Local support Brothers Yemen played a longer set that I’ve usually seen them doand it was all the better for it. Stretching out with laptop, home adapted ‘ethnic’ looking horns, violins and wires they built a slowly mutating bed of drone.
Taurpis Tula took to the stage as a quartet featuring the very smartly attired John Olson on Sax. Their set was a densely packed rush of playing with both Heather Leigh Murray and Olson taking the lead to off the map destinations. The flow of the playing seemed wave like, lapping at shores before exploding into a crash of sound and peaks. Luckily I was close enough to be able to focus on the individual players during the set, letting certain instruments take the unintentional foreground.
Wolf Eyes were a lot less obviously ‘dude metal’ gig orientated than the last time I’d seen them playing. This was a shorter set of more seemingly structured pieces interspersed with the usual great stage banter. This show should be taken as yet another piece of hard evidence in the case for why this band are followed and lauded as much as they are.
The trio are one of those bands to be experienced live. It’s a format that makes all the sounds you hear on the records make sense. In a time when many acts are trawling the same deconstructed language, is refreshing to see such a wide palette being used by this band. It shows that they give a damn. They ran the gamut from precise electronic distress, wall of guitar noise to the probably unintentionally musically obvious and fantastic. The fact that they so obviously enjoy themselves when playing is so evident that it’s difficult to not get sucked in by the enthusiasm. Their gigs are not distressing trawls through darkness and obliterated noise, they are fun.
Olson’s Sax playing was particularly incredible throughout with one track that I’d even go as far as to say was as beautiful a piece of improve / noise that I’ve ever witnessed. I’ll be hassling them via email to release this set, and so should you. Returning for a brief thirty second hardcore guitar and vocal duet encore of Fucker’s “We Make Noise not Music” the front row descended into chaos. Whether this song really exists is hard to say, but even if they don’t Wolf Eyes have found their commercial crossover anthem, should they ever need one.
