What follows is an attempt to piece together my memories of a musically and somewhat physically heavy weekend tooling around the capital in my dancing shoes (8-eye Doc Martens, if anyone fancies getting the patented n0teeth look). One of the many reasons this blog has come about at this particular time is that the casual industrial, EBM or noise fan in London is spoilt for more choice of gigs and clubs than I can ever recall there being in the decade-odd since I moved down here from my two-horse, one-club hometown.
Friday night: NĀDA @ The Waiting Room, N16
This wiry lil firecracker has been around for about four years now. Long enough that the heads can confidently buy a ticket in the knowledge that a glorious time is in store, but still unknown enough that for many punters it'll be a thrilling new discovery. For n0teeth, Friday night's instalment was made doubly delightful by the fact that it was taking place at The Waiting Room, a venue almost within walking distance of my pad, and one that holds many happy (and messy) memories. Beloved and much-missed EBM/newbeat night Endurance was held there back in the day when it still went by the slightly odd name of The Baby Bathhouse (more on Endurance in posts to come).
A younger, skinnier, prettier and decidedly less sober n0teeth catching a breather after several consecutive hours of working his body to the Belgian beat
Most of my Friday evening went past in a dizzying blur of whiplash-inducing high octane trance-inflected industrial techno, but I managed to keep just enough of a grip on reality to remember a few highlights, such as the inimitable Proteus. Proteus is a DJ whose sets I've had the pleasure of losing my mind to in various venues around east and south London over the last few years, her mixing and selections somehow getting deadlier every time, and on a cold wet Friday night in Stokey she pulled it off yet again.
Either side of Proteus deploying her ordnance you had two Nāda residents, Ivan and João, the former making any old (or young!) Slimelight heads in the audience reveal ourselves with a cheeky Wolfsheim cut near the end, and the latter taking us to the stratosphere with a warp-speed selection that practically made the walls of the Waiting Room drip with liquid TB303 viscosity.
After staggering home to bed I wondered if I'd be in any fit state to head south of the river the next day for another adventure, my weekend seemingly having peaked in terms of raw electronic carnage.
Or so I thought.
Saturday night: Club Mutante vs Gob Nation @ Spanners, SW9
The transpontine portion of my weekend was more of a gig than a club, with promoter Club Mutante and label Gob Nation teaming up to bring an eclectic but decidedly logical assortment of punk and electronic music. A shameful confession: due to one logistical problem or another, S (my gigging buddy since we met at uni 16 years ago) and I didn't make it down to Spanners until halfway through PC World's set, missing the first four acts entirely. The half that we caught, however, did not disappoint, especially considering how much I'd hyped the PC boys to S and another friend who'd be joining us. I had previously seen PC World twice - once at Venue MOT with the mighty Leroy Se Meurt in tow, and more recently after accidentally stumbling across them in a tent on a very wet and miserable afternoon in Southwark Park, and with a new EP on the horizon I wanted to see all the PC I could get. Side note: it's always nice to see Tetsuo clips playing on screens when you walk into a venue just to reassure you that you're in the company of people who know exactly what kind of metal-fetishist body horror you're into and totally Get It.
The word "retrofuturist" gets tossed around a lot these days, mostly by people who are either afraid to confess to being steampunks, or those who can't think of anything more original to call artists whose entire aesthetic seems to be borrowed from Stranger Things (to be fair, it's hard to think of anything original to say about someone who hasn't given you anything original to talk about). PC World is a marriage of raw vocal aggression, massive kick drum delay, warm yet ominous washes of Fairlight vocal synth, cracked LCD screen technoparanoia and some unidentifiable Other, some magical ingredient that keeps them well away from the filing cabinet where we stash away our merely competent/passable 80s EBM revivalists for a slow day.
If it turned out the PC in PC World stood for Portion Control I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised. Frontman Will comes off as the snarling, writhing reincarnation of a young Dean Piavani recently defrosted from cryogenic storage in a railway arch lockup since 1983 - a comparison he didn't seem to object to in the slightest when n0teeth breathlessly put it to him, gassed on several beers and the adrenaline rush of seeing PCW rip the rivets from the roof.
A brief but no less pleasant chat with PC World's machinist Ryan informed us that, contrary to what we'd heard, neither band member is Swedish. (To the rat who fed us this scandalous piece of misinformation: you are everything that is wrong with the world today and I hope you feel proud of yourself for trying to pull one over on the humble owner/operator of an electronic music blog.)
In between bands Ryan and another DJ slapped down some viciously funky electro with lashings of acid and bass, putting my post-Nāda "that's enough twerking til it hurts for one weekend" vow to the test, although not quite as far as the headline act would later do. Sadly, word came through that Nation Unrest, another local-ish EBM duo who have so far managed to escape n0teeth at every turn, had cancelled their set and given me the slip once again. I'll catch you blighters yet - hopefully at Studio 9294 next month opening for Real Lies!
After another hour or so of pleasingly grimy selections from a few different DJs, Providence RI to London UK transplant & noise musician turned outsider techno primitivist Ren "Container" Schofield graced us with his presence. If I've ever seen this guy play live before (and I faintly feel like I might have just once) then he surely can't have brought the munitions like he did at Spanners on Saturday because I would have definitely remembered a performance like that.
Remembered? I'd still be having flashbacks.
The man is a monster. His sound is primordial. These are not the sort of noises you would wish your wife or servants to hear. Who the fuck allowed this public danger anywhere near a synthesiser?
Of course, anyone can twiddle a few knobs and detonate the kind of guttural frequencies that make you seasick, but few if any can make you dance at the same time. The blistering onslaught of rancid analogue filth was consistently underpinned by a simple and raw yet effective electro beat allowing Container to keep frying our synapses with every squelching lick of acid under the sun without interrupting the constant flailing of limbs. I thought I was all raved out after Nāda, but Container had me pulling jerking, frenetic, spasmodic moves I didn't even know I had in me for what felt like an hour (but could easily have been twice as long and I wouldn't have minded regardless of complaints from my feet).
When the smoke cleared, S and I exchanged expressions of open-mouthed shellshock. We weren't entirely sure what the fuck had just hit us, but, to put it mildly, we rather liked it.
The only thing that can top a show like that is a French taco, so S and I said our goodbyes and wandered off into the night in search of that perfect post-gig refreshment. After that, the ultimate high: the endorphins that rush in when you finally lay down your aching bones after a hard night's stomping around a bare concrete floor.
I have a few more musical excursions lined up before the year is out, and they have a lot to live up to. Goodnight for now, Denmark Hill.
