Well now another night out at Port Chalmers. Its actually a miracle that noise or noisier or noisier-than-thou acts can play in a pub that used to service only the most hardened wharfies, fishermen, sailors, navy, arms dealers, cigarette smugglers, pirates and politicians. There is still a little strain of the aforementioned types who rock on in and lecture you on how many years they've come to the pub and how they have never been asked to pay 5 dollars on the door and that they're offended to their very maritime core...then there's the younger fishermen, gawdy , scurrilous and right-leaning, they've payed their 5 dollars so they better get the A1 treatment!!! And their girlfriends too, 'we've got a dollar fifty',,,and you are supposed to feel like you're bohemian scum, ripping off the hard earned money from the over taxed over worked silent majority of this righteous land and we should actually PAY THEM to come in to listen to our noisy drivel anyway. Backbone of the country my ass.
Anyways, venues venues schmenues. Bane of my life. The whole world is a fucken venue. A big mismanaged corrupt venue with bands and lights and camera and action.
First up on this pre-whitsunday bash was Dunedins last great-white hope LSD Fundraiser, cassette four-tracker whacked straight into the mainline, a raft of tapes of his musique concrete and sound collage opus, lurid cymbal work, slackened piano strings and reverb boxes and such atmosphere ---- a bleak deathly grind - the Fundraiser's sound is a dark psychodelic funeral. Dene Barnes was seated al maudlin and introverted as he churned through his sound-histories, a meditative process...a gnostic process, shuffling the ethereal deck. "Poetry in Motion" --Gavin Shaw.
Sefton Holmes aka Black Yoghurt set up in the middle of the dance floor and delivered his new
set of songs - songs so very very good and so very very (very) virulent its a wonder no greasy talent scout hasn't signed the guy up for a life of photoshopping and amyl nitrate - I imagine he'd go down well in London(?). Dark EBM with a dirty south island analogue line, slice o' life lyric and ...yes....melody. I can still hear his harsh noise fan-base protesting..."you've sold out Sefton!"...yeah...naaah.....he's...evolved. These are intelligent songs - stylish, poignant. I could see them released - with big glossy posters and magazine spreads and television ads and a video for each single....kicking the asses of 'the adults' and 'shihad' et al.....
The Black Yoghurt play Auckland city July 7th at the Whammy Bar alongside Bastardwisher bandmate Glasgow and ex Dunedinites Snorgazzzm)..I wish them the very best up there in that self obsessed city state.
Eye played 3rd on the bill....the audience was one part boheme, one part local. Tough crowd. Tough like noughat. Like gristle.
The kinda gig where you get liquored straights gyrating like the blob on speed, belching up on stage and dismantling your gear, getting on the mic and slobbering over everyone 'go home you pricks, you hippies'...well... not quite, but close. If it weren't for Merrin Sinclair and her deft psychophysical handling of snarling groups of working class drunk guys I would've been shut down for sure. Thanks Merrin for ejecting that guy from the dance floor as he approached the stage all unpredictable and cocked and loaded.
Eyes' set was a barrell of fun. Drone and roll at its peak resembling the very essence of early Sonic Youth. One of Dunedins best bands IMHO. LMFAO. WTF- why the face. Peter Stapletons' tom-centric beat was typically trance inducing, his surrounding noise-makers brewing up feedback like its the freaking weather. Wind and rain and hullabulloo hoo haa. Weeeeee, wooooooo, waaaaa.
Sink holes and sandwiches, gone fishing, silts and slurries - best western. Drive on mister Strauss-Kahn, your leftist vision was snuffed out just in the nick of time! So lets book a group tour to Banyan Province and blow us up an ancient Buddha figurine! Spray tans! Snakes! 17th century orgy set! Society, damn you,,,society!! ooohh Barbara look its a bit grainy but I can make it out - a dark disc-like object left of that cloud. Fake. Fail. Its a fucken bird you idiot. A BIRD!!!
I gets on stage and improvise (make it up as i go). Synth into the PA, relentless informational pulsing, belligerent, ungracious and irreverent clarinet squawks 'screeeeeeeeeeeeeech warble warble trill trilly ....AM radio crunch'n'chancre/slightly retarded edge...directionless and coarse, in a word - crude. Thanks to all who enjoyed the silly display and took it for what it was - just another dream - another day, the generation of another set of neuronal pathways...their strength gets weaker over time until their eventual decay and reabsorbtion. Waking life is only one tiny part of our true life. We live on in another dimension every night as we sleep. And we have dreamless sleep too - such bliss. One of the reasons I am attracted to upanishadic thought is its consideration of sleep as a valid and important phenomenon. The 'three states' are just as real as each other. Believe it or not (wow really? Nooooooo really? ) it is dreamless sleep where we're at our closest to the Absolute. So suck on that. Crude Live. Epistemology and artechoke hearts.
Thanks to Dene Barnes and Sefton Holmes and the chaps from Eye for performing that night - great sets by all - and thanks again to Forbes for his sound-tech skills and his tireless attention to detail. Thanks to Hector from Chicks for hosting experimental music in an age of musical malaise and cynicism and in a lil' port town where most of the locals dont really get it or want it.
Our cells divide further and further and our telomeres shorten.
Zip.
You paint quite a picture of the kinda awful goodness i miss up here. Thanks for the heads up on the upcoming AK gig. May have to venture out
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