May 2025
The Rossi Bar

Thee Boxx Menn start with a super sub that could be bass or kick and a filthy speech based short loop that’s 120% distortion, the loop slows down and we get into the business of the set. The sub gains some definition and confirms it’s a kick. Whistling swoops through a helicopter buzz. Everything gains squelch, the whistling included. The helicopter turns into an ominous fleet, and the whistling into an incredible slow long sweep. A filtered military brass band serenades the choppers with what sounds like it may be the opening bars of “Take on me”. There’s a lot of reverb. The choppers do this thing of slowing down considerably but still end up beating at the same speed. Twice. Maybe three times. Everything drones up. A buzz floats up and down the scale, and some other percussion finally joins the kick bring in a lot of energy. Some percussive buzzes and car door rattles herald the arrival of a bassline and then an acid squiggle. So many ideas just rattle through. Morse code short wave tuning, bird song, charging rhythmic noise, delay grime. Amidst the swooping synths a thin fuzzed synth pics out a melodic line and you can sense a drum pattern is emerging from the aural mist a long time before you actually hear it lurking about on the edges of your hearing, then finally it emerges skittling out of the morass. everything drops away to a driving synth riff and the drum track locked together. Around this alarm bells rattle, a second drum/synth pattern locks out the first, and brings some blistering waves of bass that completely obliterate all before it. A rhythm track of ticking brings in the third bassline in about as many minutes. This one with an evil synth riff and kicking double kick pattern.  The drums get looser and louder, the synths fall apart into eratticism. The percussion levels up into syncopated psychotic complete with deranged whistles.it filters down to next to nothing; a nice 50Hz hum. A stripped down version of the drums comes back that’s 50% filtered beeps. Again distorted vocals in the mix, maybe some kind of tribute to Mal who’s in the audience. It finishes on sweep and foghorns

In the middle slot its Em- (apparently it’s a typographical thing, a particular kind of dash), she just gets better every time she plays. The set kicks in with a frantic squiggle of a synth line something from a sugar rush 90s J-pop single with equally frenetic drums soon tippy tapping hyperactively under it. Some ominous synth washes stabilise everything, briefly give it a centre from which it explodes into fragments, half bass lines, creaking Halloween synth riff, voice or non-voice, implied acid squelch. The drums worry away at the beat, unstable, bass drum hit-hit-hit, hit, hit-hit, hit-hit-hit-hit. Some big buzzing deep piano notes hint at a change, eventually giving structure for everything else to fight against. Everything falls away leaving the piano and then in comes a new set of skittering synth pulses flurrying away against a super slow snare hit that seems I don’t know – a tenth of the speed of everything else? A mid-range synth part that sounds like some kind of alien trying to communicate with us comes in, to be answered by a whistle thing, the rest solidifies around the snare, slower, more substantial, but still swerving around any kind of normality. It’s like a coked up Bach playing half a dozen bent toy synths with broken fingers. There are still superfast percussion elements, but at around halfway through the set its lurching; there are these odd rhythmic pauses, sudden inexplicable percussive voids that throw you. The sound slowly thins, and seems to slow as it does so, still definitely lurching, a percussion track equal parts buzz, hum, gong, synth stab, altered voice, shimmer. A new percussion track builds out this, a head smacking kick drum and woozy flatulent bass. Woodpecker knocks, two note electric piano, toy piano. Imperceptibly it picks up speed. A groove, so calm after the frenetic rattling from before. Heads nod and shoulders go. A melody hinted at by something in there: a line passed from sound to sound, reverbed piano, gong, buzz, swoosh, bin lid, whirr. We even have a breakdown with some chattering lightweight snare and pads, then the insects are back and the itchy beats return to overwhelm everything, stripping down and speeding up to pure rhythm. There’s a little synth riff as it speeds up then slows down to finish. Tasty.

Finally we had Soborgnost, down from that big city. He leapt in with a big buzzing roar that gave way to a nice riverbed old Skool break, eventually that got some beefy kick and a sub sinewave bass all sonic and tasty. Swirling all round this were skewed delays, flashing synth pads and spiralling gurgles, it felt like it had just got going and flipped into a new beat. Something from the back of a factory, the foreground sonics continued their distractions and again a sudden switch. An insistent kick and snare about 160bpm, followed by 3 note bass, cowbell clang, and a vocal line swerving around it. Drop the drums everything else carries on, 16^th gongs, voices, more voices. Or tones? It’s driving now, he hits the groove and sticks with it, the occasional drop or swirl, but its right there. The next track starts with two detuned synth riffs working against each other, they get into a rewind, come back with a solid Residents/Bovell bass line and fast echoed rattling hi hats. Barely audible dub sirens wibbling delays, operatic vocal or high slow synth line? A melancholic piano meanders about, everything seems pitch bent. The next one starts with a mid-bass stomp, heavily delayed bursts of something (guitar? Synth) then some drum thing out of a Throbbing Gristle track comes stomping in. a one note synth line over the top and the delirious delays and screaming and whistling squelch about. The next one starts with another sub bassline stomper, skipping drums, and distorted vocals. It’s as if Sherwood had been involved with the Jack The Tab compilation. There are confusing fuzzed our organ lines, swooping noises, metallic whines. The next one starts with some nasty 8 bit pan drum and backwards zombie calls before another monster flanged bassline kicks in over a 4 to the floor industrial beat. Shouting, rattling, roaring all lost in swampy delay. There’s a breakdown of someone destroying a typewriter to finish. Another flanged bass, this one a bit slower, with a relaxed 120 4/4 kick, and minor destruction noises. The typewriter snare bounces against a white noise punisher. In a totally groovy manner. A masterclass in solid grooves and deranged effects.

WARNING: there is extreme glitching in the following video: