“Unfortunately the £20 increase is unavoidable. The collapse of the pound versus the dollar has impacted on the festival very significantly.”

Makes sense, if it wasn’t for the fact no toehr festival decided to raise the price by that much. Next excuse, please.

“I do accept that many fans will be concerned that this is a large increase but compared to many of our competitors who offer two-day festivals or a lesser depth in line ups and less stages, Reading & Leeds Festivals still represent incredible value.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh wow.

tentacle care,
overwealming space,
boy with glasses and tangerines,
spine shake,
sex pistols bootleg vinyl lp tmq

It’s nice to know I’m not actively looked for, keep it grassroots and what not

Sorry wait, what?

Tentacle Grape™ is the brainchild of Dekker Dreyer and his skilled team of grapists. Each bottle of this delicious carbonated grape drink is crafted with care… and a slight feeling of breathless anticipation. As Tentacle Grape™ slides smoothly down your throat you’ll feel refreshed and full.

The things they come up with these days…

http://www.tentaclegrape.com

“And while the real music fans have been edged out of larger festivals, and turn towards the smaller festivals for their fix of remotely interesting music, such as the ATP festivals, something tells me that the larger festival bubble will surely sometime in the next couple of years burst – while I’m not hoping for collapse of an icon such as Reading and Leeds festivals, maybe it’s for the best interests of real music fans.”

Five months on from the debacle that was Reading Festival, I must say, ATP’s December installment of their Butlins festivals had high expectations for the future of festivals for me. While Reading had the advantage of being able to spend a weekend in the summer with all of my friends sitting around waiting for a good band to stumble on stage, it missed what festivals really need which is a) a variety of music, b) for that variety to be good and c) a good atmosphere to appreciate the variety of said good bands. ATP festivals are renowned for these three points, so it was with much relish we travelled the odd 200 miles to get to Minehead – and while Butlins may seem like a surreal backdrop to the madness handpicked by Melvins and Mike Patton, I can honestly say that this event was one of the highlights of my gigging lifetime (2 or so years, then).

FRIDAY

Melvins (1983 line up)

To start the weekend, the ‘original’ line up of the Melvins performing tracks from the Mangled Demos From 1983 album released a while back. King Buzzo introduces drummer for the set Mike Dillard and bassist “Matt Lukin”, who rather curiously enough is a dead cert for full time Melvins drummer Dale Crover. Hmm. While the crowd don’t whip up into a frenzy, the hardcore side of Melvins is an apt opening act, being an influence for many of the bands to come. Houdini number Set Me Straight was a crowd favorite from the set of otherwise stock-hardcore songs, and there was the general feeling of the set being there for the sense of nostalgia as opposed to music. Regardless, an intriguing look into Melvins history.

Tweak Bird

If I was to be honest, I can’t remember much of Tweak Bird’s set; although what I remember was definately worth chasing up. The White Stripes-esque (in line up, not sound) set up of guitar and drum duo was definately unique in the grand scheme of sludgy duos – the frilly high voice of one of the brothers somehow complimented by the other brother’s beat-perfect drumming and his own guitar work. The merch stand didn’t have any of their CDs. Boo.

Dirtbombs

This band have been described on the internet as one of the best live bands around – curious enough to beat tiredness from the journey, I was, simply put, blown away. Dirtbombs are best described as soul-meets-garage-rock, with two drummers and two bassists. Intense stuff, especially the memorable ending where the instruments and drums were taken off the stage bit by bit while the band were still playing, right up until the drummers had one tom drum and a whistle between them, at which point launching themselves into the crowd. A must see.

The Locust

Having been disappointed by the opening of Torche’s set, The Locust filled in the space admirably. I say “filled”, I mean a more brutal verb like “pounded their way into” – I had expected them to play the standard 1, 2 minute songs, yet while they did do this, they created soundscapes that could probably make glass break, the bass making my spine shake. Their stage personalities also added to the effect, whilst not playing their instruments they remained completely static, eireely twitching like puppets when playing their parts.

Zu

It’s hard to describe Zu to someone not familiar with them – hardcore meets metal meets jazz? Maybe, but that doesn’t really matter; to hear the band is to realise what they’re on about, and while mixing jazz with metal doesn’t exactly seem to be on the top of the pile of great ideas, in practice it is a sight to behold. Filled with energy, the chunky, driving bassline and the saxophone’s booming melody work together perfectly. Who would have thought it?

SATURDAY

Bohren & Der Club of Gore

“Doomjazz”, apparantly, before you ask. While I do appreciate their music, their placement as first thing on the saturday wasn’t exactly inspired; a late night spot would have fit their gloomy, atmospheric jazz happenings much better. Not a very memorable set, but potential is definately there for an excellent show.

Mastodon

While they were a guitarist down, they still managed to make do with a fantastic set that covered all their albums – and although Colony of Birchmen was missing backing vocals, they seemed to sound pretty similar to the four-piece version of Mastodon we all know and love. Blood and Thunder was still the whalecore classic it was the day it was concieved, and the Blood Mountain-heavy set displayed their progressive talents. Now if only they would actually drum the opening to Crystal Skull, then we’d have something to write home about.

Melvins

Pretty much the Brighton show (read review below) but sans Boris, Honey Bucket and My Generation amongst others. Still, a fantastic show from one of the best live shows around, running through some oldies such as Tipping the Lion and Eye Flys, but mostly keeping to (A) Senile Animal and Nude With Boots material. The dual drummers set-up was as tight as ever, while Buzz and Joady kept the guitars and vocals the classic chunky, brooding Melvins style. Ending the set was Star Spangled Banner, met with general confusion by the crowd, yet was still as bone-crunchingly apocolyptic as it’s been previously. The best set was to come on sunday…

Butthole Surfers

Gibby was spectacuarly drunk. Meandering on stage with a bottle of whisky in one hand and beer in the other, the vocal style that ensued actually fit the music very well – opening with 22 Going On 23, the newly-reunited original-lineup of the Buttholes (how’s that for marketable) were one of the highlights of the festival – this is coming from someone who previously was not a massive fan. Tinkering with various electronics, the singer, Gibby, manipluated his voice into a snarling (albiet wasted) monster of a frontman. Another must see.

Fantomas

This marked Mike Patton’s sole contribution to the performance side of the festival (well, alongside Fantomas’ sunday set), and while I did hope for some impromptu collaborations with the likes of Zu or Rahzel, this set billed as a performance of their most ‘conventional’ album, The Director’s Cut, was an incredible sight to behold. Although oh so slightly out of the original order, Patton’s well oiled machine bulldozed it’s way though, ramping up the intensity of the original record sevenfold. Dale Crover replaced Dave Lombardo on drums, however the difference was not noticable on the grand scheme of things. One way to look at it was half Melvins, half Mr Bungle. And I like that view. A lot.

Neil Hamburger

Words cannot simply describe how funny this man is. This man is so unfunny, he’s funny – it’s a taste which is somewhat aquirred. He stumbles around stage with glasses of bourbon, insults the audience repeatedly (“why don’t you go to another stage and watch someone shit on a plate?”) and lacks a certain amount of taste (“Q: WHY did god let Smash Mouth have three top 5 hits? A: It was a clerical error. They were meant to get AIDS”), yet it strangely fits together. Definately watch him if you get the chance.

SUNDAY

Vocal Sampling

Essentially, an acapella group from Cuba that sings both cuban classics and modern hits such as Hotel California and Every Breath You Take. This is how you start a morning – the stage was sparse with only the 5 members of the group and their microphones on stage, but they whipped up the crowd a frenzy – at one point getting the crowd to actually dance, which doesn’t happen enough at gigs in my opinion. It certainly is an experience to hear the Hotel California solo, complete with effects, with no guitar on stage.

Leila

Something went very wrong here. Plagued with technical difficulties, the sound kept of cutting out, and oddly enough one of the singers shuffled on stage before introducing himself with “I want to die”. Enough said really. Probably would have been better if it worked properly.

Monotonix

There’s a reason that this Israeli “freak rock” band are hailed amongst the greatest live bands of our time – choosing to set up on the floor instead of the stage, as soon as the first bangs of the drum hammered in, the lead singer had already gone across the crowd and back again. Although I can see why on record they can be a bit shoddy, they are strictly a live band – hanging from pipes on the ceiling, drinking people’s beer and spitting it around the crowd, crowd surfing the drum kit whilst crowd surfing themselves and playing it… ask anyone who went to go see Monotonix a story about them and they’ll reel out something different every time. At the end of the set, the drum kit was whisked outside, where the gig continued outside (until the security told them to stop). Basically, brilliance.

Melvins (again)

Essentially the same as the saturday set, with the inclusion of My Generation and Boris; maybe Jared was inspired by Monotonix, but the crowd interaction in this show was incredible – during Eye Flys, the lumbering frame of Jared leant into the crowd whilst playing the bass line, a vacant, chilling facade etched into his face, fitting the mood of the song perfectly and giving the song extra creep factor. Then, during Boris, he ditched his istrument in favor of running amok in the crowd; at one point he charged towards my lady friend whilst having the shirt of someone streched over his face while the person still had the shirt on. Doubtless it’s somewhere on Youtube, but his haunting cries during Boris summed up the whole “Nightmare Before Christmas” aesthetic excellently.

Kool Keith

While rap/hip-hop stars always have a sense of ego, I’m sure “Black Elvis” is a bit far for this man. Not much else to say, wasn’t paying much attention. Kutmasta Kurt was good, though.

Squarepusher

So it’s about ten to 3 AM when Squarepusher gets on stage – The Damned apparantly took ages to get on – and we’re all pretty tired and dreading getting up by 10AM. Of course, once he gets into the thick of things, time is no longer a restraint, exhaustion disappeared, and gone to be replaced by frantic dancing to his jazz-IDM frenzies. The first few songs of the set were from his latest couple of releases, Just a Souvenir and Hello Everything, Hello Meow in particular getting crowd attention (the bemused-amused face of Tom Jenkinson when people started to crowd surf was priceless), and by the time he was pulling out the dancier stuff like Come on my Selector half the crowd had surrendered for the night, leaving a small pulse of a crowd lapping up whatever he was pushing at us. Was it worth being up until half 4 for? Yes, yes it was.

And on that note, a Mike Patton quote from the Fantomas set: “I’ve seen more awesome bands in the last 1 and a half days than I have in the last 10 and a half years” – and this rings true. In one place, in 3 days, I was proven that some festivals aren’t souless holes. Here’s to ATP festivals. Shame I can’t make the Jesus Lizard one, though.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27955316/

Speaks for itself, really.

Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like “savages.”

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I’ve been in line since yesterday morning,’” she said. “They kept shopping.”

A brief history: it’s the late 60s, and two bootleggers known only as “Ken” and “Dub” start distributing a double LP of Bob Dylan bootlegs under the title Great White Wonder, aptly named after the packaging, which was simply white with the text “GF 001/2/3/4″ – Dub later reflected on what he had unleashed: “[Great White Wonder] was just this phenomenon. All of a sudden we just started having fistfuls of money. We didn’t realize what we had gotten into”. While the record labels were left fuming, fans suddenly found themselves with access to songs from their idols which would otherwise be left unturned: the bootleg label TMQ (Trademark of Quality) soon found themselves to be somewhat a modern day Robin Hood for music fans. Some may agree, some in the industry may not, but either way, they found their way out from the microphones of the fans who attended the shows to the masses through independent record shops tiptoeing around those blasted legalities through labelling them as imported recordings made in other countries, thereby neatly sidestepping the ‘bootleg’ label. And while the format of bootlegs changed from vinyl to tape cassette to compact disc, the much coveted Hot Wacks underground magazine became the universal bootlegging bible and bootlegging became the hobby for die-hard music fans.

So what’s changed between now and then? Napster came and went, and in it’s wake the internet has become the prime calling point for new music to filter out to the masses, with even the biggest bands such as Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails embracing the technology. But where does this leave bootlegging? Better than ever. Before we continue, let’s clarify a few terms. Bootleg refers to the practice of recording concerts, packaging them and selling them for profit, while live recording refers to the practice of recording and trading the physical recording without profit. Therefore, when referring to online trading, the better phrase to use is live recordings, unless it is somewhat for profit, which it rarely is. The question is, how has the internet (and, as an extension, the birth and evolution of digital equipment) improved the practice? Firstly, focusing purely on the online aspect of it, new technologies have enabled higher quality recordings to be shared faster and easier than ever – the most popular and therefore number one choice for bootleg collectors is Bittorrent. For those who don’t know, a brief overview from Wikipedia:

“BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used to distribute large amounts of data. The initial distributor of the complete file or collection acts as the first seed. Each peer who downloads the data also uploads them to other peers. Relative to standard internet hosting, this provides a significant reduction in the original distributor’s hardware and bandwidth resource costs. It also provides redundancy against system problems and reduces dependence on the original distributor.“

So essentially, the spreading of a file over Bittorrent relies on a community sharing chunks of the file to each other – the more people that join the torrent and therefore actively share chunks of the data, the faster the file download is for everyone. This fits in perfectly with the online trading ethos – give a little, get a little. This is extended to the point whereby on trackers (i.e. servers that host the torrents and index the contents) that specialise in live recording trading, a high share ratio is needed in order to download more recordings. This, of course, leads to new torrents being created in order to up the ratio, creating an online community that is bursting to the seams with music that is simply begging to be discovered.

Let’s take the private tracker Dime-a-Dozen (or EZTorrent) as an example. the site only houses 110,000 users at once, at which point registrations to the tracker are closed – if a user’s share ratio is too low or they have become inactive on the site, then their account is deleted and space is made for a new user. In this way, a tight-knit, ever active community is constantly uploading new files (or reuploading dead files), and it is in this way online bootlegging is kept alive. How is this superior to the old style of bootleg trading, though?

1. Better availability of recordings: The recordings on the online trackers are, if popular, there for months, even years. This eliminates the need to trawl trade lists or newsgroups in order to find the exact bootleg you need, replaced with a search engine online. Even if the original recording’s torrent is dead, there’s always somewhere to ask if it’s wanted.
2. Wider range of sources: For the more popular recordings, a number of different sources for one show recording is often uploaded – this makes getting a bootleg and the quality being unlistenable strictly a pre-internet problem.
3. Community input: Not only do the community comment on the sound quality of recordings and setlist discrepancies (and thus improve the overall quality), but due to the range of consumer-level sound manipulation software on the market, many recordings can be mastered to an almost professional level.

And so online bootlegging is, of course, beneficial to the consumer. But how about the artists? Surely the act of packaging their music and giving it away is akin to piracy? The short answer here is that the potential fiscal loss from allowing recordings to be spread around the internet is much, much smaller than the problem of piracy. The long answer is spreading the recordings is always going to be such a minor nuisance that artists cannot plausibly encounter financial loss that would affect them – the hobby of collecting, recording and trading bootlegs for a band is strictly amongst the hardcore fans of the band who collect these recordings as a testament to their support for the band’s artistic output. These are the fans who would buy anything with the band’s name graced upon it – take my love of Nine Inch Nails, for example. I own every single studio album, live album, remix album and EP on CD, as well as a good few of the singles, both the live DVDs, 2 shirts, tickets to two of their shows and a few vinyl releases to boot. As well as this, I own two burnt recordings of shows of theirs I went to, which sit proudly upon the shelf. Clearly, there is no financial loss for the band there.

However, a major deterrent for bands to allow show recordings is the artistic loss; that is, their artistic works (i.e. the songs) being shared in less than perfect quality. Kings of Leon and Mastodon are both bands that have recently shown their distaste for playing new songs live, due to within the space of a day a myriad of low-quality camera-phone recorded videos of said new songs appearing on Youtube and ruining the artist’s vision. Brent Hinds of Mastodon elaborates in an interview with Drowned in Sound:

“No, we’re not playing any new material. We tried that already and all these kids ended up streaming it on YouTube. It’s just a shit sound and we want the album to come out first.“

Of course, any music punter can see that after a gig many, many videos will flood Youtube for the masses to see, and of course, excited fans who didn’t go to the gig will flock to the video to catch a glimpse of what their musical heroes have got brewing for them. This could either be an excellent way of raising excitement for a new album, or, for the most part what fans and the bands alike believe, a poor representative that spoils the final product.  On the other hand, some bands embrace the idea of fans being able to record their shows – Grateful Dead is one such band, who promote recording of the shows in order to share. Although the amount of microphone stands in the crowd eventually got unbearable for the sound crew, eventually a special “tapers area” behind the soundboard was made in order to please the whole crowd. More recently Counting Crows adopted the same technique, a testement to the effectiveness of allowing tapers into the shows.

All in all, online bootlegging can only be a good thing for music fans – enough of a niche activity to not affect the band’s financial profit, good enough quality to appease said fans (and with the collectibility that niche interests also enjoy), and a way to introduce friends into bands you’ve seen or to show off a band that excels in a live setting, the internet has boosted bootlegging from a Camden street corner to a community-based project for fans to cherish their revered shows for years to come.

And the Sex Pistols bootlegs I was talking about? Why, they’re on Dime now. And so the cycle continues.

It’s not often that an album cover completely sums up it’s contents perfectly – Eluvium’s Talk Amongst The Trees is a perfect example of this, hazy figures roaming a misty landscape seemingly without purpose, yet with a kind of longing or subverted reasoning that perfectly fits the subtle twists in an ambient soundscape that Eluvium had woven perfectly. However, AIR IN KYOTO‘s new EP, Take Heart, Blind Beast, is certainly one to add to the list. Similar to Eluvium, AIR IN KYOTO uses looped droning ambience soundscapes as a canvas in order to paint an elaborate picture; however, AIK utilises more organic instruments mashed through a synthetic filter in order to achieve his means.

The two track EP is the fourth release by Swedish musician Marcus Spång under the alias AIR IN KYOTO (the last being the Isopharmacy album released earlier this year), and upon launching into title track Take Heart, Blind Beast, it’s obvious the alias was carefully chosen – a faint distorted guitar carefully yet obstrusively fades it’s way into the track, before a whole manner of Aphex-esque beats pummel their way into both ears, one at a time, and the immediate thought was nature’s entaglement with these urban enviroments we’ve nurtured. The almost fragile presence of the acoustic guitar halfway through the track is marred by all kinds of effects giving it enough volume and influence over the beats in the track that it’s never relegated to the back seat despite a barrage of glitch workings over the top. And I say “marred” in the most flattening way – acoustic guitars have never been renowned for the effects you can manipulate with them, but here… it all comes together and just works.

Similarly, the shorter but still awe inspiring second track Still Black Canvas is a collage of noises that, when considering artists that use similar effects (again, Aphex Twin being the prime suspect, along with Squarepusher and Boards of Canada), it’s a strangely calming affair. In the vein of Loveless, these are songs which, despite their slow, calming parts, need to be played loudly in order to realise the power of the sum of it’s parts. While remaining with the same formula that Isopharmacy went down, Take Heart, Blind Beast is a collection that remains constantly on the edge of collapse – this is gloomy, almost apocalyptic stuff, the fuzzy electric layers underminded by the fragility of the acoustic, and is ultimately refreshing in a time where ‘noise’ most often means a sonic barrage.

Take Heart, Blind Beast is available for free on Sordo Recordings, and is downloadable here:

http://www.sordomusic.com/catalog/deaf011.php

Seriously? Here’s just one of my favorite quotes from the press release: “The new system has been designed to give parents ‘at a glance’ indicators of the age appropriateness of any game’s content” – there are so many things wrong with this sentence, it makes my blood boil. The most important one, however, is “at a glance”. At a glance? If the parent can’t see from a simple glance the age rating of a video game and the basic jist of what the game’s about, then really there’s no hope for the rest of their parenting skills. For example: Jimmy, aged 10, wants Mummy to buy him Resident Evil 4: not only is the game called “RESIDENT EVIL 4″, there’s a masked shilhouette on the front cover with a chainsaw on top of a red backdrop with black trees. The PEGI symbols on the back show a spider, a fist and a speech bubble with “&£$@!!” in it, quite clearly for strong language. As if this wasn’t already an apt reminder to the parents that this may not be suitable for young Jimmy, the huge (and I mean HUGE) rating sticker on the front quite clearly says 15, and if parents don’t manage to cotton out what that means, they need a visit from social services pronto.

Would putting some colours on the front really make that much of a difference? It is fairly obvious here that the core weakness in the chain here are the minority of consumers who either a) don’t care about the ratings system, which is fair enough (I myself was a player of Alien3 back in 1993, this being before ratings though), or b) are the kind of consumer who can’t work out how the front belt stops at Sainsbury’s and then goes off on one nice complaining train. Not that I’m bitter or anything. And if “92% of customers thought its traffic light labelling was easy to understand”, I’d guess 95% of those people thought that the original ratings system was easy to read. I weep for the remaining 8%.

Kicking off the festivities was the search engine’s nightmare Porn featuring Tom Moss on guitar/effects and the Melvins’ very own Dale Crover on drums – having recently released an album with japanese noise god Merzbow (…And The Devil Makes Three), it came as no surprise that the set boasted noise, and lots of it. For the half hour or so before Tim Moss came on stage a faint siren-on-acid esque noise had permeated the crowd – once he took the stage, this was cranked up to within an inch of the audience’s teeth-clenching threshold. Not to say this wasn’t good; not at all, this was sublime, the melody enough to keep it from trailing off into pure noise territory. Once the bassist and, after a while, Dale Crover take up their chosen instruments, the noise is elevated into the realms of sonic brilliance, the drums giving the piece a sense of pace while the bass (interestingly played with knuckle dusters) gave it a certain amount of oomph. The perfect climax came as Coady Willis (of Big Business and Melvins) joined the drums to give the audience the first taste of double-drumming action. Needless to say, Porn were a triumph, perfectly keeping the balance between being sonically interesting and melodically solid enough to applease the audience.

The good thing about all 3 bands on the bill sharing members and instruments? Short changeover times. For example: the wait between bands at most major venues is anywhere between half an hour and three quarters of an hour (sometimes pushing up to an hour). Here, it only took 15 minutes for Big Business to get on the stage and start hammering away, Coady Willis’ aforementioned drumming getting more of a look in this time around, and boy, that kid can play. Of course, melody is also needed to sweeten the crunch, which is handy, because Jared Warren is a beast on the bass. If you haven’t already (and why haven’t you?), go pick up one of Big Business’ records as soon as humanly possible – I haven’t been this impressed by a support band for a a good few months now (Eluvium supporting Explosions in the Sky springs to mind), and they were the perfect compliment to the Melvins proper. The bass lines driving the beast of a set along like a bulldozer, pushing through songs both old, such as Easter Romantic and Hands Up, and new, such as Cats, Mice, continually keeping the pace up. Eventually Dale Crover joined them on guitar (for the record, the liner notes for Stag says he plays the sitar on The Bit – what can’t this man do?), adding the guitar element to songs such as Just as the Day was Dawning, leading to a chunky and frankly awesome ending to the set.

As much as I would love to get through this review without mentioning token Melvins review words such as sludge godfathers, slow and drone, it turns out token words are there for a reason. However, this is not to pidgeon hole the ever-versitile Melvins into one meagre style of music – opener Nude With Boots is a pristine example of this. Fast, chirpy, but still with the trademark Melvins crunch, it’s a wonder how the crowd largely don’t move around more: movement is basically zero. And after album counterparts Dog Island and Dies Iraea, there’s still nothing (admittedly these are some of the more slower and beefier songs that Melvins have made in the last few years). Oddly, fecal matter only really begins to hit the fan when Civilized Worm broods it’s way onto the set – now we’re talking! Not that I’m not of the belief that gigs need ample amount of jumping and movement to be good, but here… it just fits. The set itself had perfect balance between old Melvins and new Melvins (i.e. post Big Business joining the band), the new represented fantastically by (A) Senile Animal having it’s own string of songs in the set alongside Nude With Boots material – Rat Faced Granny, The Hawk, You’ve Never Been Right and A History of Bad Men so very almost having a run through the set exactly the same as the album tracklisting.

Of course, the Melvins have has a long and incredibly fruitful career, their work varying from the slow drone (sorry) masterpiece Bullhead, to a live album of noise Colossus of Destiny, to the electic (and my personal favorite) Stag. To ignore this would be a crime, and Melvins thankfully stay within Bennett’s Law by playing a healthy dose of the classics throughout the set – debut opener Eye Flys is given the modern treatment, the creeping bassline being backed up by the furious double drumming (which, in case you haven’t heard, is symmetrical. Good fact right there), while possibly their most famous song Honey Bucket is presented the way they left it; frantic, messy and pure brilliance. By this point limbs in the pit were flying, and with good reason. This is controlled carnage at it’s very best. Tipping The Lion is a more stripped down (if it can be called that) affair than it’s electronic-ish album counterpart, with the the beat and libido that made me fall in love with the album version. Not a band to keep things at standard, they even brooded through a couple of covers, taking myself a good minute or two to recognize what they made of The Who‘s My Generation. I’m sure fans of The Who would hate it’s chundering, half speed guts, but as an indifferent listener to Pete Townsend’s brigade, I loved it – it’s not often a cover isn’t recognizable from the original, and it’s this freshness which makes me fall head over heels for it. American classic Star Spangled Banner opens as a strinctly acapella affair, their singing backed up only be a series of boos from the audience, to be drowned out by frantic drumming and riffing by the outset of the song. Could this be a statement about modern America? Apparantly not, as Buzz later clarifies in an article it’s strictly neutral. So there you go.

Which brings us back to the matter of Boris. Does this deserve the best part of a paragraph to itself? Yes. This song on the album itself is one of the best heavy songs ever produced in my humble opinion – and to make it even better in every single aspect is a feat that only the Melvins could really pull out of their rabbit hat. The opening was both as devestating as the original and frantic as the newer stuff, with added drums giving the song an extra kick up the backside (see: the middle section of Etna by Sunn O))) and Boris, which is equally as spectacular), while the live setting gave the bass and general meat of it extra beef that the original CD just couldn’t get. And by the middle of the beast, the tempo was changed so they were singing and playing half speed. Half speed. Half the speed and just as brutal. And while the band themselves didn’t interact with the audience much, and the set wasn’t as long as it could have been (this is nit picking, however awesome The Talking Horse and Going Blind would have been), the stellar ending to the set summed up the gig as a whole: simply stellar.

Setlist:

1. Nude With Boots
2. Dog Island
3. Dies Iraea
4. Civilized Worm
5. The Kicking Machine
6. Eye Flys
7. Suicide In Progress
8. Billy Fish
9. Tipping The Lion
10. Honey Bucket
11. Blood Witch
12. Rat Faced Granny
13. The Hawk
14. You’ve Never Been Right
15. My Generation
16. A History Of Bad Men
17. Star Spangled Banner
18. Boris

And rather fittingly, prehaps, that it should be held in this tiny 300 capacity shop down an alley at the end of Brick Lane, London – this group are certainly destined to be a live force to be reckoned with, and based on the strength of this show, will surely only become more popular as they play to thousands across the US and UK supporting Mogwai. As one last bang before the inevitable popularity rocket, if you will, and bang they certainly did. As they take the stage, however, this is not an outcome which is immediately expected – armed to the teeth with pedals, dials and sliders, complete with the juxtaposing innocence of a pre-school voice recorder and game boy, they briskly ease in the crowd with album opener Sweet Love For Planet Earth – those who have listened to the album (and for those who haven’t, go do so now) instantly recognise the sweet yet chaotic chirps, a facade for what follows. The opening is reminicent of an Animal Collective gig, at least on the aural level, and prehaps the clothing sense the group have, yet by the time the keyboards roar into life, all these preconceptions are blasted away.

The hour that followed was an examplar way to perform experimental and downright noisy music – Ribs Out, the second song of the set, was particuarly energetic not only through the use of live tribal-esque, truly head-splitting, apocalyptic drumming on a Tom drum, but Andrew Hung’s ‘stage’ presence – jumping down from the makeshift crowd, seemingly entraced by the music they were creating, yet also never seeming like the presence was forced. And while a couple of other songs featured similar tribal drumming, the duo showed that they ain’t no one trick pony through dropping some dance beats into the mix, such as in Bright Tomorrow. Admittedly, it wasn’t enough to stir the monday evening crowd into a frenzy, but it’s refreshing to see a group of this nature not relying on looping similar samples through songs in order to seem more experimental – Fuck Buttons kept their set interesting yet never letting the noise relent. Seriously, no gaps between songs, no rest until the very end of the set.

Race To Your Bedroom/Spirit Rise was, however, a whole new ball game; reminicent of noise gods such as Merzbow and My Bloody Valentine, a ten minute portion of noise was added to the mix after Ribs Out, a peculiar choice, yet it sequed well. Having gone to the My Bloody Valentine reunion shows earlier this year, I saw similar scenes of smug head-bobbing by those endowed with the common sense to bring earplugs, and the ol’ finger-in-the-ears routine by a few close to the speakers. An experience it certainly was, and while of course it’s not really comparable to the carnage which is the MBV noise section, I found myself drawing parallels. Fuck Buttons provided tonight with a healthy mix of old(ish) and new songs, loud and really-fucking-loud, and rhythmic and noisy. With this, there’s no real way they can continue on this form and not gain popularity on the forthcoming Mogwai tour… here’s to the future.