As keen spectators may have gathered from Peter Hitchens' traditional biannual Twitter meltdown, the clocks went back this weekend. On Friday night, a favourite timepiece of ours - Sheffield industrial legends Clock DVA - whirred and clicked into action, kicking off their first club tour since the 90s right in n0teeth's neck of the woods.
Our mood transformed from "pretty hyped about seeing the DVA for the first time" to "giddy with excitement at such a splendid lineup" when we clocked (pun intended) the support acts: Londoners PC World and Nation Unrest plus Berlin's Spit Mask, with DJ slots by local (but appropriately Sheffield-born) goth/EBM scene heroine Proteus and one other excellent selector whose name escapes me. The venue: No90, a rechristened favourite haunt of ours.
n0teeth has seen PC World enough times now to lose count, but nowhere near enough to lose interest. This was our first time experiencing them clean & sober, however, and it was immensely gratifying to discover that their techno-pessimistic Cabaret Voltairisms hit just as hard without any chemical adjustment of the senses.
PC World: "EVOLVE OR DIE!"
The headliners - for they were rightly advertised as such - occupied an unusually early spot on the bill, causing n0teeth and associates to joke that perhaps dear old uncle Adi needed to get back to Sheffield before his bedtime. Regardless, they had the room packed nose-to-tail by 9pm, the excited buzz of the crowd reaching a roaring crescendo as the three piece incarnation of Clock DVA (pronounced "dva" like the Russian word for two, as an old head was heard to point out) took to the stage.
Clock DVA: from starboard to port we have Gabriel Edvy doing the visuals, Adi Newton running the electronics and some other geezer updating his LinkedIn.
It was hard to predict what sort of set the legendary electronic-industrial dark wizards might serve up. Primitive electronic skronk complemented by dissonant oddball saxophony? Post-punk jollity? Or their own peculiar brand of noir-ish jazz?
From the moment the gloriously, thrillingly ominous synth notes that open Buried Dreams rumbled from the speakers, the tone was set for the evening: we were to be treated to the undisputed golden era of Clock DVA, the period around that seminal, ingenious, criminally underrated 1989 album and the proto-industrial-techno experiments that followed hot on its heels.
The Sonology of Sex is officially the world's first ever industrial techno track, and anybody who disagrees can take it up with Mr Internet's legal team.
Here's a factoid that is only slightly more interesting than Hitler's vegetarianism or Gary Oldman being younger than Gary Numan: Buried Dreams was allegedly found on Jeffrey Dahmer's stereo at the time of his arrest. Performed live in the present day, it still sounds every bit as unsettling and futuristic as it must have done at the time, with only minor tweaks to the electronics.
In this sense, PC World was the perfect opening act: no other contemporary industrial band has quite managed to pull off the stunt of re-crafting undeniably 80s-rooted synth sounds in a way that reflects a great unease with what's to come rather than a wry, insincere look at what was happening before they (or n0theeth, for that matter) were born.
Pity poor old Spit Mask, then, who had to follow the double-tap of a seldom-seen industrial legend's triumphant once-in-a-blue-moon reappearance and the cocky strut of some young upstarts on their home turf. It was always going to be an anticlimax but especially when the best you can offer is some well-worn BDSM tropes coupled with standard issue EBM (BDSMBM?) - fronted by a guy who looks like Alice Cooper.
Spit Mask: welcome to their nightmare.
Only the truly hardcore - and possibly a few friends and well-wishers - stuck around for Nation Unrest, a band n0teeth is constantly encouraging/threatening to release more music. During the hour or so that followed Spit Masks's set, we were treated to the entertainingly shambolic spectacle of the two-piece electro-punk act squabbling over which cable should be plugged in where and occasionally barking orders at the sound desk. All the while soundtracked by that one DJ whose name I didn't catch skilfully replicating all of the best bits of Slimelight with a mixture of tooth-loosening dark acid gear and classic cuts from My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult.
Nation Unrest: take the skinheads bowling.
When they finally got going, Nation Unrest's rudimentary Ebb worship was punctuated by air raid sirens, blasts of feedback and Bennettesque vocal belligerence - given at least one of the members has a background working with an experimental/dark ambient outfit I would love to hear this hybrid EBM/power electronics coalesce into some recorded material in the coming year. Get to work lads!
As always, it's great to see a local venue like No90 thriving, especially after the pandemic. Shortly before venturing out into the neon-polluted night, we stopped by the toilets, and saw a Clock DVA esque eye staring down at us. And for a brief, tired moment, we fancied it gave us a sinister wink.
