September 2025
The Rossi Bar

First on were Ban Hus. It was originally planned that they would go on last, but apparently they insisted on going on first, and looking at the stage I think that was probably the best choice. The entire stage is crammed with stuff, it looks like Steptoe’s house! When people are arriving they already have a drone going, and occasionally one of them goes on stage and tweaks it. I can’t even begin to describe all the stuff they have – I’d recommend looking at the video, and definitely checking them out at the December Splitting The Atom. So anyway, they start with the drone, which as the set proper starts it drops down to a pocket fan like buzz,  thickened out with a full on bass drone, some whirring, then some bashes on a rattly drum. This carries on for a while, with odd little noises seeping around for texture. There’s some rolling crash beater going on with a cymbal and the drone seems to get more intense, some kind of scrape gets built into the cymbal sound. A counterpointing glassy clank, some pinging, still that drone. Some small wooden block percussion, sparking, the drone turns into a buzz, distant bicycles ping their bells, and the drone starts to fade into static then comes back as something approaching a bassline part. Something sounds like a rolodex rhythm part, the bass feeds back in great rolling swoops. Intensity ramps up again, layers of noise, jangling bells whistling. I couldn’t tell by looking but maybe there is some looper action going in, it’s a hell of a thick noise for the two of them. Definitely a chugging delay pedal is getting some action. Eventually it feels like we’re going to lose the bass drone, it sounds like rain, everything lightens up, the rolodex carries on spinning. Ah, we slowly get into machine noises, grinding and repetitive, sheet metal scrape and the wind roaring. We get brief cameos from space whirrs, voices, traffic, distant funfairs end up on a loop. Again it all calms down, some subsonic rumbling, gentle clanking. There’s a hint of a sequence, maybe a bottle clank through an interesting rising delay, the possibility of a bassline returns, booming gently away quite low in the mix. A Morse code message bursts through the mist. There’s a swell of the machine noise again. Another burst of static, a crowd hubbub. It cycles through these. There’s some dialogue about cookies, a blast of delay and it ends.

In the middle slot was the return of Slow Slow Loris after something like 10 years. Starting with vocals fed through some kind of gurgle box, an insistent drone comes up underneath and we can start to make some sense of the singing. There is a shuffle of sandpaper scrapes to give some rhythm. The vocals find a looper and plenty of screaming delay. The drone gains some sawtooth edge and some heavy sweeping. The second track starst with an uneasy scraping tone, interrupted by a heavy machinery thunk, and a declamation. The scrape is back with the rest of the factory, a slow rhythm, lots of reverb, a nasty buzzing chug, and drop down to the thunk again, the voice and then back into the maelstrom. The vocals take on a yelp at the end of each line. And again the drop, this time with a stringy drone and a nice line of feedback. Next time round a proper sub bass drone brings everything back in. Everything gets thicker and thicker in the mix, layers of vocals, layers of drones, then a series of cymbal crashes and we’re in to the next song with a trace of that feedback again. This one starts with gloomy synth drones all Germany 1985, white hot piercing tones cut through the murk and voices. The vocal line leads through, dragging the corpse of a super slow rhythm and Siouxsie’s ghost, we get the vocals layering up into a Bulgarian choir and the voice declaims over them. “Alone”, “I’m tired” again (and how is this done) the drones start to feel super urgent, taking on cello intonations and deep synth tones. The next track starts with layers of male wordless vocals, over which she sings through some kind of backward effect, its creepy, trails of delay spiral off into dark corners, the voice starts ranting. The synth line feels controlled by a rigid square wave LFO: Up then Down, Up then Down, with a harsh trebly noise careering through the mid ranges.  The noise line spreads engulfing all, the ranting continues and ends a squall of delay and then everything drops into a sung line over a string-synth tone. Disorientingly we veer between the two parts for a while. Then we get into a creepy low gear bit, indistinct swarms of synth sounds growl round each other, no rhythm, but it’s not drone, the vocals stray into wolfish howl, its all a bit low bitrate, some crushing synth blunder in ramping up some pressure. Then down to seagull(?) squeak on a short loop, and the vocal FX thicken out to sold shards, and the foghorn hits, the synth judders back in. the vocals clarify then murk up again, then drop down to pure thin loveliness singing back to each layered other. The creepy voice “I didn’t sing”. It all fades out to end.

And to finish off the evening its Foreboding Formulas for Forlorn Foreskins, and with a name like that it has to be one of Simon Yorkshire (the host of Intox Extravaganza)’s acts. He started off in a T-shirt with a hand painted slogan on it. This will be a theme. It’s a duo, Simon chatting and Nik on synths, it starts with a fat bassy looping synth pad, “they call equal people” a Shepherd tone wails rising away in the background, then it batters into a chopping industrial rhythm and buzzing bass. Simon puts on another sloganed shirt. He starts singing rather than talking. The noise levels pick up whirling all around the bass line then a vicious drop into an on off bass, and nasty power-saw synth. Bashing back into the beat, then hot on its heels another breakdown, beat, breakdown and off on a D’n’B driving beat with a wobbly bassline. Simon moves around the various mics he has set up on stage, delayed or reverbed. Inner rhymes. Nik swerves off into TV theme land – but one with super-sized sub bass bins, the rhythm track starts to judder, Simon puts more clothes on. The temp slows into a head slapping hip hop beat. The synths are all textures. “Climb the social ladder”. We breakdown again, a lengthy one this time, with a slow shifting elongated bass. Little piping synth bips gently sway along. Occasionally a bit of a beat joins them. We go a bit tempo for a while, nice bassline, counterpointing synth riffs, a little bit of squelch. Then a marching snare riding a loping raw bassline intrudes and off we go into the hinterlands again. Simon his-self is quite layered up by now. Then Nik slips us into a raucous mess of noises drones, swirls, sweeps, mushes and Simon drops his last lines.