Tag: MSV FCK

Promenade in the rain again

January 2018
Green Door Store

MSV FCK

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

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

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

We interrupted this transmission from outer space

August 2016
Green Door Store

Ahtuf Kontrol

Ahtuf Kontrol

Mike Turner-Lee – dance
Seb Turner-Lee – guitar
Mickey Ball – trumpet
and Patrick Turner-Lee – dangerous wires
It starts with Seb and Mickey seated across the back of the stage, Patrick’s silver hair bobbing up and down behind his Juno. Shiny slow notes chime out from guitar while the heavily effected trumpet and keyboard wind slowly out and Mike starts to move from centre stage opening himself up onto the floor in front. Patrick’s shiny radiophonic tones set the backing for a lead trumpet line with odd echoes on the guitar. It shifts into some harpsichord patterns before setting for some properly unsettling synth action, a buzzing with decaying drones falling around it before the guitar comes to lift it back into space music. A deceptively nicely structured piece.


MSV FCK

MSV FCK

Matty – Drum machine. synths, samples and noises
Lee – Guitar, voice, synths, samples and noises
Jason – Drum machine, synths, samples and noises
Sonically it’s hard to turn that description of line-up into anything sonic, it’s hard to differentiate the individuals in the way that live music sometimes is (belying that this is their first show). Everything sounds electronic, the drums are often distorted, or seem to be doubled. Things come and go and sometimes not even voluntarily. There’s some nicely deranged lead lines, all micro-tuned and confusingly pinched, some expansive bass tones and engagingly oddly syncopated rhythm parts. They occasionally settle into something like the groove of a daddy longlegs missing a couple of limbs, a bit lurching but effectively getting somewhere. considering what they do, its impressive how they manage to keep the spaces and sense of structure as they evolve through their set.


Memorial Bench

Memorial Bench

Ollie seems to inherit a land on the edges of drone, drone-ish, but far too quickly moving, taking us beyond the finely detailed Aqua Dentata of last month into a strangely liminal region where we have density and lightness, stasis and yet a plethora of tonal qualities that change at an incredible rate. There are hisses, throbs, organ piping, space peeps, boops and all sorts all whirling about in a dreamlike charm. there are hints of rhythm and even a vague sense of some melody just beyond discerning. After the exciting start, it settles down into what sounds almost like a field recording on alien world, much thinner, buzzes, squeaks, rattles with underlying alien washes, un-water liquid bubbles foaming unpleasantly. Ollie seems to have loosened up by this stage, the density and kineticism of the first third of the set is gone, we still have constant and relatively fast moving change but over fewer layers and it’s a little more languid, as if made in a parallel universe where Edgar Froese was a Martian.