n0teeth has been back in the gym this week, for the first time in over a year, and hating every agonising second of it. When does lifting weights in a white vest actually become fun please?
Before taking on this new regimen we managed to pack in a couple of sweet gigs over the weekend. Without further ado here's the field report.
Impulse Control @ The Engine Rooms, Bow
This sucker had been on n0teeth's radar for a while, probably for no reason other than the vibe being correct. None of the names rang a bell besides Polanski, but something about tonight had a good aura generally, like n0teeth was all but guaranteed to hear Our Kind Of Shit without a clue who was playing it.
n0teeth loves a good railway arch. The Engine Rooms are located at one point of the triangle formed by the Elizabeth Line, the District and Hammersmith & City Lines and some national rail line or other: a spot n0teeth has often thought would be great for a venue so imagine our delight on finding that was tonight's destination.
We get inside and already, Industrial Shit(tm)'s happening. An all-too brief set by Soft Power brought the noise (both rhythmic and otherwise) to the floor, along with enraged screaming and a light spot of chain-on-metal-plate kling klang. Mentally bookmarked for future Bandcamp purchases and, of course, any live appearances they make. The visceral thrill of human howls piercing a thick cloud of electronic noise is kind of what n0teeth lives for.
After Soft Power had packed up someone got on the ones & twos with a full clip of no-nonsense DnB that very occasionally threatened to go breakcore on us but mostly stayed on the right side of crusty with snapping metallic snares and twisted bass lines you could appreciate without straining your ears past a wall of distortion. n0teeth has no specific objection to the whole dog-on-string grotcore soundsystem thing - hell, we studied in Bristol - but it's been a taxing couple of weeks and our aching bones would've revolted. With a heavy fog of dry ice obscuring the stage I couldn't pick a single DJ out of a police lineup but I caught some killer sets between bands.
At around 11pm another hitherto unfamiliar act called Strategy of Tension took to the stage. They had me at the name - a brief but pleasant chat with a band member afterwards confirmed that it was indeed inspired by a particularly dark chapter in Italian history that continues to hold a morbid fascination for me - and their set did not disappoint. Strategy's penultimate song had slamming kicks that brought to mind an angrier, nastier PC World, making a connection between rhythmic industrial and arrhythmic noise bolt across my synapses like lightning. With a wailing 303 in the background to boot.
As an aside: I believe I've already theorised in another post that, as a rule, the dirtier and more abrasive the music, the friendlier the crowd. I'd add to this hypothesis that the soundness of said crowd sometimes increases in inverse proportion to the convenience of locating the venue: nobody ventures this far off the beaten path unless they genuinely want to be there, and everyone at this well-attended noise night seemed to be having as good a time soaking up the racket as we were.
From many friendly chats throughout the night, several of the punters, performers and promoters confirmed what I'd guessed from their general appearance and vibe: none of them come from the Official Goth & Industrial Scene, but rather noise rock, hardcore punk, DIY whatnot. I don't know if anybody involved in these nights is conscious of the fact that they've created a refreshing alternative to the "mainstream" of rhythmic noise, your big name Ant Zen signings that will without fail get booked by Slimelight, but it's fascinating to hear their spin on a sound that for years I thought "belonged" to a different scene entirely.
We were then treated to great ambient synth washes from Vera Spektor, peppered with lengthy bursts of juddering beats, all woven together into a continuous set. Not that n0teeth minded in the slightest, but the first two acts we caught were both tapping a very similar vein, and a third rhythmic noise act might not have felt as exciting. But Spektor, while certainly coming from a noisy angle, served to cleanse the palate and take us down an entirely different sonic pathway. Another act we knew nothing about before tonight, and another one we're now excited to hear from again.
The last act we managed to catch was Polanski doing his thing. As a general rule, if you see Polanski's name on the bill, it's generally the mark of a quality techno/noise/industrial knees-up. He is known to this blog through outings to other cracking nights of this kind such as Arcane and, if memory serves, Blanc. His sets are always banging in their own right of course and tonight's was, in two words, utterly sick. At times taking n0teeth back to our early Corsica days with clenched-jaw industrial techno selections recalling Perc or Truss at their most brutally swung, and at others simply firing off rancid salvos of indescribable, unclassifiable noise.
Morning commitments of a less industrial nature prevented me from staying right to the end and catching the final sets, but little did I know that I wasn't quite done for the weekend just yet.
Ninos Du Brasil @ New Cross Inn
God bless the algorithms for waiting to tell me about gigs that I will with 100% certainty want to see until the very last minute. If at all. It was purely by chance that I saw the Ninos themselves posting about this gig on Instagram as I idly scrolled through, and instantly leapt at the chance to see them.
The promoter, Real Life Presents, added further weight to my theory that ex hardcore punk / post hardcore types are the ones putting on and putting out the best noisy electronic sounds at the minute. They don't exactly hide their HC background, with the Facebook strapline "mosh life is real life". (Is this just a fad and if so should I be worried what will happen to the abundance of great gigs when the punks move onto other music? Or merely the start of an even bigger sea change in underground music? Answers on a postcard please.)
Sunday was one of those spectacularly horrible evenings where it's raining hard enough to make a waterproof non-negotiable but isn't quite cold enough to stop you turning up at the venue so sweaty as to make no odds to your overall state of dryness. The Overground, that vital pathway for banging east London heads against south London speaker stacks (and vice versa) was out of action, so the n0teeth transpontine expedition was at the mercy of Arriva buses and Southern trains. We sadly missed Crimewave, a new name to us, from Manchester, but arrived just in time for old favourite Container.
Ren Schofield's blistering sonic attack went down a treat at Spanners a couple of months ago, but I have to admit I was unsure how it would fare in the New Cross Inn, a venue I associate more with indie rock. If Schofield himself was worried, he needn't have been: before his set was even halfway done he'd got a good chunk of the crowd flailing frantically (or at least leaning in for a closer look) like all our rave reflexes had been triggered at once. An impressive feat for a man who, by his own admission, doesn't have much connection to dance music culture: Container didn't recognise No Good (Start The Dance) playing on the PA before his set, and nor should he have to. Some of the greatest boundary-destroying sounds have come from people who were never aware of such boundaries in the first place.
By the end of Container's (satisfyingly long) set many of us were drenched in sweat from the relentless industrial-electro-noise workout. At least two people I spoke to were new converts. After a set like that you could only be fully on board or determined never to set foot in the New Cross Inn again.
The first song on the PA after Container's set was Incredible. It seemed oddly fitting to play another unassailable UK rave classic after witnessing an American gleefully but unknowingly tearing the genre of dance music a new one and resculpting it in his own bizarre language for almost an hour.
Then came the boys from Brazil. Less detached from dance culture but originally coming from a punk background (in northern Italy, not Brazil, it turns out) the Ninos' recorded output is an intoxicating cocktail of percussion both live and programmed and a diverse bouquet of influences from samba to industrial bass. How would they pull it off live, I wondered?
With great aplomb, seemingly boundless energy and enough low end to shake the barnacles from the Titanic, it turns out. From the moment they took to the stage in their "carnival" outfits, Ninos du Brazil had the entire crowd jumping and writhing to their punishing yet oddly infectious rhythmic wrath. There were sampled touches here and there, but for the most part the drumming was live, both members thrashing away at the skins with lethal precision.
Above you can see NDB getting the crowd to crouch before springing to our feet and resuming the frenzied bacchanal of body beats. It brought to mind a time-honoured live ritual of Slipknot's, another band with a penchant for plentiful percussion.
This was a powerful, physical show that didn't quite fit neatly into the category of (purely) electronic music. Ninos du Brasil have got something special here, something primal and intense that resists easy pigeonholing. Catch them before they graduate to bigger venues that don't allow as much band-crowd interaction for safety reasons.
Addendum: at the time of drafting this sucker, we had not long been informed of the sad passing of Killing Joke axeman Kevin "Geordie" Walker, a devastating loss for the world of post-punk, industrial and, well, wherever else you might like to place the uncategorisable wall of noise that is Killing Joke. And one which n0teeth will be marking soon once we've managed to narrow down our all-time favourite Geordie riffs to a mere ten. Watch this space.