April 2015
Green Door Store
Nuclear Whale
Nuclear Whale is on first. Lots of lovely Dave Smith kit a few other bits and bobs and he’s LOUD. A dense, viscous sound with lots of crunchy beats and not the space to call it techno. Thick strong basslines and noisy melodies to the fore. Boo Cook has visuals running, a cutup of space trip, bombs and glazed talking heads working against the banging of the music quite nicely.
Binnsclagg
Binnsclagg pull together probably the best set I’ve seen them do since they gave up power tools. Lots of dynamics: peaks and troughs, noise, drones, wrong music mash-ups, sing-a-longs, noise and beauty. A favourite moment for me was a big chunk of the JAMMS first single. Both Verity and Karl on electronic devices, noise machines, tome generators, tone generators, loopers and Kaoss pads. They have words and stand to say their piece. The Verity-led singsong at the end was priceless.
Tim Shaw & Sébastien Piquemal
‘Fields’ is a piece by Tim Shaw & Sébastien Piquemal, Tim was at Fort Process last year and they are touring this art piece. They are set up onstage with some extra speakers dotted about and their own wifi network which they have asked people to connect to before they start. On stage and through the big PA they pump out some bassy drones, I nip out to the bar and notice that the phone in someone’s pocket is making a weird sound. As I get back into the main room and wander about all the phones around me have started this thin droning. if you look at their screens white command text is scrolling up and slowly the sounds from the phones begins to diversify. Obviously its quite quiet and thin sounding but the acoustic space afforded by the bass drones leaves plenty of room. all the audience seems to be milling about, comparing phone sounds and talking about what’s happening. Its probably the first time I’ve been so happy with audience noise during a set as everyone is so involved. Aces.
Nuclear Whale was half hidden behind a keyboard stand (we don’t see many of them do we?), with a couple of small synths on that and a laptop off to the side. He started off nice and early with some chopped vocal drones that evolved into a slowly evolving stately theme, beats building underneath, before moving on in with percussive meeps and bass buzz, moving onto to a relentless grind. The voices come back, to be washed away by a shimmering wash and mid tempo beats, and science fiction sounds detune their way to a climax. It was a nicely constructed set complemented with a fast moving visual collage provided by Boo Cook.
Lorah Pierre and Andrew Jarvis did a good impression of a Health & Safety nightmare, set up on two oil drum tables in the middle of the cobblestone floor. Lorah had strung two bulbs on cables over a pipe overhead and had scattered boxes with lights and light sensitive equipment dotted about. Andrew had a laptop and a Copycat that he de-tracked with a couple of knitting needles playing with the tape, lifting it off heads and playing with the speed. Their set began with a slow throb that seemed to be set off by the glowing light bulbs brightening and dimming, with a static screech of shortwave stammer twittering away in the background. The throbs change nature and detourned to some kind of aeroplane buzz before squalling out into two kinds of harsh noise and falling away to the pulsing lightbulbs again. It went a bit radiophonic before we had some really nice noise interplay between the pair of them, taking apart the sonic spectrum piece by piece until we get TARDIS’d away.
Wrong Signals wrong footed me by avoiding the full radiophonic sounds I associate with him, by starting with a glitchy rhythmic synth pattern that developed a string melody and wax cylinder crackle. This faded into a shifting pad with an insistent warble melody, that gave way to one of the few beats of Toby’s set: densely structured, stereo denatured snares almost washed away by sonar pops and bass bops. After this we really get stuck into some radiophonic frenzy, Raymond Scott-ish repetition, with some crazy playing over the top, before ending on a slow moving piece of sci fi bliss that conjured blade runner cityscapes.