Zam Zam night

November 2014
Green Door Store

Ah, the Spirit of Gravity again. This time we’d booked the Zam Zam records tour and they had two acts a DJ and a demo of the Cymagick thing (which I didn’t see). So no time for the Electrokreche this month, instead we have a nice long intro set from DJ Wildrfid (Simon from Geneva). It’s a great mangling of things: noise, words, music, beats, synths and effects, half played from records have mucked about with live – anything from accordions to techno.
After that Simon plays and makes more mayhem between all the sets.

Breaking Robots

Breaking Robots The first stage style set is Breaking Robots who seem to be the [beep] collective’s house band, Natasha Thoday with some kind of odd box with bits that slide in and out , wheels, controllers, she seems to be aggregating Zacarias and Sarah who have more instrument looking devices. Anthony Arborialist is controlling visuals (a job he maintains for the night). For the soundcheck Natasha had been thrashing the PA with some heavy bassdrum techno, but the actual set is a melange of weird noises, glitch and strange electronica.


HUM

HUM HUM are set up behind a long trestle table on the stage, Mark, Heloise and Olmo, bits of kit, microphones, toy synths. In fact it makes me think of the missing elektrocreche. To start off Heloise sings a low key intro, which gets washed into pure atmosphere for a while. Then Mark hollers and wails and it all spins into echo and murk; Hapshash lurching rhythms and psychotic repetition. Electric tranced shamanistic thud.


Mai Mai Mai

Mai Mai Mai Mai Mai Mai is right at the back of the stage hidden next to the screen, in a mask that makes Toni Cutrone look like Cerebus. His set is a crystal clear sound of electronic tones and field recordings of storms, a nicely tonal contrast to the thick soup of HUM. Some PA Juddering bass is particularly pleasing to me.