CucosBlog

Upset The Rhythm put on an exciting bill of noise bands at Kilburn venue The Luminaire last Tuesday. Final score: England 2 - USA 0.

Headlining were the admired California act Burning Star Core, with support from the States by infamous NY act Prurient. Warming up for the visitors were the extremely British Consumer Electronics and the galactic Leopard Leg, most of whom happen to live in Brighton. Why the geographical information? Why the national identities? To be answered en route…

Antony and I arrived after Leopard Leg had already started, and we walked in to a huge din. Onstage were about 8 young women, all except one playing drums. And they were moaning and screaming. They weren’t playing whole drum kits - if only - but mostly snares and other bits and pieces. I think there was a guitarist amongst them, but it could have been a trick of the ears.

Suddenly they all started tapping, playing sticks on rims, and the effect was magical. Once this hazy pitter-patter had been established, they sang as if they had spent all afternoon leaping naked over a fire on Summerisle. And one of them even broke out an accordion. How very refreshing it was to leave the noise and fury behind and create an entirely different sound, gentle and yet eerie, mythical even. Not just folky but yolky.

Without much delay at all, on came Consumer Electronics - a fellow dressed in black trousers and shirt and paedophile sunglasses. I think he was trying to look seedy. He basically wacked up the volume on some noisy / timestretched backing beats and gave us several semi-audible rants. I thoroughly enjoyed his performance because it was funny, he mentioned Asda, and he was obviously loving it. He eventually unbuttoned his shirt completely - and left the shades on. Great! I just knew that tommorrow he would be back at work and sniggering into his Blackberry that none of his colleagues have even the slightest idea what the hell he gets up to at night.

Two noisy bands into the show, and Prurient was going to have to do something special to stand out. I had seen some mpegs of his performances on www.ecstaticpeace.com and I knew that he had a reputation for extreme performance on a self-harm tip. He had some kind of noise machine which he wacked on and then sort of limbered up before going off on his crazy thing - the screaming noise shit etc. He wore black gloves and kept his back to the audience. And it was painfully loud. I had to step outside with my Magners on the rocks. Prurient does performance art. There was no music. Next!

Your blogger was beginning to fade by the time Burning Star Core came on and started murdering a mucho mucho amped-up violin. I left after 5 minutes.

Antony made the interesting point that, apart from Leopard Leg, the other 3 were solo (male) noise acts.

Note to self: when you finally get up on that stage, get a little contrast going like Leopard Leg did. Play warm-up rather than headline - you have the advantage that people still have some patience. Open for a noise gig and you’ll seem terrific by comparison.