January 2018
Green Door Store
MSV FCK
One of the long trestles filled end to end, and over the end with stuff, the MSV FCK recognisable from earlier shows lined along the back. Bookending is a tall man I’ve not met before to the left with his sheaves of words and Sara Jane Glendinning with her guitar and clarinet to the right. The start is hesitant, uncertain, some words and halting noises before Jason brings in a bass drum, slow and steady, I know this because I was watching him do it, this is pretty much the last point at which I will be able to pinpoint person and sound. The tempo picks up, I think we have some octave clarinet. Washed out fuzzy washes. Sara Jane sings back at the declaimer, the beat picks up. A few times I think of Mark Stewart and Gary Clail shouting mesmerically at each other over Tack>>Head. Rhythms come and go. Noises give way to tunes to lumbering jolts of bass. People dance. Not usually a response to the first act. Theres a clanking bassline reminiscent of Turkey Bones and The Wild Dogs. Occasionally the sound empties right out to some words, or some skronks, hiss of tape and kettle whirring away in the quiet. But not often.
Kayfabe
Coming through from outside Kayfabe processed, white porcelain masked Lisa Jayne, Carl in a white suite. She had a cymbal and spoke as they passed through, until finally seated on stage, she takes up her book and Carl sits on the stage and gets stuck into his small collection of small synths. The mask is removed. More words issue, lo fidelity beats and cheap reverb follow her story, sometimes they lead it. The words disturb the sounds. They disturb me. Occasionally a radiophonic clip clop trots past the decaying monotron haze. There is evolution, bass thickens, delay trills and thickens into a noisy paste. At some point she stands up. This is a thing, turning round she regards us cooly in a mirror. The mask returns. An end.
Rotten Bliss
Rotten Bliss starts on stage, but wanders off into the audience shining her moon torch onto the ceiling (surrounded by the reflected stars off the glitter ball) whilst she sings over seaside field recordings and a speedboat wash plays on the screen of the empty stage. Slowly the sounds fade out and she ends singing a cappella. At this point she gets properly stuck into the electric cello, played upright. This song switches between folk inflected vocal pieces of beauty and instrumental passages of sawn cello noise. This pretty much sets the scene for the rest of the set, swerving bowed shudders, twitching & tortured screeches curling out traces of feedback and sonorous bass bubbles, and some frankly terrifying vocal pieces. It the two seemingly at odds, but combine tremendously, giving contrasts of density and space, a cello based almost unstructured Loud Quiet. But very structured. I really like it when people bring things from the edges of music and use them to construct songs. The noise sections are terrific, too, switching from full blooded scrawled side bow hell, to tails of near feedback. Then just when you think you’ve got it pinned down she drops something almost empty in its seeming simple beauty.
Kayfabe’s entire set is available on YouTube at youtu.be/iZc-OcaNh1M