Cluster / Ariel Pink / Howlin Rain / Bronze / Ascended Master live @ Brookdale Lodge 24th MayI went to quite a lot of trouble to attend this gig and witness with mine own eyes the greatness of Ariel Pink, probably the most exciting music phenomenon of this period. The fact that Cluster and Howlin Rain were on the bill too made it unmissable.
Ascended Master opened up the show at around 7:30pm while Memorial Day holidaymakers dined in the surreal Brook Room next door. The heavy, trance-inducing rok of AM must have just made the whole experience even wierder. They have 2 girl singers and a couple of guitarists and a drummer and they reminded me of Amon Duul II. Highly recommended.
During the intermission before SF band Bronze I went off to the bar. During my 3 week trip, Makers Mark whisky was one of my happiest discoveries, so I ordered one. The barmaid must have been out of her mind because she did me up a huge serving in a tall paper cup - maybe she couldn’t see how much she’d given me? No, I don’t think it was that, because having tilted the bottle up again, she held it up to the light and saw there was another finger of whisky in the bottle, which she then dumped into my cup too. I swear there must have been a quarter of a bottle in there. She saw my delight and rhetorically asked me my opinion as she handed it to me with the word “healthy?”. “Looks good to me, I said”. “5 dollars”, she informed me. Fuck, I’ve gotta come back here, I thought. I was nursing that sucker for the next 2 hours so cheers to the Brookdale Lodge staff.
Bronze came off like a more aggressive take on Silver Apples or Joy Division. The singer reminded me of the guy who plays the schoolteacher leading the mayday dance in The Wicker Man.
Brian turned up during their set and introduced me to some of his friends. I got talking and went and smoked a joint outside as Howlin Rain started. I love getting high, and it was cool coming back inside to watch their show. Ethan Miller played a lot of guitar with this sympathetic band and bared his teeth for that real Woodstock/Creedence vocal delivery. But stripped of Comets On Fire’s distorted effects, are these Howlin Rain songs ultimately just dull pastiche?
I had noticed Ariel Pink coming into the hall with his band, it must have been during one of the earlier sets. He had long, somewhat frizzled hair and was stooped and nervously biting his lip as he helped carry in the band’s kit. So they missed their sound check and therefore spent most of their allotted show time sound checking. So they only played 4 songs in the end, and they sounded pretty good really. They started to to play For Kate I Wait, but stopped 2 bars in and played something else instead. It was wicked to see the man himself in the flesh. It took me a couple of days of sitting around in a motel in the middle of fucking nowhere to get to see him, but it was worth it.
Cluster just played some bland laptop ambient electronica, which I must say sounded to me like the very crappiest mid 90s chillout dross. It was disappointing insofar as they were billed as returning Krautrock legends.