black yoghurt, glasgow, johnny white, crude

PICS
I waltzed up to a local photographer at the gig and in typical apologetic style labelled it an 'intimate' show...and he curtly corrected me...'Not intimate.....it's exclusive'...

'Twas a scantily populated show, a symptom of a few things I suppose, the recent weather, another show at the crowns 'old man bar' that night, and the slew of gigs earlier in the week. So the show had that incredibly intimate feel - real laid back, jokes between audience and performing artist(s) as if each were simply sitting at the bar.
Black Yoghurt is Sefton Holmes going solo. The Laptop is an essential weapon here, Holmes effortlessly selects from a vast pool of ready-made beats and sounds, dials up a suite of sound softwares and transfers the mulch through the public adress system with the finesse of an AI from 2050. His solo work is very much evolving into a stylish strain of idm. A joy to behold.

John White has a musical history that tracks back to the 90s when his band Mestar titillated crowds of indie kids...Whites' craft has evolved since then, playing noisier stuff in the Zoo Polluters, contributing to Cloudboy, playing noise in Amalgam, touring and recording in Europe and Asia, freestyling with the enigmatic 'Mental Health Triangle' and finally settling into a solo routine. A fey pop sensibility is the adhesive factor throughout. Last Visible Dog saw fit to release Whites work and in 2003 'Mogwash' was released. White recruited Richard Scowen and Justin 'Sci-fi' Ulu from Horsehead Nebula as back-up for the set and the result was a dadaesque soiree of casiocity. Form and formlessness. Obnoxious late-80s keyboard percussion slice'n'dice in manual mode. Ting ting ting.

Crude got humping next. With sober dexterity I honked and spattered horn'n'yawn o'er

cackling dicky-beats, pop and piddle, sporting this seasons merino, paddle-pops and

lauded lands, the great blockade on Gaza and the psychology of zionism like lightening through my brain, the history of Saudi Arabia in mind, the great philanthropy of Prince Al-Waleed bin Taleed, the bizarre cartoonish facial-features of King Faisal, last weeks power bill and the trickle-up effect of economic austerity measures. 'You wawlkd eeeein, thyen y' wawlk raaaght bayk out agayn'. Stand and deliver.

And finally, Glasgow: John Glasgow that is, weaponized music - an arsenal of pedals in an array, wired up and fed through a mixer, pure sound arrested and processed, each new effect punched through rhythmically and unpredictably, Glasgow holding our attention with wild gestures in perfect sync with the noise. So much can be done with one tone. The noise shooting through each device like a screaming spectre, revolving and overlapping and chattering.