Supersonic Festival.
Capsule at The Custard Factory - Birmingham
8-9 July 05
Doomed. The night B'ham town centre got evacuated due to a bomb scare minutes before the Merzbow vs. Stephen O'Malley of Sunn 0))) set. Bugger! Bugger! Bugger! And I'd travelled from Sheff really only to see a rare gig by my lovely new PTV3 but was thwarted as obviously they were headliner and we were all lobbed out onto the cold hostile streets about 11pm. Many of us wandered around including our own underworld maverick Genesis P, lady and pranksters at side, asking the somewhat stunned looking organisers 'can we just go on and play now?' on the outside of the (now shuttered) main door.... Perfect! Look, there's Stephen O'Malley (Sunn 0)))) & Masima Akita (Merzbow) and a few hundred cheesed off punters, some who'd only just arrived. I told Masima how much I respect his wok, I mean work, and that he appeared to be very calm (or shocked), "I can't do anything." were about his only words, and he continued to stand and stare as if patiently waiting for his return flight to Japan, (or the big bomb that we were all supposedly evacuated for) head full of the current noisy plans..
Still.....this
fest is where I found myself in a small theatre space, on the front row, entertained
by the likes of Kreepa vs.
Black Galaxy.
By the end of the set I was pasted to the back of my chair with the overall
intense hurricane of volume and frequencies bursting forth. What a joy to wander
in on this from a choice of acts around the factory festival not knowing what
to expect next. One of Britain's leading electroacoustic composers, John Richards,
has brought along his patented 'Kreepback
machine' and he's all over it. John is also the driving force behind the
composers' collective nerve8, who 'explore the diffusion of electronic music
in unusual acoustic spaces' and key player in the successful electronoise group
Sand. Hilary Jeffrey is blowing a trombone through some effects units and it
sounds like heaven and hell. Stage right are Nic Bullen and Simon Mabbutt managing
a giant rack of equipment, sure there's a laptop or two in there somewhere but
this is modules on a grand scale. At the risk of sounding naive (thick) I'm
having trouble telling who's playing what except for the 'tromboscilator' then
half way through the set when it starts to pick up into a frenzy of ebullient
audio candy and John starts to jump about on the huge dials and knobs like the
mad scientist he probably is. The bass rhythm levels, I think from the BG side,
are extremely deep and it feels like my nerve pathways are being rearranged,
like I'm actually being reprogrammed, and I'm clean as a cup of Yorkshire tea..(?).
I can't give you much more detail on the musical styles (hey we're 5 months
on here!) needless to say long tracks, build ups you can't think get more intense
when they continue to do so, very thick giant rhythms gorgeously punctuated
by dreamlike high quality alien racket, a synergy I certainly look forward to
being part of again.
With the
above as my personal highlight of the prematurely withdrawn festival, I mustn't
forget to mention the tremendous drum led sound of 'Battles'
from New York
and the amazing noise rap of Dalek,
whose raw emotional lyric and sound produced a tear in the eye of this arrogant
old concert-goer, particularly at the start of their 'Ever Sombre' - Large MC
with a stare that could kill flanked by the crazy lovable DJ Oktopus and another
right hand dude... "The fortunate find core-essence awakened…. Eyes
out of focus only see what they told us…World of weights on our shoulders."
Pure dedication. Come to Sheffield, anytime. Oh by the way, Dalek are playing
the UK this week, Khanate (O'Malley) have just played B'ham again and Gen has
a new TG album out (and the 2004 Astoria gig on DVD!) on Jan 1st, and in case
you didn't know TG
doing a huge event in Berlin in 5 weeks time.
Moodi
Review
added Nov 05
