Club Silencio
The Volks
3 Colonnade, Madeira Drive, Brighton (UK)
10.00pm-3.00am.
£3 Entry
DJ Tendraw & The Gypsies Dog
DJ Scotch Egg
Adam Lygo
Eaten By Children
197
Zeropointenergy
Uphonious Murmer Blend
Aries
James Edmonds
DJ Ashley Marlow
Drawing together a varied mix of twisted electronica practitioners and noise artists mostly via that modern communications wonder; myspace, Adam fashioned an unusual and pleasurable evening of high quality and high volume electronic goodness. On a visual level, all eight acts had set up their equipment simultaneously so that the Volks resembled the inside of the starship enterprise. On a logistical level, in order to satisfy time constraints on the already seriously nocturnal show time of 11pm through to 3am, each act was given a 20 minute slot.
First up was EUPHONIOUS MURMUR BLEND. At first glance a solo guitarist, EMB built from an unsettlingly quiet start into a thunderous onslaught of glitch, delay manipulation, downpitching and guitar abuse with a modicum of carefully chosen sampled sounds thrown in. Some of these appeared to have been sourced from the venue itself – I was later informed that sampling the ambient sound of a venue before the performance is standard practice for EMB; the natural reverb of Leeds Holy Trinity Church being a favourite, apparently.
Having finely honed their craft on London’s arts scene over the last four years, these two lads created a stunning amalgam of break-core, bleep, noise, grinning and hardcorepunk-style shouting; seemingly simultaneously unerringly tight and on the verge of collapse. With syncopated movements and almost turntablist-like rigour on circuit-bent kids toys and other unrecognisable devices spewing out their unnatural barrage of clatter, DJ Tendraw & the Gypsies Dog captivated the audience while looking all the while noticeably un-demonic in their smart-casual attire and sensible haircuts.
Smart casual would certainly not be a term one could apply to the night’s
host ADAM LYGO. A tall, thin man sporting voluminous, black garments and a sparkly silver Gretch guitar, Mr Lygo spent his vigorous 20 minutes
alternately spitefully prodding his tableful of digital effects into
overload or violently sawing away at his guitar in a heads-down hardcore
stylee. His overlaid distorted guitar loop technique impresses in the same
way Masami Tsuchiya’s playing did, (the only member of Japan who was
actually Japanese) - not only because it wasn’t immediately obvious how his sounds were being generated but also because of the curiously alien
qualities of the sounds themselves.
anything but, were ARIES. A boy/girl bowed fx guitar and drums outfit with plenty of hair to shake, Aries made a solemn and pounding drone riot.
Following that and making a nice contrast, was the break/splatter/blat-core of the mysterious gentleman going by the name 197. Dense, hard-cut, fast edits with a dancefloor-frenzy potential that would work just as well while comatose, 197 went in hard and fast with his german parka hood up, clutching a perpetual roll-up while stabbing sullenly at his laptop and midi controller. As they say in the jazz world; nice.
Turning in the night’s most interesting performance (of the theatrical
variety) was another young man with laptop going under the name
ZEROPOINTENERGY. Using some kind of self-designed motion control system, with sensors attached to his hands and head, Zeropointenergy used his own twitchy movements to manipulate the squishy, tech output from whatever software it was he had running. Never falling into the trap of actually starting to dance, and thus potentially ruining everything, he instead took advantage of being able to appear to be transported/taken over by the technology itself. Quite successful and very entertaining; the effect was also compounded by the unfamiliar nature of his sounds.
By the time EATEN BY CHILDREN addressed the stage as it were, the hour was well approaching 3 in the am and everyone present, possibly including Eaten By Children, were feeling the accumulated effects (drink) of the evening. However, by despatching solid, organic bass tones, crackling static, buzzes and clicks, little bits of radio, Mr By Children didn’t display any obvious signs of inebriation until the very end of his set, whereupon clearly having difficulty with some technical aspect, he made a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to fling his entire 24-channel mixing desk from the performance space by its cables with a weary “oh for fucks sake…” which brought the audience to their feet and the night to a very fine and appropriate end. Club Silencio; thank you very much and goodnight.
Slightly off kilter Records.
