April 4-6, 2003, Camber Sands, UK
Zoviet-France were a low key opening with random rumble and drone
rising from abstracted ambience to half realised attempts to scale
walls of noise. They were more varied and engaging when I saw them with
Ryoji Ikeda a few years back. Here they just seemed to be coasting
along blindly and we might as well just have stayed outside with the
car engine running and our heads on the bonnet. The Fall were back on
form hearing nosey telephone thingamebobs listening in and losing
tempers with friends. They had an able new bassist and the young goth
wife of Mark E. Smith diddling about on keyboards. The most vivid
imaged etched from day one is of the Dickensian spectre of Smith
looming through the chain mesh at the stage side. I got into blind
drunk can't-find-my-way-round Smith mode so was totally trashed by
Public Enemy. I do however recall that they played a stormin' Rebel Without A Pause,
they were a lot of fun and like most anyone with even half a
functioning sense of reason, Chuck D dislikes world-leader-pretend
George Bush intensely.
Somehow I found a hangover cure the next day with my head in Pita's PA
as he stood in red jacketed racing stillness at his laptop, coaxing
huge swathes of digital distortion from which rose funny little buried
three note melodies. Farmersmanual were disappointing compared to
recordings I've heard, but still the kind of glitched abstraction that
makes a good organic lager drinking backdrop. It was hard to give a
damn about them though, and why they needed so many as five laptoppers
to do what they did seemed a mystery. Disjecta's processed guitar
drones actually worked much better further from the stage as background
ambience, and my new frind Eva's main criticism of the event was that
there was too much stuff like this. It was no problem for a hardened
experimentalist like me but veterans of the Shellac curated event last
year were often heard to complain of a lack of guitar bands and
associated energy. That's not a criticism that could be leveled at the
bouncey hand waving high jinx of rappers El-P and Murs. They got a big
cheer for denouncing warmongering stooge Bush, and were so fuckin' on
one that you couldn't help but get carried along by the rush. Yasunao
Tone looked very happy to confuse the techno heads with some random cut
up abstract noise, and Hecker's studious almost non-existant stage
presence and post-Gilbertoid bee buzz proved to be the most room
clearing performance I witnessed. His set was close enough to sounding
like he was playing back his recent Mego CD to beg the question of why
he'd actually bothered to turn up - nice work if you can get it! Earth
cancelled so appropriately Sunn O))) were moved to burn bright in their
position, a slow riff grind of apocalyptic doom that won legions of new
fans. Their mind altering armageddon mogadon skullfuck was most
certainly the highlight of the first day and afterwards Aphex Twin just
seemed like mediocre crowd pleasing mouldy old dough, albeit pleasantly
foot tapping mouldy old dough.
The best day by far was Sunday. Lovely humourous rapid cut ups from Jim
O'Rourke brought a cartoonish feel to the air. His ability to sense
humour in avant soundscapes should not be underestimated. If you ever
get the chance to see such exceptionally life affirming artists as Coil
or the Magic Band, it would be worth traversing a continent for. A new
Coil set was presumably what I would expect to eventually be reformed
into Music to Play in the Dark 3, with only The Dreamer Is Still Asleep
in a drastically reworked form as finale to nod to old glory. They put
on an awesome and powerful performance which to me seemed like a ritual
of anti-war magic, with a bearded Balance waggling a long sleeve camply
as the green univarse light show altered minds and etched a spinning
wormhole in so-called reality. I was quite overcome and tears streamed
down my face. These were not tears of sadness or joy, but a body
bursting beyond its threshold. On sale after their set was a new CD
titled A.N.S. which is the follow up to Time Machines and is equally exquisitely hallucinogenic. Bernard Parmegiani's De Natura Sonorum
raised the largest applause noise to crowd size ratio and it was pretty
cool to be able to wander around the half empty hall in and out of the
rushing elegant peaks and troughs as usually electroacoustic concerts
are seated affairs. The Magic Band just owned the place as soon as they
walked on, cool mofos to a man. Opening with Rockette Morton's Trout Mask
bass solo, they cut a dash through some instrumental renditions that
it'd be hard to believe could've been better back in the day. The sound
was perfect, courtesy of Shellac bassist Bob Weston. Guitarist Gary
'Mantis' Lucas was obviously named such by the Captain due to the
stance he pulled as he worked those difficult shapes into our eager
ears. When John French stalked out from behind his kit to take on a
Beefheart persona and sing a bellyfull o'psychedelic blues, it was a
moment I dreaded just in case it all relapsed into kitsch karaoke
clowning, but nothing could be further from the truth. As he told the
tale of the farmer who pitched the devil from now to now with The Floppy Boot Stomp,
it was obvious he'd lived so much of this seminal music that he'd
become a different person, and one who could deliver a more than
convincing full on hoodoo hoedown in the Captain's boots. Towards the
end of their joyous set there was a false fire alarm and the room had
to be cleared. I might've found me a woman to hold my big toe until it
was time to go, but nowaday's a woman's gotta hit a man. A few more
songs to a drastically diminished crowd had me leaping about like a kid
waving apples down the front and after the inevitable fiery finale Big Eyed Beans From Venus
the only reasonable response was to stand in front of the Mantis
shouting, "We love you!" The Magic Band were so great I tripped out to
their show in London the next day, and who should I bump into walking
the nice streets of Wimbledon? None other than Malka Spigel, wife of
WIRE guitarist Colin Newman. Clearly I was about to witness lightning
striking twice!
 |
|
