Tag: Rotten Bliss

No Looper

August 2022
The Rossi Bar

Secret Nuclear starts with a nice fat drone that gradually resolves itself into a 2 note bassline with a ticking hi hat. Over this we get some very Trans Europe melodic lines. The droneline resonates out into nothing, then comes back as a muted electric piano riff. The second piece alternates fat squelchy bass and pinging acidy beeps, they gradually merge. The third starts with an empty wind that slowly tonalises around nocturnal clicking and growling wildlife. Another little pinging riff sets us off in another direction. The growling returns, detuned and unsettling that’s overtaken by noise and nasty synth slapping. The next piece starts up with a sparkling piano riff, a sneaky staggering bass slips in with the first drum part in a while, the piano comes and goes, the drums fade and more parts interweave around the piano ending on a riff that just repeats into delay for a nice while. The next track starts out like Dick Hymans “Bell and Tony” with a bit of squelch underneath, a nice meandering top line gives it some depth before a rhythm track bubbles up like a crunchy robot in a fish tank. It drops down to a one note bassline for the end. The final track gets into spooky territory, a delayed two not pinging riff, gloomy growling bass, lots of swampy atmosphere, a slowly arpeggiating Goblin-ish riff finishes off the atmosphere properly.


Mark Wagner is next up, just wearing a pair of shorts with a set of hand pricked Hermetic tattoos covering his body, microphone and his kit set up on a shiny black clad alter. He plays his new album, Son of the Sun, distorting and twisting it into new and alluring shapes, using the album as a starting point for something a lot more interesting. The first track is sparse drums, ominous basses and stentorian vocals. Everything is louder and nastier than on the album. The vocals thicken up, the synths more Carpentarian. It’s pretty big stuff, of a piece, really coherent; focussed, the bit of “Shout, Shout” was a bit of a surprise, but works really well in context. The middle of the set he plays fairly straight  but towards the end he gets into some nasty glitching of the songs again, mangling beats and backing vocal tracks, some almost Gabba moments there.


So finishing off the evening was Rotten Bliss, her cello feeding – left foot right foot – into separate effects chains. She starts with a raspy mid tone line. Occasionally swelling out into something more sonorously bassy, but really taking a free improv approach, bit of side of the bow to give it a proper scrape, not too much going on with the effects at first. Eventually a two not blast makes itself into a refrain, alternating with what she was doing before. She gets into something that could be a tremolo, before some proper blasts of screeching noise. She lets that unfold for a while. Lulls us into a false sense of security with some more of that tremolo business, then gives our ears a bit more of a lash, but at a much lower volume. She rides that for a while, layering it up with a nice simultaneous bass line. She goes out on a different mid-range line from here, lots of space, almost repeated motifs. More space. Avoiding the smooth full cello sound, she keeps the two effect chains in trim, reining back the overloads and distortions, a little melodic line rasps out of this space. It fills, takes larger form, marching, developing. Eventually she moves off onto a variation of this melody, developing that for a while. It reverts back to a polka inflected version of the previous melody. She keeps that going while with the other foot gives us a few delicious pulses of noise, then winds it right down for a super slow motion run through to end.





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