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

And so, at the beginning of August, local rockistas Mothertrucker went out on their first tour. Alongside dalliances in Scotland, the East Mids and the Deep South, there was due to be a Birmingham & Black Country leg. This was curtailed to just Birmingham when the Wolves gig was cancelled and a Brummy replacement found. A two day Birmingham residency thus came together.

Monday the 7th was at The Barfly. This was an opportunity to meet up with that good ol’ boy Matt Pratt & his new special friend ‘Chelle, as well as a chance to see the doings of Tommy of Random Conflict, who I went to school with many a-year ago. He wasn’t Tommy of Random Conflict then. He was just Tom at the time.

I arrived to find Redjack already on, and enjoyed what I saw a lot more than I expected to after the first few minutes of hearing them (the lesson of not being unnecessarily cynical is always one worth re-learning, of course). In a stylistic sense they were just your ordinary grungey basic rock, but their songs sounded pretty good and they seemed to bring both melody and groove. We’ll not go mad, but I approved.

Slab were on second, with a sound somewhere between Tool-ish churning rhythms and Machinehead-ish basic modern metal (I know in theory the two cancel each other out, but still…). They were OK, with some good riffs and good bits to some of their songs.

Random Conflict were on next, featuring the aforementioned Tom. Metalcore business, and they like their beatdown parts (in fact, although the songs on their MySpace page don’t sound like it, live they came across as nearly all beatdown from start to finish). Bags of energy, though, and they gave it good & proper onstage. Again I’m not about to get overly gushing but I did enjoy their set.

Mothertrucker finished the gig (‘headlining’ at The Barfly, eh?) with one of their ‘large’ sets. They do vary a bit sometimes, but this was definitely what I’ve recently christened Epictrucker. Big, broad swathes of guitar play across the rhythms, and the thought that came to mind was a glacier sweeping across the landscape. Breathtaking.

Also worthy of note: A) the way the light was reflecting from Chris’s guitar looked fantastic, with beams of illumination strafing out into the audience; and B) the chap who was shouting along, even though they’re an instrumental band. That shows resourcefulness.

There was a nice atmosphere to this gig. I did like the fact that it although was really clear that each band had attracted their own group of fans (and plenty of ‘em, too – not to knock anybody’s drawing power or anything like that, but I was expecting sparseness. I was wrong. 70-odd punters turned up, which is amazing), most people seemed to stick around to give everyone else a fair listen. You don’t always see that. Thumbs up.

~ Russ L, who as usual desperately needs to get this blog up to date ‘cos he’s really not going to have a lot of time over the next fortnight.

Apparently…

I’ve no understanding of how it’s worked out, but still - about two and a half grand-ish in proper money? I’ll sell this thing, happily…

~ Russ L, open to offers.

The first of what may well turn out to be a 381 part series in which I have a little waffle about turns of phrase that I find amusing, and patronisingly blame it all on the young folk.

In this instance, though, we have two words that the hardcaw-uh kidz use and I was genuinely confused about (and really, I was). Hopefully this may shine an explanatory light out to anyone who has been as baffled as I have been with these.

Windbreaker - I’d heard the word ‘windbreaker’ used in relation to band merchandise before and been completely confuzzled, since as far as I was aware a windbreaker was one of those canvas partition things you put up on the beach to prevent the sand blowing all over you. Not so, I have found out this week! Nowadays, it seems, a windbreaker is an anorak.

Two-step - This one I’d heard in the context of hardcore dancing. Again, I had to crease my brow and move my head back slightly - “Garage music? What does that have to do with beatdown dancing?” Thanks to the inimitable Maxine I know know that the term also refers to that left-foot-right-foot-left-foot-right-foot running on the spot dance you see sometimes.

I’m glad I know now what people are talking about with these things. It may sound silly, but in their own little ways both of them had faintly troubled me in the past. If I can pass on a spot of illumination to anyone else out there then I’m glad to do so.

~ Russ L, feeling old (again).

Saturday the 4th – the big wedding! Ooh, it was so exciting.

It was a typical wedding in the sense that it was absolutely lovely despite the fact that everything that could go wrong did. Sarah and Daniel (‘Trigger’) were married and are ready to begin a new life together, and I wish them nothing but happiness.

My usherin’ day started early, as Mike (brother of the best man Ste and individual without whose efforts this wedding really would not have gone ahead. I always thought I was the one Trig gave the crap jobs to, but I now know better) and I raced up to The Burlington Hotel in Birmingham where the meal/reception/do was later to take place. Our mission was to inflate a shedload of balloons with helium, tie them onto strings and arrange them on the tables in the (very impressive) function room. This takes longer than you might expect. Halfway through we noticed that the rubric on the side of the helium canister stated that it lasted for three-to-five hours. A concerned call back to the groom’s house led to a spot of consultation and the reassurance that they’d used it before and it lasted much longer than that.

Two-and-a-half hours and a big hole in my finger (numerous layers of skin were flayed away through repeated balloon tying. The difference between cheap and good-quality balloons, as far as I can tell, seems to be that the latter are more difficult to tie up) later, we raced back to young Daniel’s house to join up with the rest of the groom party. Suits (blessedly the rest of them had turned up, after all of this nonsense) were donned where applicable and after a short while we walked around the corner to St Pauls, joking that ‘Reservoir Dogs’ music should have been playing as we advanced through the streets be-suited. My fellow ushers (Dom and Joe, Dan’s half-brothers) and I installed ourselves behind the little table we had (my demand for a swivel-chair and cigar to go with my ‘desk’ went unheeded), and it was time to hand out orders of service (gripping them between thumb and middle finger to avoid my balloon-hole weeping over them) to the attendees trickling in, and play the waiting game.

For quite a while, it turned out. Not only had the electricity gone off at Sarah’s house in the morning, but her limo was late too. The customary half-hour lateness for the bride was doubled. Dan looked ever so slightly off-colour.

Sarah arrived, and everything became perfect. ‘Radiant’ is a clichéd word to describe a bride, but apt; the light seemed to shine from her. The service went ahead and no-one shouted out at inappropriate moments. Tears nearly came to my eyes. Reader, they married each other.

As we came outside for photos, someone got a call from the hotel. The balloons had lost their helium buoyancy and descended to the tables. We warned them… oh well. I was needed for photographs (although I only turned out to be in one), so Mike led a merry band in a dash into town to re-do the central table’s worth of balloonery. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Mike made this wedding happen.

The convoy assembled (a limo for the happy couple, limo for the bridesmaids and bride’s parents, and a minibus for those of us important enough to be in the wedding party but still plebs). The plan was then for some photos to be taken at Leasowes park, near Halesowen, but (naturally) the drivers didn’t seem to know about that. We told ours. Nobody told the driver of the limo taking the lead, and he started heading to town and gave us the chance to witness the amusing spectacle of two stretch limos trying to do u-turns on the Hagley Road.

We eventually found ourselves at The Burlington and there was another long wait (I don’t actually know what this was about, but it gave me chance to drink some free wine) before the meal. Dan and Ste’s speeches were both spot-on and very well judged, and the meal was fantastic (with some of the best-cooked turkey I’ve ever had).

Then, of course, the do. More free wine was drunk. Lots more. Oh dear…

~ Russ L, more happy for Sarah and Dan than his limited verbal ability can express.

The big wedding drew nearer still. The time came for the male end of the wedding party (including me, as an usher. I said ye-eah, ye-eah… I’ll stop) to go to pick up our suits from Young’s Hire, at ‘Suits You’ (formerly ‘Suits Plus’ in Birmingham’s Bullring), and we weren’t in the least bit pleased with how things went.

It must be stressed that we had to spend the morning waiting for them to call us to tell us it was OK to come and collect the suits. I’ll repeat that – ‘they’ rang ‘us’ to let us know that everything was ready and waiting for collection. Under the circumstances, you wouldn’t expect to turn up to find a minor detail like the GROOM’s suit missing, would you?

On top of this, my (I’m always the awkward one) jacket had a dirty great mark on it and they hadn’t given me any cufflinks (“Did you ask for them specifically?” Not myself, no, but the suits were all ordered at once and every-bloody-body else had a set). They were able to find me some cufflinks in the shop, but Trig’s suit and my jacket had to be sent around to his house in a taxi the following day.

The tailor who dealt with us was a really irritating individual, too, and then on top of everything else (this isn’t the shop’s fault, but it added to our frustration nonetheless) they needed a photocopy of a bank card to release the suits, in case they didn’t come back. Naturally, none of us had one on our person and we had to wait while hero of the hour Mike (you’ll hear more of Mike’s all-round star quality as tales of this wedding continue) dashed into town to provide the necessary.

The outstanding articles were successfully delivered the following day and so it all worked out OK in the end, but none of us were in the least bit pleased with the service.

I would not recommend them.

~ Russ L, scowling sternly as he writes this.

(The above title is an in-joke, thank you for reading).

Dan (A.K.A. Trigger) and Sarah’s wedding drew nearer. One of the final events of Trig’s stag month (this was an earlier one) was a night out clubbing. I’m really not a clubbing person (it’s a sufficiently unusual occurrence to make it into here, whereas – say – an ordinary evening pubbing wouldn’t be. I don’t waffle on about absolutely everything, y’see…), but as a one-off why not eh?

Beers at Trigs, train into town, pint at The Old Joint Stock, and then onto clubbing a-proper. The queue outside Snobs was just silly and one of our number got unfairly ID-d at Walkabout, and so onto Flares it was. That’s no bad thing, ultimately. You’re guaranteed a nice mix of music.

I don’t have a lot to report other than “Hark at Russ L going clubbing, how out of character.” The lager was much cheaper than one might have expected but somehow it wasn’t getting me drunk. As a result, I didn’t dance. Trig lost a ‘How-fast-can-you-drink-a-pint-of-Guinness’ competition with this girl (by 0.01 seconds…) and failed to come up with an hilarious sexist punchline about swallowing (probably a good thing). Glass on the dancefloor and ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ are not a good combination, as one of our number found out to the detriment of his hand and as a result of that another of our number found out to the detriment of his shirt.

Oh yeah - ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ by The Foundations really is one of the best songs ever.

~ Russ L, sadly lacking an afro wig.

After a short recovery period at home it was time to again sally forth, out to The Custard Factory for the second part of Supersonic. Rain streamed from the sky and left me a touch worried about the outside aspects of this, but it soon cleared up and had no effect other than making some of the steps a bit scary and providing some puddles for people to avoid/play splashy-splashy in.

Main/outside stage openers Una Corda were already on by the time I arrived, but I didn’t miss too much of their set. They’re a band I’ve liked to varying degrees in the past, but this was without a doubt the best set I’ve ever seen from them. Rock-leaning post-rock with (at their best, like here) a huge epic sweep to them, perhaps made to feel even more epic by size of the stage. Fantastic, and they went down really well too.

Hanne Hukelberg and band followed on the main stage, providing the best set of the festival to my eyes. I’m not sure I believe her claim that they had lost all of their instruments and replacements had been provided by the people of Birmingham (a saxophone? Fair enough. Accordion and glockenspiel? OK. A prepared bicycle, though?) but the music was captivating. Her general air of restrained lunacy and magpie approach to sticking bits of allsorts together seems to get her compared to Bjork a lot, but sonically the closest comparison for some of this was the jazzier bits of Carina Round’s first album (oh yes), albeit far less intense. Hanne has a gorgeous voice infused by both folk and jazz, and beautiful songs. I really enjoyed her performance, often closing my eyes and drifting off into a reverie and being reminded of happier times that may or may not have actually happened. Plus she played a prepared bicycle. You can’t beat that.

Still on the outside stage, I watched about half of Michael Gira’s set, with the ex-Swans geezer now doing his own alt.country thing. It’s a typical sound with just him ‘n’ his guitar, but there’s gravitas in his voice and his songs seemed to be interesting Nick Cave-esque tales of retribution and vengeance.

I was sad to leave him, but I definitely wanted to see Final in the Theatre Space. The room was far too full, to an absolutely ludicrous degree. I watched peeping over the top of a little wall (yes, indoors. This is too hard to explain if you don’t know the layout of the Theatre Space), and during the early part of the set found my cheekbone crushed against it whenever anyone behind me moved. It was worth it, though. Ambient drone is very fashionable of late, but the music of Final has a soul and elegance so rarely seen within the style. Justin Broadrick (pale face and hoodie giving him the look of no-one so much as Ingmar Bergman’s Death) solemnly rang sombre but bright waves of reverberation from his guitar and electronics, a physically dense sound but with a lightness of touch that could elevate the listener above the similarly physically dense surroundings. Beautiful.

Back to the main stage for the Modified Toy Orchestra. They’re no longer “Brian Duffy And The Modified Toy Orchestra,” which is apt as they definitely seem to have transformed themselves into a proper band over the three times I’ve now seen them. Thoughts that they might be a one-trick pony should be abandoned – their electronica/tuneful glitch played on doctored toys presents some fantastic songs, and the projections onto the screens behind made for a fantastic visual element (combined, of course, with the five of them lined up and immaculately dressed). Their cover of Kraftwerk’s “I’m The Operator With My Pocket Calculater” absolutely rocks, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the interpolation of Beethoven’s Ninth finale with which they open their set. It was interesting to note Michale Gira watching from the sidelines with a pleased-looking air, too.

US Maple are very heavily feted amongst certain circles, and prior to this I’d never ‘got’ them. Their supposed deconstruction of the basic rock band has always left them sounding to me like… well, a basic rock band. The bit of their set I saw in the Medicine Bar left me with no different impression. Slightly noisy American rock, by no means bad but nothing special. I didn’t dislike the bit I watched.

Out into the fresh air again next, for Broadcast on the main stage. Very pretty sixties influenced electronics with plenty of unusual squiggly ‘n’ wobbly bits layered over the top and the occasional depth charge of powerful bass, but never losing a human element as singer Trish held sway like a stern-but-loveable schoolmistress. Heartening stuff.

Isis followed on in the US Maple mould, in the sense that for all of the hype around them I formerly quite liked them but didn’t think they were amazing, and their set here changed nothing. Their proggy expansive metal *cough*secondrateNeurosis*cough* lark does have some fairly interesting songs, but none that fully justify the alternate auras of ‘lots of bluster, but it’s all really serious, honest’ and ‘bow before us for we are cooler than thou’ that they project. In the ‘more-or-less likeable’ range, albeit going on for far too long.

I thought I’d have a look at the rest of Zombi’s set in The Med Bar, having heard good things about them from a fair few people. Mad, but excellent stuff – traditionally prog keyboards combined with drums playing weird rhythms, and bags full of energy. Not in the least bit what I’d expected but a lot of fun. On the downside, my tiredness and drunkenness really kicked in at this point.

High On Fire were the last band I attempted, back out on the main stage. Just like the last time I saw them, HOF were pure headbang, for good or ill. Motorhead-come-Slayer with doomy bits, completely mindless but massive amounts of fun. I watched a fair bit but had to leave before they finished, lest leaving it any longer led to me collapsing by the roadside somewhere while trying to get home.

I cannot possibly emphasis how great Supersonic 2006 was. Not a bad band all weekend and plenty that were a hell of a lot more than just ‘good’. Be there next year or be really, really stupid.

Another account of this can be found here, and a bunch of ‘em are linked from here. There are photos here and here.

~ Russ L, saluting the Capsule girls and everybody else involved in making it happen.

Supersonic (courtesy of Capsule) was amazing. Last year was absolutely fantastic, but this topped it by far. For those unaware, Supersonic is an annual festival in Brum, spread over the various venues of the Custard Factory site, and consisting of a varied program of interesting music.

I’ll get through my only complaint (come on, there had to be something) first, and it’s not directly anything to do with the festival – the Medicine Bar in the Custard Factory has stopped selling cheap bottles of Carlsberg, and now only dispenses expensive bottles of whatever-have-you else. I used to hate the venue mainly because of the pricing and only started to like it when they began selling said Danish bargains, but now my opinion has gone woooooooosh back to hatred. I curse them. You can still go across the way to pay over the odds for a pint of watery lager in The Kitchen (served, of course, in plastic glasses with the least possible yield strength any object could have whilst still being solid. Salvador Dali glasses, as a foolish man wisely noted) which is still cheaper than the bottles, but I know that place shuts early on some nights. A second time, I curse them. (Edited on 17/8/6: The Carlsberg bottles were back last night, albeit in limited numbers. I just don’t know what to think anymore…)

The festival began on the night of Friday the 21st of June. I stuck to the main line-up in the Med Bar. When going to buy drinks in The Kitchen (and thrice shall I curse them) I saw a procession of DJs being all wacky and ker-razy by wearing masks or dropping children’s TV themes amongst their sets. It probably all sounds like a good idea in a student refectory but it’s not especially entertaining. Having said all that I should note that The Countryside Alliance Crew who played in there later on seemed to impress a lot of people, but I didn’t see them.

Mistress were on first , doing another ‘entire new album’ set. I’m really getting into this new stuff, now. The big doomy one and the chuggy headbangy one that I’ve mentioned previously were again the highlights, but all of it seemed to have an epic sweep about it. They grind and they blast, they doom and they riff, they’re not purely a sludge band anymore and haven’t been for years. Most people likely to be reading this will know Mistress already but if not, give ‘em a listen. One of the best noisy metal bands going.

PCM were initially sounding a lot more groove-oriented than the last time I saw them but soon got down to destruction mode (whilst still grooving a lot, of course). There’s a nice mix of sounds in their heads-down-and-charge styled drum ‘n’ bass, varied even further when they were subsequently joined by The World’s Most Unlikely MC, Karl Willetts o’ Bolt Thrower. In all honesty, he didn’t make as much of a radical impact on the music as you might think and at times his growls got lost in the overall massive low-enderation, but it was a fun addition and he looked like he was having the time of his life up there.

The Bug’s industrial dancehall was truly fantastic, proving to be everything I’d hoped for (and I’d hoped for a lot). The man himself laid down walls of earthshaking sub-bass before being joined by the vocals of Ras B (looking slightly baffled, presumably by the unexpectedly shaggy-haired audience in front of him) and Warrior Queen (a proper woman - filthy mind and thighs you could use to club wildebeests to death). I’ve said before (as much as I hate to make genre-alisations. Arf. See what I did there?) that live reggae makes me dance like little else; the energy and groove here did that as much as ever and I threw quite the foolish shapes, while the brutal sonic elements simultaneously appealed to some of my other sensibilities (Chest-caving bass! Ear-shredding-scrapey noises! Oh, how I love me some chest-caving bass and ear-shredding scrapey noises). Act of the night.

The night wasn’t over but my wrecked (in numerous ways) little self left at this point, ready for the big day after. My waffling about that will follow very soon.

~ Russ L, urging everyone even remotely capable of getting to Birmingham to go to Supersonic next year.

Off to the (soon-gone, if I hear correctly) Flapper on the sixteenth of July with Comrade Pratt. Know what? It was too hot.

Sunset Cinema Club opened. I’ve no idea where I got the Fugazi vibe from when I saw them last summer, since we’re basically looking at funky indie-pop-rock with odds and ends of all sorts of other stuff thrown in (they occasionally reminded me of fellow locals Project 7, albeit nowhere near as good). No songs particularly stood out, but while they didn’t make me like them or make me want to like them they did go as far as making me want to want to like them. Yeah.

Following Friday’s debacle, this was the tenth time I’ve seen Mothertrucker. Whoo! The double-figures club is an elite group, comprising only them, Mistress, Decimate and Carina Round. You won’t be surprised to see me write something along the lines of ‘another day, another ‘Trucker set’ then, but another ‘Trucker set is more or less always another great thing. Band of the night, even if I have nothing in particular to say about them.

I was keen to see The Arm in a situation where they weren’t being assailed with various troubles, and they didn’t disappoint. I have heard some bemoan the fact that “they sound like they’re playing one song for ten seconds, then they change to another,” but that’s part of the appeal to me. The fact that their hypertechnical instrumental metal songs manage to do that while still sounding coherently like songs (rather than wackycrazyrandomwanky) is a great thing in my eyes, a great thing indeed.

~ Russ L, who can get on to Supersonic next. Finally. I know this one was crap.

I’ve said this before and there’s no doubt whatsoever that I’ll end up saying it again before long, but I really need to get on with catching up with this - not only do I have Supaaarrrgghsonic to write about, but also stuff relating to the biggest wedding since Madonna and Whatsisface.

On Friday the 14th of July it was off to Scruffy’s for a gig that I gather was promoted by the Iapetus Records mans dem. I tried my little hardest to get there early to see all of the bands, but found myself assailed by late/missing buses. Arriving halfway through Montana (advertised as being on first) didn’t seem to be too bad going, but I found out after they’d finished that there had been a bit of a reshuffle and Mothertrucker had already been on before them. Blast.

Montana themselves were ace, and I liked them a lot more than first time I saw them (I quite liked them that time, but this one was superb). I’m finding them difficult to describe, though – they seem to take elements from all sorts of different styles but don’t really sound like they do. I realise that won’t make a lot of sense. They have epic build-up bits, noisy riffy bits, the occasionally screamy fast punk bit… allsorts, and it all hangs together brilliantly with a nice dynamic swings. Their singer is a great big bloke. That wasn’t why I liked them.

The lighting during Symmetry’s set was awesome. The ‘bathed-in-blue’ effect looked especially good with a bit of dry ice. Apparently it belongs to the band themselves, which is surprising (it seemed unlikely that Scruffy Murphy’s might have invested in new lighting but even moreso to imagine that small/DIY touring bands would have such a thing with them) but something I applaud – it’d be great if more bands put that sort of effort in. I bet it ain’t cheap though. I digress, anyway – they played mostly instrumental Neurosis-y/Cult Of Luna-y sort of stuff (hardly rare these days) but varied things a touch with a few more song-based loosely Earthtone9-ish tunes. Not bad (not great either, but not bad), although I do think their set went on a bit longer than it needed to.

Bossk (it’s pronounced ‘Bossk,’ rather than the ‘Bosskay’ I had previously assumed. I’d got the idea that the ‘k’ was supposed to be capitalised, though, dunno where from. I’m glad it isn’t) were a more typically post-rock type of band, in (I suppose) a Red Sparrowes type of mould. Of the two touring bands at the top of the bill I enjoyed Bossk’s set more than Symmetry’s (the lighting continued, incidentally), with what sounded (on first listen) like better songs despite more limited sonic scope. That stereotypical thing of their loud bits being better than their quiet bits applied, though. Why do so many bands of this nature end up all one-or-the-other like that? Ah well, doesn’t matter. I liked ‘em anyway.

I enjoyed this one a lot more than this blah might suggest. In contrast to the Mistress/BMTH gig earlier in the week, this one just had an air of fun about it.

~ Russ L, picking Montana as band of the night despite my spectacularly crap failure to describe them.