs somewhere in the course of my consumption/enjoyment of it. One reporter’s opinion, and all that. It’s an awesome set. It’s loud as hell. The crowd go ape-shit. But I get exhausted.

Man. Saturday. I turned up late, I left early, and I still went home feeling like I’d spent ten rounds ducking blows from an angry gorilla. What a weakling. Ring the bell, Desertfest wins!

See you soon for Sunday….

Labels: Church of Misery, Desertfest, High On Fire, live reviews, Weedeater

For years now, I’ve been eyeing up London’s Desertfest as an event I would greatly like to attend, but in the past, prior commitments, grown up responsibilities and general lack of time/energy/money have combined to stifle my vague dreams of attendance.

In spite of all the reports I’ve heard about how well-organised and lovely the festival is moreover, there’s also been the fact that, given how much I’ve learned to HATE the myriad discomforts of attending music events in anything other than a thoroughly relaxed/DIY context in recent years, the idea of spending a bank holiday weekend pinballing around the sticky-floored venues of tourist-decimated Camden Town, suffering through endless bag checks, queues, beer-soakings, exit crushes, poor-sound-mix birthed tinnitus and midnight takeaways basically sounds like hell - especially when measured against the more tangible pleasures of quietly sitting at home, enjoying the comforts of food, wine, a sofa and some good movies, all with an additional £100+ still in my bank account.

But… this year’s line up. Oh man. For once, the weekend was free. The funds were present and correct. No immediate obstacles loomed. With a couple of weeks to go, we hit ‘confirm’ on the ticket booking. Three days and nights of unadulterated METAL (or, well, unadulterated HEAVY SPACE/STONER ROCK at the very least) loomed. Let me tell you how it went.

All photos are by Satori, by the way, for which thanks.

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Check-in and wristband collection on Friday afternoon is smooth and incident-free, and Desertfest HQ outside Camden’s actually-pretty-nice rock/metal pub The Black Heart is a happy and chilled out place to be. Lovely range of (I)PAs for drinking in the sun, and I highly commend their in-house milk stout for after dark.

Musically-speaking, proceedings begin upstairs, where The Quietus have (applaudably) been allowed to book a set of comparative outliers to the Desertfest remit (including the not-even-remotely rock or metal affiliated electro-punk band Snapped Ankles, who must have caused a few raised eye-brows amongst the purists).


No such concerns hopefully with Casual Nun, who deliver a far more straight forward, rock-orientated set that I had been anticipating - perhaps with one eye on the likely audience, or perhaps just because that’s the way they’re presently rolling, who knows. Anyway, we’re a pretty far cry from the pretty-fucking-out-there psychotropic improvisations found on their ‘Psychometric Testing by..’ and ‘Super Fancy Skeleton’ LPs, as the band’s Black Heart set finds them operating as a more or less trad v/g/b/d four piece, give or take the disorientating swathe of effects through which the ostensible frontman (sorry, I don’t know member names here) feeds his vocals. Working through a set of fairly structured/pre-planned material, they conjure a dense, legitimately deafening space-rock roar built upon the kind of forward moving, Can-via-Hawkwind grooves that remain quite impossible to fuck with, regardless of context. Despite the band’s fairly, well, casual attire (all four band members is front buttoning shirts and sensible shoes fergodssake, with only the vocalist’s Charlie Manson hair/beard combo giving any visual hint of sub-cultural affiliation), one hopes they might have succeeded in luring a few stray Fu Manchu fans into the choppier waters of their recorded output.


Next up, hard to contain my fanboy excitement at standing right in front of Mike Vest for a rare set by Melting Hand, the noise-rock sort-of-super-group he plays in alongside Gordon Watson of Terminal Cheescake/Luminous bodies on bass and Gum Takes Tooth drummer Tom Fug. A slightly tweaked line-up from the one that recorded their debut LP ‘High Collider’ a couple of years back now finds room for Marion Andrau (formerly(?) of Underground Railroad) on guitar and a chap named Wayne Adams (who is an unknown quantity to me at least) at synth. [Thank you to this Quietus interview for helping me with the name badges.]

Riffing on material presumably taken from their forthcoming second LP, I hereby declare that this incarnation of Melting Hand is fucking blinding, and I hope they stick with it for future engagements. Pedal LEDs glow and blink across the floor of the darkened stage like a miniature, nocturnal city, but these are players who know how to use such arguably excessive gear to its maximum advantage, primarily by doing what so many of those indie guitarists who spend thousands down the shops conspicuously fail to do – eg, turning it all on and turning it up.

The result is an exhilarating hurricane of chaotic, free-flowing noise-rock excelsis, sounding as if band-era Skullflower had lightened up, got the bunting out and had a birthday party, and it was bloody amazing. Though still very much centre stage, the rhythm section are a little less dominant in the mix here than they were on ‘High Collider’, thus encouraging the move toward a more full-on noise set-up (for this afternoon’s performance, at least), and a particular shout-out too must go to Andrau, who ably rises to the not-inconsiderable challenge of going head to head with Vest’s characteristic maximalist whiteout, transcending mere second/extra guitar status and adding her own wild and inventive contributions to the group’s sound at every turn. In fact the moment mid-set when she and Vest got about as close to trading/overlapping solos as Melting Hand’s oeuvre allows was a particular highlight for yours truly. Not quite 6PM, and mind and ears are both already blown.

Based on previous visits, I’ve always considered “Koko” (formerly the Camden Palace for those with long memories) to be a contender for one of London’s shittiest music venues. Though blessed with an exquisitely well-maintained (hopefully Grade One listed?) ex-music hall interior, the combination of irksome, unnecessary-queue-generating security procedures, poorly stocked rip off bar and TERRIBLE sound mix / acoustics have all helped make it a place to avoid since it re-opened a decade or so ago, and as such, I was happily surprised to find myself able to glide straight through the doors and into a good balcony position following a quick sprint in the Mornington Crescent direction, moments after The Obsessed began their set.


Sound is as echoy and murky as ever, making it difficult to catch the pearls of snarled, overgrown teenager wisdom Scott “Wino” Weinrich drops between songs, but when the drummer counts in, he and his recently recruited new rhythm section cut through the mix like pros. (Admittedly, the bass sounds a bit like someone distantly operating a machine lathe somewhere down the street, but, as I’ll learn over the course of the weekend, that’s something you’ve apparently got to get used to in these, uh, let’s say established, London venues.)

You’ve gotta love a guy who sticks to his story, and Wino is certainly that. Through Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, his self-titled records and his contributions to Saint Vitus and Place of Skulls, Wino has kept his particular vision alive across four decades, and as a long time fan, I’m stoked to finally see this living, breathing personification of the heavy rock ideal in the flesh, fronting a new incarnation of his earliest, and many would consider most essential, band.

Recognisable songs aside though, we could easily be watching any of the groups Wino has led over the years, and, regardless of the name on the ticket, everything I could have wanted from a Wino gig is present and correct. Pitched somewhere between the raven-beaked solemnity of ‘80s trad doom and a vein of sneering, anti-social biker rock sleaze that reaches even further back, his songs have riffs carved to last out the centuries, a cycle-engine grind backing up his weirdly melodic, funereal hymns to drug-baked cosmic journeying and perpetual outsiderdom, whilst an unmistakable whiff of psychedelic spirituality enters the picture each time he goes for a solo, sending twelve bar wonders of screeching, atemporal jazz-damaged beauty reverberating through the lofty reaches of the former Camden Palace.

Though he operates within a genre that even it’s biggest fans would have to admit is rife with aesthetic posturing, ridiculous excess and general tongue-in-cheek silliness, Wino has been living this music – through periods of addition, poverty and god knows what else – for as long as many of us have been alive, and his songs, even stretching as far back as The Obsessed’s first recordings from the mid ‘80s, retain a quality that is dead-eyed, rock solid and serious as death. It certainly feels like a rare privilege to see him doing his thing on a Friday afternoon in Camden, and I hope I’ll be able to do so again very soon.


‘Serious’ is also a term that springs to mind when discussing Ghold, who we just about squeeze in to see in the packed out Black Heart shortly afterwards. An intense, progressively minded London-based unit who have grown from a duo to a trio, and now seem to have a fourth participant on board, apparently playing a Fender Rhodes no less. Ghold prove to be the loudest band of the festival thus far, and the first to have me reaching for my ear plugs. Though their music is impressive by yardstick, I’m flagging me this point (wimp that I am), and the constant, tension-building noose-tightening of their long, multi-part compositions soon proves pretty gruelling. Having already been warned that folks were queuing down the road to get into a packed-to-capacity Electric Ballroom to catch a glimpse of sludge-core bruisers Eyehategod, I’m secretly relieved when the decision is taken to bale early in order to sit down with some food before pitching out a good spot for Napalm Death in a few hours time.

Now, say what you like about the Electric Ballroom, at least it’s unpretentious. Complete with wall coverings and floor/ceiling surfaces that look like they’ve been pulled together from scrap material to fix up a previous disaster, it’s… long overdue an overhaul, you might say, but it also has the most satisfactory sound mix of any of the large venues used by Desertfest, and a relatively well-stocked/non-extortionate bar and publicly accessible balcony and lounge area seal the deal. Electric Ballroom, yr alright.

Now -- Napalm Death. I’ll admit this has the potential to be a weird one for me. Over the past few years, I’ve come to revere the band’s seminal late ‘80s recordings almost to the point of mania. If prompted in fact, I’ll be delighted to tell you in great detail exactly why ‘From Enslavement To Obliteration’ just edges out ‘Reign in Blood’ as the most important, innovative and/or mind-blowing extreme metal recording ever issued. [If you’re not familiar with it, please become so.] But – as much as I love their music from this era, that is basically where my knowledge of the band ends. I honestly know about as much about what they’ve done since 1990’s ‘Harmony Corruption’ as the average punter at a Yo La Tengo gig, so…. given that that’s about when the line up who are performing as Napalm Death this evening first began to cohere, this could be something of an issue, perhaps?


Well, I needn’t have worried. Far from legitimising such doltish fanboy dilemmas, it turns out Barney Greenway is such an ingratiating frontman, you could probably tell him you’ve just arrived from Venus and aren't really sure what this whole ‘organised sound’ thing is all about yet, and he’d slap you on the back and add you to the ranks of the chosen without further comment.

I’m sure that, for those who have been more closely involved with the metal scene than I have been over the years, Barney’s distinctive on-stage persona must be beyond a joke by this point, but, as a Napalm Death first timer, I’ve got to admit I found him a disarming and hugely charming presence.

How can I best put this… one of the things I’ve always loved about Napalm Death is the way they square the circle vis-à-vis making violent, hate-filled music dealing with subject matter of unimaginable horror, and presenting it as a positive, cathartic, morally integrated force for good in the world. In the three decades that have passed since the band’s initial burst of inspiration, it has become the norm for groups operating in all sub-categories of hardcore and extreme metal to shroud their work in imagery of misery, horror, mass death, torture, genocide, nuclear Armageddon, skulls, gas masks etc etc, to the extent that the original thinking behind this off-the-peg aesthetic is often lost behind a flippant attitude of “fuck everything” misanthropic prurience that, weirdly, seems almost unique to white males who have grown up in parts of the world not conspicuously ravaged by war and death.

I’m not trying to guilt-trip anyone for enjoying this aesthetic – god knows, as a fan of horror movies and doom metal, I’ve spent a fair amount of time wallowing in it myself over the years – but, as stated above, I appreciate the way that, ever since their inception, Napalm Death have been at pains to justify their work (and indeed, their name and artwork) in grown up, socio-political terms, and to make their intentions clear. Then as now, their music is framed as an expression of (and entirely legitimate response to) the horror they feel at the pain and injustice that is inflicted upon the people of the world every single day by those in positions of power, and, by forcing their listeners to confront it in the most visceral way possible, they hope to raise awareness, prompt action, and all that other good social activist type stuff.

They are not putting gore and dead bodies on their album covers just because they think it’s cool, in other words, and I’ve always liked the thought that, in the unlikely event that a benevolent global socialist republic suddenly came in to being, prompting universal equality and world peace, Napalm Death would gladly down tools and spend the rest of their lives playing nice, mellow music for dancing in the sun (perhaps changing their name to, I dunno, ‘Happy Children’ or something).

Anyway, getting back to Barney, I love the way he puts all this across so clearly over the course of a sixty minute Napalm Death set that no one could possibly be left in doubt re: where the band are coming from. In an area of live performance so often characterised (understandably) by muscle-flexing aggression or mute hostility, it is absolutely delightful to find this guy saying “okie dokey, right then, what’s next..” in the voice of a holiday camp comedian in between outbursts of guttural, throat-shredding carnage, hailing the audience as “friends!” with the enthusiasm and good cheer of the MC at an anti-war rally, even as he awkwardly jogs on the spot and hops about the stage like a middle-aged marathon runner warming up on the starting line. He’s just lovely, basically. What a great guy.

Again, I’m sure many in the crowd will have rolled their eyes as his political sloganeering, having heard it all before, but from my POV, he succinctly addressed the broad points that needed to be made to put the brutality of the music in its proper context - religious bigots, slum landlords, anti-abortion campaigners and assorted others can all fuck off; nuclear brinkmanship on the part of world leaders is insane; a happy and comfortable life free from discrimination on the basis of race, gender or sexuality is the right of every human being. Not exactly controversial stuff, I’ll grant you, but hard to restate it too often, right? By the time he’s exhorting us – “in a spirit of friendship and solidarity” – to help him complete the title of a certain Dead Kennedys song – I’m happy to yell along.

(Deep breath.) And of course it helps that the band are fucking great too. I mean, I may have been out to lunch for thirty years, but this is f-ing Napalm Death, innit? They’re hardly going to half-ass it. Shane Embury’s fingers on the bass still look as if they’re moving in X4 fast-forward, and Mitch Harris’s guitar tone sounds like a wolverine biting the head off a terrier. Danny Herrera’s drumming may not quite recreate the beyond human insanity of Mick Harris’s work in the ‘80s, but he still does the business well enough to send just about any hardcore band I’ve watched in the past five years fleeing in terror.

What a fantastic band. What a fantastic set. I need to catch up on those post-1990 records and pick myself up a (hopefully fair trade) T-shirt post-fucking-haste.

To be continued…

Labels: Casual Nun, Desertfest, Ghold, live reviews, Melting Hand, Napalm Death, The Obsessed, Wino