Oh. (Russ L going to and fro in the Earth)

Quick one here to bring me back up to date - on Friday the 24th it was over to the Arena Theatre with me, to see “It’s A Plot - David Benson’s Conspiracy Cabaret.”

Very good it was too. A spoken word type thing with added songs, it sees the wonderfuly camp David Benson talk about conspiracy theories and go off on various wild tangents, as he wrestles between his urge to indulge in believing that there’s all a bit more to it all and his urge to rationalise everything that happens as being the result of a series of natural cock-ups. If there’s any lesson to be learned it’s the ever-valuable “Don’t be so bloody dogmatic” and you’re bound to learn a few specific facts you didn’t know anyway, but far beyond that it was very funny indeed. Worth seeing.

~ Russ L

Having actually managed to sleep a bit after the last gig, I wasn’t feeling too bad for the last of my four-in-four-nights. It’s a good job as well - you need energy when the mighty, mighty, mighty Municipal Waste are playing at The Flapper (22nd of Feb). This gig had gone through many-a crisis and nightmare and repeatedly looked like it may have been cancelled (as had the whole tour, for that matter), so hurrah for Gaz and Black Country Justice promotions (never has there been a better name for anything, ever) for keeping everything going.

Last time I wrote about openers Life Denied we had ourselves a good old fashioned internet hoo-har. I actually did like them a little bit more this time, but my opinion is still more-or-less the same - generic grindcore/death and nothing special. I found myself quite enjoying the beginning of a song towards the end of their set, starting with a squeally little riff and going on to a galloping section, but other than that nothing stood out.

Finally getting the chance to see The Plague Symphony, I found them to be no less generic but a better example of a typical style. Deathly metalcore, not doing anything that you wouldn’t expect but with some sharp riffs and possibly-catchy seeming parts. Nothing amazing but a reasonable way to pass the time, and I suppose they’d definitely be worth checking out if you have a yen for this particular idiom.

Mistress (the twentieth time I’ve seen them, fact fans) were great, as they always are. I’ve watched and written about them so many times I honestly don’t feel like there’s a fat lot I can add again; although I’m not sure I concur with other folks who seem to be saying it was the best set they’ve ever played, it was stonking. One thing I will say is that formerly, in times gone by, I always thought that (irrespective of how anything sounded on record) their slower/sludgier and midpaced/metallic parts always came across better live than their faster/grindier bits. The thought has occurred that I no longer feel this (not suddenly as of this gig. It’s been that way for a while but was is the first time I’d explicitly thought about it). There you go then: Mistress - a metal band effective at all ranges.

Last of all, my fourteenth band in four days (or nineteenth in six days, if you like) were Virginia thrashers Municipal Waste. They are, simply put, the most fun metal band going at the moment. Catchy and energetic headbang-a-thon crossover thrash songs (very very DRI, although comparisons really aren’t important) coupled with a genuine sense of humour. I can even imagine people who resolutely refuse to like anything in the way of metal getting swept up in it all. In their younger days Metallica (you remember them, surely?) claimed to be that band that ‘banged the head that does not bang,’ and if that epithet seems apt for any band now then it would be Municipal Waste.

~ Russ L

Gig number three out of my four-card trick, and lord o’mercy was I tired. I suppose it’s appropriate to feel practicaly dead at a gig involving a band with the word ‘Lazarus’ in their name, but the irritating thing was that it wasn’t really the gigs on the nights or the going to work in the days that was making me so cream-crackered: I just hadn’t been sleeping too well between them. This was Tuesday the 21st, anyway, and it was off to The Jug Of Ale with me.

I was expecting Chinook & The Charged Particles to open, but it turned out that D. Louis Baker & Friends had replaced them. It’s a fair swap. Our man Baker (and his friends) seemed to be sounding a bit rockier this time, particularly on a new song I didn’t catch the name of but also in general. This apparent shift in emphasis didn’t change the fact that they’re really bloody good songs, and combined with probably the best sound I’ve ever heard for an opening band at The Jug we have a situation where - as I believe the kids these days say - it’s all good. If you haven’t got a copy of the demo yet then sodding well get one, it’s ace.

Next up were Lazarus Clamp, and initially it was a case of “what’s wrong with this picture?” As I looked at them there was something nagging away at the back of my mind, but I simply could not figure out what. Only later when they swapped guitars and someone shouted “It’ll be the wrong way round for him!” did I realise - the neck of one of their axes was pointing in a different direction to the rest. Damn left-handers. It’s funny how unsettling something like that can be when you know something is off but can’t quite place it.

There were all sorts of different things going on in their music, anyway, just none of it that hugely impressive. Their first song was a White Stripes-y overwrought blues rock affair (albeit with bass), and they subsequently went on to variously make use of indie-folk, some expansive post rock, and some simply straightforward melodic rock. None of it stood out as interesting or catchy, though. Not bad but… meh.

Chris Brokaw was the headliner but I really had to leave after Lazarus Clamp, before I fell asleep on my feet.

~ Russ L

Monday the twentieth saw me heading to Edwards No. 8 in Birmingham. It’s less a tacky rock club and more some sort of hyperreal symbol of a tacky rock club. On this night it was made even less appealing by the fact that it was full of younguns with their bleedin’ haircuts on ‘em. There was a unnervingly glassy atmosphere in the air, like an update of ‘The Stepford Wives’ where instead of a woman you get a MySpace top eight.

Things didn’t get any more human when Break The Sky took to the stage. “My God! They’re more beatdown section than man!” Someone described them to me beforehand as ‘Every Time I Die-esque metalcore, but with loads of breakdown parts” and I honestly wouldn’t be able to put it more accurately than that (there was an ETID cover in the middle, incidentaly). I wouldn’t say they were bad, as such, but they definitely didn’t strike me as anything special. They had some supporters, though, and a bit of out-of-time-with-the-music hardcore dancing took place.

Given what I’d been told about them I was interested to see Rolo Tomassi, but I wasn’t actually expecting to enjoy them as much as I did. The ever-looming spectre of technical difficulties hamstrung the earlier part of their set, but once they built up a bit of momentum they were good. Grind incorporating electronic inflections (maybe distantly akin to The Locust meeting the noisy bits of The Murder Of Rosa Luxembourg) and a nice sense of dynamics - there’s a tangible yet wonderfuly unpredictable feeling of build-up and bang in their music. I can imagine that they might come across as a bit annoyingly wacky with repeated listens, but as far as this set goes I thought they were corking.

I didn’t think much of The Final Sigh. Post-hardcore type larks with some noisecore funny-rhythm bits here and there, but not a lot in the way of songs or interesting moments. I was a fairly bored by the end of their set.

Last of all Horse The Band galloped onto the stage. They give off an almost immediately irritating aura of feeling so very very pleased with themselves, but make up for it with good music. Sometimes like melodic metalcore and sometimes thrashy punk, but always with the comical keyboards (as an aside: A mate of mine was listening to ‘Cutsman’ and was joined in the room by his flatmate just in time to hear the keyboards at the start. “Bloody hell!” Exclaimed said flatmate. “I didn’t know they’d made a musical out of the film ‘Tron’!”) and an adrenaline blast of energy. Their songs to vary in quality a bit (most are good, some are amazing, a small handful are fairly forgettable) but on the whole theirs was a cracking set.

I was glad to get out of the place nonetheless. Standing amongst a bunch (feel free to leave suggestions for a collective noun as comments) of plastic MySpace things can get a bit tiresome.

~ Russ L

(Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how the title relates to this. I know how much you all value bonus points).

‘Tired before you start’ would not generally be considered the best state in which to approach a four-gigs-in-four-nights-a-thon by many, but I spit in the face of such bourgeoisie hen-cluck received wisdom. Shattered I was and shattered I advanced, over to The Sunflower Lounge on Sunday the 19th.

I was expecting a three band bill, but it transpired that Parisians Petrified had been added to the gig. They did initially seemed a bit wearisome but grew on me fast. Made up of a vocalist, a guitarist and a box o’ tricks playing digital grind stuff, they really packed a punch in a way that a lot of bands only wish they did. The glitchy beats were bought forward (whether this was deliberate or just the sound on this particular night I don’t know) and it gave the whole thing a hell of a wallop. Their songs also seemed to have something in the way of hooks, too. Good good.

The wonderful Calvados Beam Trio were on second. They had some technical troubles and by the looks of their faces weren’t themselves happy with their set, but I was happy. Excellent post-punk instrumental business, very noodly but without sounding like wankers, and with an unusual but insistent type of groove about them. I like the one that goes ‘buh buh buh-buh do-do buh-buh.’ That’s most of them, actually. Cracking band, though - go and see them.

Trencher are also always a pleasure. Grind with added deliberately crappy keyboard sounds and (oncemore) songs with hooks. They have such a dense sound, thick and viscous. Luvverly.

Bilge Pump’s name didn’t inspire massive confidence, but they turned out to be very good. Grooving post punk ala Gang of Four meeting… yes, I’ll say it: Funkadelic. Not a band I find myself referencing too often when talking about the underground rock bands of our times, but (happily) here we are. The drummer was an absolute star and they had plenty of interesting riffs, but alas I didn’t get the full experience as I had to bugger off halfway through to get the bus. Definitely a band to investigate further, though.

~ Russ L

So, Friday night. This was an interesting little bill at The Hare And Hounds in Kings Heath, courtesy of the Confetti Throwing And Pretend Fucking Gunfights collective, who have a few more gigs coming up locally over the next couple of months so be sure to have a look at that link. A gig at The Hare And Hounds means tins of Carlsberg Export for a mere pound each from the upstairs bar, which means getting a bit more plonkered than you initially intended to. The things we have to put up with, eh?

The Fall, The Rise were already on when I arrived, and were very different to how I remember them being last time I saw them. Whether that’s a result of their new stuff being different or me just being a div I don’t know, but their songs this time seemed to be big sprawling things, going through various different parts before finally coming to their conclusion. The Husker Du vibe I’d previously got from them couldn’t have been further away, and instead I was left thinking of the Deftones in places. I still can’t get on with the vocals, though. At all. Whatsoever. It really is a shame because I think I would quite like them otherwise.

The Arm were on second, and a band I’d been meaning to see for quite a while after having heard a fair few good things about them. On the night they were struggling with various problems (not being able to hear anything onstage, some sort of falling-apart-type-behaviour from the drumkit) but still really impressed. It’s ludicrously fast and technical instrumental metal they play, a bit like Hella if they were interesting. Angular spiky bits abound, and they managed to attain a tremendous degree of sonic velocity even with things conspiring against them. I bet they’re downright scary when things go their way.

I’ve only seen local underground notoriety-merchants Esquilax once before, but I was aware that they perform a completely different set every time they perform. This time there was only one man on stage (I’ve no idea whether this was planned or they’re some sort of Wu-Tang Clan-ish operation where the line-up at any given gig is determined by who can be bothered to turn up), kneeling with his back to the audience and creating one long feedback scree. By ‘long’ I mean ‘the whole set.’ The pitch did modulate a bit and I initially expected something interesting to be said through the tonal variation, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. I get the feeling it was supposed to be an aural endurance test for the audience, but it didn’t really work – it could have been painful had it been louder, but at a perfectly reasonable volume for the size of the room it simply didn’t have that kind of effect. A few people walked out, but neither in a “This is agony, I must flee!” way or a “I am disgusted with this being presented as music and storming off” way – it was more “Bit boring, innit?” In noticing this, though, I realise where the fun was to be had – scanning the faces of the rest of the punters to see how they reacted was very interesting. I enjoyed the set, then, although that didn’t have a fat lot to do with any of the sounds coming from the speakers.

I’d somehow managed to get the prior impression that What Price, Wonderland? played spazz/adjectivecore, which turned out to be completely inaccurate. They were quite the nostalgia trip, actually – they reminded me of bands like Polaris and Bob Tilton, who knocked about when I was aroundabout sixteen. You’d hear them on home-made tape compilations that you could buy for about two quid and were usually a benefit for a hunt sabs group or a homeless shelter or whatever-have-you, made by some enthusiastic youth copying songs from various 7”s and albums onto a blank tape. Great days. They probably use CD-Rs now. If you’ll permit me to come back to the point, WPW sounded like your Bob Tilton-ish British emo bands of those days. I find that the boy-hoarse-‘cos-his-voice-is-breaking vocals used by most of these sorts of bands rarely come across as effective and indeed they didn’t here, but WPW were alright.

I was fairly pissed by the time That Fucking Tank from Leeds were on, having set up on the floor in front of the stage. I remember assuming that they were proving that they were men of the people in the way that underground bands so often feel that they have to do, but in retrospect they might well have been trying to get in front of the speakers to avoid similar problems to those suffered by The Arm. Whichever way up it meant that we could all stand in a ring around them, and that was quite good.

I’d heard a few songs by That Fucking Tank beforehand via the incredible wonders of the internets, and based on those I really was not expecting them to groove as much as they did. It was, of course, a welcome surprise. Theirs was an incredibly full sound for just two of them, with odd bits bringing to mind Lightning Bolt and The Fucking Champs (and yes, I’m wondering too how much I’ve been subconsciously influenced by the semantics) but sounding entirely like themselves. If I’d been even a teensy bit more drunk I’d probably have danced.

~ Russ L

I don’t seem to go to the theatre very often these days (this is something I need to rectify), so I was quite looking forward to a trip to The Arena Theatre in Wolves on wednesday the 15th, to see “Here’s What I Did With My Body One Day.’ The Arena seems to have had new seats fitted since I was last there, and I have to say I don’t like them. They lean forward to an unpleasant degree - I had to keep shifting position to stop myself thinking I was about to fall off.

This was courtesy of Lightworks, anyway, subtitled ‘A Genetic Detective Thriller’ and really very good indeed. The extremely English scientist David Ree is the son of an Huntingdon’s suffering expatriate Frenchman, who moved to England to escape the family curse of inadvertently killing French intellectuals in road accidents (Roland Barthes, Pierre Curie, Ernest Chausson). Ree the younger scoffs at the curse, and when called upon to speak at a genetics conference takes his father over to Paris for the first time since before he himself was born. When his father disappears and Ree hears of a traffic accident involving a fellow scientist, the panic-stricken search begins. Periodically the main narrative is broken up by Barthes, Curie and Chausson discoursing on their lives and deaths.

I loved this no end, enjoying it on every possible level. The multimedia set design was fantastic and definitely worthy of mention - one large projection onto the back wall, and three easel-like folding boards that ingeniously doubled up as screens for further projections and various pieces of scenery. The play itself, meanwhile, is not only extremely funny and warm but also so very, very clever. There’s not too much I can say without giving too much away but it really is a pleasingly tricksy piece of work. Essentialy we have a exploration of whether there is anything more to the world than a “series of events unfolding to their causal conclusions” (I sincerely apologise if I’ve misquoted that). The way events lead to each other and the things felt by the characters at the occasions of their deaths could usher the viewer towards to an opinion either way.

The tour of this is on its final legs but there are a few performances left, so I’d urge anyone and everyone to check it out if they can.

~ Russ L

We are witnessing the beginning of the deluge. Apparently children are leaving school unable to write in anything but text message language. Give it aroundabout fifty years and I suspect that, collectively, we won’t be able to communicate anything more complex than ‘fuk u dik :(’ in written form.

Some will scoff and speak of the language’s need to evolve. I don’t argue - of course it does. It will not and should not remain static. This is, however, an irrelevant point. The abbreviations and silly little faces of mobile phones and the internet do nothing but devolve the language.

I’m not a linguist and I don’t pretend to be, but we need to look at what we have and what we’re replacing it with. Noam Chomsky (you may not like his politics but there’s no linguistic theorist more respected) describes current English spelling as a ‘near optimal system.’ This is largely due to its combination of both phonemic and symbolic elements. Some languages (Italian, for example) are written exactly as they sound, each letter in a word reflecting the phonetics of the pronunciation. Some languages are symbolic - each character represents a whole word or an idea (think Chinese) rather than attempting to express the pronunciation.

Written English does both. Words don’t exactly follow the way they sound but generally do so enough to give you a good idea. Meanwhile, symbolic elements do come into play by means of other structures in the way things are spelled. The example people tend to use is the silent ‘g’ in the word ’sign’ - it isn’t pronounced, but gives you a semi-conscious link to the word ’signature’ (in which the ‘g’ is pronounced). This is a massively useful feature of our language, one not shared by many. English speakers worldwide (with massively varying accents and dialects, and even people for whom English is not their first language) can glance at a text and get at least a fair idea of what’s being said. This does not apply to text message/internet language unless you’re already sure of what the abbreviations and little symbols mean in advance.

The thing that really gets my goat, of course, is when people use this sort of nonsense whilst simultaneously complaining about how people can’t make themselves understood properly on the internet, and how things like sarcasm cannot be expressed. It’s absolute nonsense. The English language has been around for a fair old while now, and on the whole writers haven’t had a great deal of trouble getting across what they mean. Those who would say otherwise are simply attempting to blame the rest of the world for the fact that they themselves can’t be bothered to take the time or trouble to put a bit more effort in and make themselves clear. Of course misunderstandings will come about occasionally, just as they do when you’re talking to someone face to face. There’s no reason why it should be habitual unless one of the two parties has some sort of problem.

I’ve digressed slightly, but people who complain about all that whilst writing in a patently unexpressive manner and relying on smilies to try and cover it really are asking for everything they get.

It’s a regression to a less flexible form - cave paintings of base symbols and little faces rolling their eyes. The trend towards it also seems to be irreversible. I wash my hands of it.

~ Russ L

I know two men died and all, but I’ve been loving this story so much for the last few days:

Tempt not the blade - All fear The Sentinel

~ Russ L

I would have written about this one much sooner, but I haven’t been feeling very well just lately and really wasn’t in the mood for it. On the monday before the one just gone (that’ll be the 6th of Feb) I saw me old mucker Trig for the first time in ages. For no obvious reason I’d been given a couple of free tickets to see The Fallout Trust at The Barfly by a grinning halfwit (thanks!), so after a couple of pints in The Dubliner there we went.

I’d never heard of the band prior to the day before, and although I’d listened to one of their songs in the intervening time I still wasn’t fully sure what was in store. There were six of ‘em, made visually interesting by the fact that the singer definitely looked like someone else but I couldn’t put my finger on who, and by the appealing (ahem) lady keyboard player. Their music is firmly within that currently popular retro indie sound, very The Jam-via-Kaiser Chiefs. Their songs, however, don’t seem to be as 100% formulaic as a lot of the bands practicing all that at the moment, and (more importantly) seem to be very good. They have quite a few almost Beatles-ish harmonies, and the keyboard player taking up a violin on some songs was a nice touch too. The definite highlight, in fact, was a big ballady number sung by one of the guitarists (or possibly the bassplayer, I forget this far after) where said violin came to the fore.

Good stuff. Yet another band to pay attention to.

~ Russ L