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Ok,
so I arrived to the gig late*
and missed local boys, Runt Hornet, who by all accounts performed
a fantastic set and wowed more than a few people their with a homemade
one-string bass guitar, constructed from a drain pipe!
Up
next, and where I came in, was The Psychic Paramount - three guys
from New York.
Now normally at this point you would expect me to compare a three
piece rock band to Motorhead, Nirvana or perhaps even Greenday**
But
this was different. Very different.
Walking
into the Brickyard's concert area was like walking into a wall of
solid sound. The force of the rhythm, the intensity of the blanga
beat just drove the sound into your body. But it wasn't just noise.
There was a rhythmic, near disco vibe to parts of the set that had
your feet tapping and your head shaking. The music was trance like,
hypnotic even.
For
me there was echoes of Hawkwind at the height of their Space Ritual
period; but instead of a troupe of musicians, poets and naked dancers,
there were just three guys, taking a whole building to a different
galaxy. To quote one of the audience after Psychic Paramount had
finished their set, "It was like a musical kick in the n**ts!".
From
New York go east
We
now move halfway across the world to a different continent and culture
and meet World's End Girlfriend. The creation of Katsuhiko Maeda
a self taught musician from Japan.
On
stage there's no band, no singers, just Katsuhiko hidden behind
two Powerbooks with his guitar connected to an audio processor and
thence to the computers and it's from this unlikely and lonely figure
that a whole orchestra of sound erupts.
The
music World's End Girlfriend creates transports you to different
time and place, this is a soundscape that has so many themes and
ideas running through it that at times it's hard to grasp just what
the music is doing, but always there's a feeling that is at once
both comforting, familiar and at times dark and foreboding.
The
closest I could come to summing up the sound of World's End Girlfriend
is it's like the best parts of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Variations,
played all-at-once.
And like Psychic Paramount before this hypnotized the audience.
How else could you explain a whole host of people sitting silent
and still, staring at the backs of two Apple Powerbooks***
From
solo to Mono
If
Psychic Paramount were loosely a space rock band and World's End
Girlfriend was an orchestra then that must mean Mono are Dadaist
collective living the post modern dream ... Well close(ish). They
actually describe themselves as a 'post rock' band - Yeah; what
ever ...
Looking
nothing too special****
as they stand on stage waiting to begin, they could almost be any
modern four piece indie band found within the pages of NME, but
that's where any similarity or indifference ends.
Slowly
building from quite ambience to thumping rock and back, Mono raised
the bar of what one could and should expect from a modern rock band.
With
grand sweeping sounds that shouldn't be possible with the guitars
and drums Mono have on stage; to howling feedback that's turned
into musical thought, Mono take modern rock and ambient sounds by
the scruff of the neck and tun them into some otaku-geek-boy who
knows his place. This is hentai made music. This was different,
this was good and the audience knew it too.
This
was an experience that had to be felt, it was more than your 'standard
gig night', it was one of those rare nights when you know that something
special has occurred - that you have seen the beginning of something
that's very, very big ...
*
Caused by the very necessary distraction of having to ensure that
a Nintedo DS would connect to a wireless network!
** Robbo's very small range of comparative rock
clichés!
*** No it wasn't the latest Apple product launch!
**** Actually the sight of a four piece Japanese
post rock band on any UK stage is always a special sight.
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