Chromehoof @ Offset 30/08/2008

Chronic, and cataclysmally dazzling. Mighty Chromehoof slew us, with a broadsword to the heart, then conjured the shards of our shattered souls from the dust with a devastating disco beat. I never knew that I could jump and headbang like that at the same time. Magnificent, supreme.

Colour Ride @ The Windmill

furies of frenzy bolt from the blue poppy shirt fields of death black blue filth beating sax-sweat ensweetened surrender. in pants. in a hole in a room. (hell and people).

"i can't do it". tache and cape pseudo pidgin-pop parody. mental monkey-chicken-rib oriental. swarming scrum.

heavy heavy space-invader flashing bleep annihilation. lemming-lemming-lemming-doom. didnintendo crush 'em all? blip. (blp).

Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno @ Corsica Studios

I have a nagging ringing in my right ear every time I close my jaw. The point where my skull meets my neck is vaguely aching. Yesterday I went to see Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno in Elephant and Castle. In front of a chunky stack of amps on the right-hand side of the stage guitarist Kawabata Mokoto radiated effortless metallic glory shredding relentlessly like the demented old uncle of Herman Li from Dragonforce. I don't think I saw a single drop of sweat come off that guy's forehead and when near then end he thrust his guitar up with one muscled arm to deflect the laser into the crowd amidst feedback and fuzz it felt like it might have been ultimate energy. Adorned with long wizard sleeves and silver beard Higashi Horishi swayed high over crowd and keyboard like a mystic poplar of portent, clearly illuminated by the divine cosmic connection that reveals itself to you after three bottles of red wine. Effortlessly immense and relentlessly fun, two hours and the tiny dark den of Corsica Studios couldn't contain the universe-inspired rock resplendence of these willowed old masters. And perhaps it was the wine, but they seemed in top form. "Perhaps you don't remember him .. last time we came he was thin: now he is very fat" joked Makoto of bassist Tabata Mitsuro, later professing unashamedly to capitalist tendencies as he entreated us to give up all our money at the (overwhelmingly equipped) merch table: turns out the poor guys had been taxed £600 to send everything over from Japan. "Please Queen help us" he beseeched. With drummers Shimura Koji and Pikachu ("Like father and daughter" joked Makoto) feeding perfectly into one another to add extra layers of minute detail to the underpinning rhythm, and a pretty constant undertone of screeching fuzz, A-M-T raised a holy hell-storm of metal prog-psych of interplanetary proportions, light-year speed and zen endurance.

Nurse with Wound @ London Fields Lido (Wet Sounds) 19/07/08

Sound affects you differently in the water. Things seem more distant; more tinny and echoed, but also more immediate. Underwater, things sound more watery. Which sounds obvious but is strange if you consider that water is a tangible thing and sound is not, and the one shouldn’t really be able to take on characteristics of the other. But this wateriness of sound is really just descriptive of the way in which we are aware of being in an element other than our own. The curious mixture of muffled distance and interiority with which sound reaches us underwater is our awareness of the element across which it has travelled; and of our being physically immersed within that element. Nurse with Wound’s set was perfectly suited to this slow, strange and dense sort of atmosphere. Swells of enveloping resonances, deep creaking pulses, indistinct strains of a lilting French tone suffused and surrounded; ethereal yet wierdly omnipresent. Shaking a rattle into a microphone struck you as a series of disappearing clicks, like an invisible shoal of tiny darting fishes. And it was the less earthly higher-end frequencies that seemed to filter through best: sounds that were muffled and confused above surface hit you with a strange clarity underwater – through the skin and in the stomach. Swimming in water that carries an audible dimension is immensely pleasurable. Noise surrounds you physically. It is both highly individualising as you are wholly immersed in your own senses without the possibility of communication, and extensive as it carries your awareness out across the expanses of your environment. Your physical processes interrupt as your breath becomes bubbles and the continuity of sound is continually broken by the necessity of coming up for air. The disparity was heightened by the unsociable July weather. To keep diving deep was by far the best way to keep warm and each time you surfaced you were assailed by a harsh wind that cancelled out the sunshine and, creeping ominously up one side of the sky, an oppressive sheet of grey cloud. Fortunately, that also meant that the lido was empty enough to swim around in. Exploring sound through a co-ordinated fluid, weightless movement. I suspect that it was rather like being in the womb. Or like being some kind of giant marine mammal: a blue whale picking up other whale song. Or maybe a giant squid. A sense of experimentation – of a new experience and way of doing things made for a collective triumphancy at what would have always been a great gig anyway, and at the end of the set Steve Stapleton listened to feedback from the small gathering of stoic listeners and thanked us for being their guinea pigs and we all clapped like seals. On the way home we stopped for fish and chips, and when we stepped outside again the bleak grey clouds had flushed pink.

Guapo @ ULU (Supporting Red Sparowes) 08/07/2008

Guapo are four guys who are very talented and probably a little unhinged. They play prog proper, of quirkily compelling character and of plenitudinous proportions. The wandering journey of a long song (or was it several?) that formed their set was an ongoing exploration of the strange and complex textures that their respective instruments could weave together: an epic interplay of guitar, drums, keyboard, bass, each spinning its own private spiritual path around the others - always in balance and never quite touching - to create a sound at once naive and deep, intricate and whole, organically electric. More than anything these guys knew how to draw the essence out of their battered instruments; pedals and keyboard effects seemed to unmask rather than distort their true character. The hunched keyboardist hammered at the keys as though he were prophesising on a vast organ in a lonely cathedral; the drummer carefully tinkled a little string of bells around his drumkit using nothing but space and air to gain new perspectives on a sound; the curly bassist pulled a clipper out of his jeans pocket to slide ethereally up and down the fretboard. Complete with sparkling lycra shirts, Guapo are all the visionary insight of the old prog masters made present as an intuitive understanding of their own powers of creation and of their connectedness with one another; with their audience; with earth and cosmos; and with the more mischevious and darkly magical forces in the universe that like to lead us astray once in a while.

Gallhammer @ The Water Rats 12/03/2008

Arriving at Kings Cross’s theatrically chandeliered little venue, the Water Rats, through horrible winds, the heavy stagnant atmosphere of hair and battered leather was almost comforting as we walked in. Tonight’s headliners – Tokyo’s all-girl doom metallers, Gallhammer – have been signed to Peaceville for a while, which might help explain the rather classic aesthetic of the crowd gathered for their first UK gig. There’s none of the self-righteous ‘new-band’ buzz in the air here then tonight; the excitement is purely anticipation of what everyone already knows can’t fail to be a damn awesome show. Openers ‘Leech Woman’ were three guys chugging hard to a heavy industrial backing track that sounded at times like it might have come from the musical ‘Stomp’ (metal poles and dustbin lids and all of that). Their unconvincing grimaces, especially from the munchkin-faced pink-dreadded vocalist, kept us totally entertained as they worked their way from ‘cunt’ t-shirts to bare chests. And it was the sense of fun and entertainment the whole way through that justified their presence when really they could have just recorded and looped themselves along with the percussion track for the same musical effect. And if nothing else, as an opening act, they were really reassuringly Loud. The Sontaran Experiment were louder. And their nearly vein-popping snarls and maniacal grins seemed alarmingly real. Their sound was alternately dense, soaring and frenetic, as tortured apocalyptic vocals (“there is no hope left for us”) were contorted and transformed into horrific artificial screeches through wierd machines and frenzied outburst of twisted prog solos were enveloped by feedback. I could literally feel my eardrums rattling: it felt like we were trapped inside a dark box as soundwaves shot through us and bounced off the walls again in all directions... in fact I felt like the autistic kid in the red room in Cube. No real need to elaborate on Gallhammer’s set then. Satisfyingly amazing, like a plan coming together... you couldn’t help but bang your head and clench your fists, but then you noticed that everyone around you was doing it too, and everything was fucking great. The only let down was the lack of encore when it should have been on the cards.... but what can you do? The music stops, people become aware of their surroundings, and the creeping ghost of London nonchalance starts to infiltrate the crowd and no one bloody keeps shouting. Disappointing, but we still left as stupidly grinning and happy as kids from a sweetshop, full of metal like it was made of e-numbers and sugar.

Polar Bear @ The Stables

Well I was going to use this post today as a space of catharsis to vent my inutterable fury at the absolute blind incompetence and arrogant pomposity of those cretinous bureaucrats at the job centre, which, given that as soon as I think about it I become consumed with outrage, could only have resulted in long inarticulate ramblings with the words ' fucking twats' interspersed at frequent intervals. But since then, two nice things have happened to me. First, a lovely young man at the bank (he was probably new) gave me an extension to my overdraft with Minimal Fuss. I just went in and asked for some money and he gave it to me. I got the bus home instead of having to walk in the freezing rain. Then tonight, by way of celebration, I went to The Stables MK, where I haven't been for a very long time, to go and watch Polar Bear. Who were quite wonderful. So I have now pocketed my rage and can instead write about the gig.

Despite the relative emptiness of the tiered auditorium (anything to do with the £15 ticket price I wonder?), a common air of unpretentious appreciation managed to join the crowd across all the empty seats to give the gig a good sense of intimacy. They started off quietly, with several more ambient numbers, blending quite beautiful fluid saxophone melodies with soft-spoken melancholy bass lines, underpinned by a depth of assorted noises, echoes and intensifying resonances coming from Leafcutter John's laptop and other surrounding instruments, including a howling cymbal channeled through the coaxing threads of a violin bow. As the pace started to pick up, proceedings were kept laid back by the soothing voice of the quite lovely and strikingly hirsute Seb Rochford, linking the set together with clearly entirely unpremeditated explanations of songs. The second half (a gig with an interval!) was altogether a little more hectic, with the chaos pad whipped out in the corner. Obviously the cue for someone up in the lighting department to start swirling the spotlights around excitedly around as though someone might mistake them for strobes. At times the artifice of the noise did seem a little mismatched with the unembellished raw chaos of the other instrumentation, particularly when it went all out on the final enlivening 'King of Aberdeen', although elsewhere sampled loops and feedback echoes added a touch of brilliant madness to tortured saxophone solos and shadowy bass lines. The polite persistence of the crowd's encore request seemed to encapsulate the demure enthusisam of the occasion, and the upbeat eccentricites of 'Beartown' left everyone feeling happliy worn out.

Bit of 'Tache and Tickle

Oh no. I appreciate that this mid-life-crisis-as-a-new-musical-direction thing had the double advantage of providing a viable coping mechanism for both the music and the ego, but I feel that this is just going too far. I'm sure if this photo was just a little more frontal we'd see some clumps of hair poking out of that shirt. How am I to maintain a sensible zero-tolerance stance on moustaches when even my long-time heroes are indulging in such revolting frivolity? Is all the world against me here? This has gone way beyond ridiculous hipsters trying to outdo each other in their poorly understood sense of irony. There's no winks or half-smiles left in it any more, irony is never so ubiquitous. Its gotten serious. Serious enough to constitute a viable image-reinvention choice for an aging Master of Aesthetics - desperate salvation through sleaze. What was wrong with just being suave?