Deepsrof, Hivemind, Carlos Giffoni, Astral Social Club at KC België

At KC België:

Deepsrof [website] are Alessia and Tiziano Di Turi who describe their music on their myspace as down-tempo experimental trash, a description that accurately covers their mix of improv-like distorted guitarnoise, heavy drumming and electronics. Dormant in their style and stage-attitude are Hairpolice, Yellow Swans, maybe some Wolf Eyes – Granted: the volume was on their hand. And sometimes I exagerate things in my enthusiasm. Future will tell which direction these young folks will go in.

BaYa are John Boyle (Nihilist Spasm Band) and Aya Onishi (Alchemy Records, Sekiri, Nihilist Spasm Band). Happilly ignoring all great things Nihilist Spasm Band and the two individually might have done in the past (I’m inclined to call myself unbiased in this matter as I’m not familiar with this great past) I can only describe the processed thumbharp meets drum-set they did as a jamsession gone out of hand: too much of the same for a too long period, happilly taking the audience with them on a road to nowhere, fun doing, but no fun watching. I was particulary struck by the fact that Aya Onishi’s drumming by moments comes close to my own style of drumming, something pretty disturbing as I’m the lousiest drummer on Earth. Things got a bit better during the final minutes of their set when Aya Onishi invited Alessia Di Turi, the drummer of Deepsrof, to take over as she joined John Boyle in a trumpet-duett, about the only moment in the show where you could speak of some interaction between the participating musicians.

Hivemind [website] was simple and efficient as hell: a big bloke in a gross shirt behind a Korg unleashing long sustained drones that are subtly balancing between the saw- and osc-position. Rrrrrrrr.

Carlos Giffoni‘s set [website] is quite compatible with Hiveminds: two lunchboxes filled with electronics (probably some kind of synth modulators) generating long sustained drones, this time a bit more towards the osc-side, and interlaced with more trance-like sounds, him standing behind his gear, eyes closed, gently rocking for- and backwards. Carlos Giffoni is a cool dude – Got a tape from him maybe 7 years or so ago for a compilation that I was doing with a track on it called “Lava Lamp”, wrote him a mail back that I wasn’t particularly fond of its synth-sound, his reply was something in the lines of “There are no synths used on that track”. I didn’t quite dig Monotracts’ “xprmntl lvrs” CD either [review], something we exchanged some mails over. When I introduced myself as that guy that wrote a bad review on “xprmntl lvrs” his reaction was a full-hearted “Cool man! That’s great!” So I’m really glad I can full-heartedly say his show was great, and so is his LP for that matter.

After leaving Vibracathedral Orchestra [wikipedia] Neil Campbell decided to go solo, and has since been recording and doing liveshows as (the) Astral Social Club [myspace]. Julian Bradley who left Vibracathedral Orchestra a couple years before, pretty much did the same thing, his solo-project being The Piss Superstition [myspace]. It’s a pitty that while on stage Neil probably didn’t realise what a superb show he was bringing, let alone remember anything of it the day after – If he finished the 3 Leffes that where with him on stage, he probably doesn’t, but a good deal of the beer landed on the floor anyway. When we arrived at the venue a couple of hours before Neil was soundchecking and those 5 minutes that he was on stage sounded quite promising – In comparison with his soundcheck his actual set was a tad looser, but totally met my expectations. Neil Campbell kicked off his set with a bunch of technical difficulties, not sure if it indeed were the electronics that were acting up, and at one moment there were 3 people from the venue fiddling the amps behind Neil Campbell while he was blending drones and broken guitarsounds in a pretty cool way, things grew a bit noisier and louder after the amps were declared okay by the sound-engineers (in the 15th minute of Campbells’ set). Also worth mentioning is the 2 minute-duett he did with a guy in the audience that had been playing harmonica throughout the entire set and that Neil honoured by inviting him on stage. For a duett between electric guitar and an unamplified harmonica. There is an article on Neil Campbell in the may-edition of Ruis [PDF, in Dutch, published and hosted by Kraak], and what is being said in that article on Neil Campbells’ music makes sense: his music is indeed quite accidental – the liveperformance he did at KC België was a living proof of that – and Neil just sees himself as some kind of discoverer, someone who touches the music, rather than being its creator. He nevertheless has things pretty much under control, even during the joyful state he was in, and I think he knows very well how far he can let things go out of control and how to get everything back in line, a process you can call experience, or expertise – I recognise something simular in the music made by the Piss Superstition – taking into account that Bradley and Campbell were once in the same band that ain’t much of a surprise – and in some previous reviews I already pointed out the improvisational, accidental aspect of Julian Bradleys’ material: its beauty lies within its imperfectness. It’s a pitty Ruis doesn’t mention how a jolly drinker Neil is in the article – something that might explain the accidental aspect of his music, but that’s just not Ruis’ style, I think they don’t believe in beer.

Despite their editorial on metal. If I get it right the tenor of the editorial is that listening to metal makes you more open-minded, jazz ain’t no cool anymore, baby! – I can fully agree with that point of view as some weeks ago I came back from Kreator feeling a totally different person [review].

With an open-minded headache, but I like to make abstraction of that. Must have been the T-shirts.

Someone Saint Vitus? Here’s what they say in “Born too late” – sing it baby:

Every time I’m on the street
People laugh and point at me
They talk about my length of hair
And the out of date clothes I wear

They say I look like the living dead
They say I can’t have much in my head
They say my songs are much too slow
But they don’t know the things I know

I know I don’t belong
And there’s nothing I can do
I was born too late
And I’ll never be like you

In my life things never change
To everybody I seem strange
But in my world now something’s died
So I just stare with these insane eyes

I know I don’t belong
And there’s nothing that I can do
I was born too late
And I’ll never be like you

Oh well. By now you probably have guessed that we do like beer. That’s what this blog is all about actually, the music is just an excuse.