(From the Solar Anus weblog)
While Sabbatical ends its monthly Thursday night residencies at the salubrious Old Bar in Fitzroy I'm assured there are still possibilities for future gigs there. This is good; there's a bit of a kerfuffle at the moment in "the live music capital of Australia" owing to the closure (or not?) of The Tote and the imminent (next year, apparently) closure of one of my favourite older dives, The Arthouse. Mark told me, though, that the possibilities for live performance in the city aren't limited, just shuffling, and in any case, pubs aren't the be-all and end-all for venues.
The weather had in fact warmed towards the evening and the inside of the place was getting a bit stuff; it was only slightly cooler in the beer garden. MV performed her cassette and effects based work to a decent handful of people, although it took a while for most of them to shuffle in from out the back. A concentrated and well performed set, I could pick up a certain sense of composition in the slow, evolving grind of sludgey-but-not-too-sludgey sounds that evolved slowly from the speakers. Not a visual project, this is one more for sitting, listening and even just enjoying. The sounds themselves where uniquely crafted and the spirals well structured. A very good start to the night.
At first, I was sighing and rolling my eyes at exp. veteran Sean Baxter's micro-tonal crinkling of metal plates on his snare and floor tom kit. That kind of cutesy, concentrated sound art thing is not to my liking. Fortunately he kicked out the chin stroking and got into some pretty damn impressive sounds generated solely from his percussive and found object gear and, as I was informed later, a striking balance with the microphones and the p.a. I could have sworn he had some device at his feet generating a throbbing, rhythmic sound will he circulated his objects through a constant swirl of crackling and crashing; it's all the in the mic. placement, it seems. So I was educated.
Despite my usual pre-gig jitters, our set went well. I was pleased to note that very few in the audience where able to hold my eye-to-eye contact for too long at the lengthy intro to our spiral "This Means You", about the pleasures of dementia (with the exception of a couple of wise blokes sitting on the side). The sound we got was suitable (Lara did a great job on the mixing) and the feedback we got back positive. I was particularly pleased that our idea actually worked; was told afterwards that some people really where, just a touch at least, disturbed. Industrial should be about giving ideas and evoking emotions that people would rather not deal with, in the hopes of expanding the mind. In any case, we where all pleased; as Ben said later at his place, "we won".
Agents Of Abhorrence. Grindcore. Something like thirteen songs in fifteen minutes. I can't stand grindcore. Getting a drink at the bar, I was listening to one of the slower break-downs and remembering how much I would have liked for a band to just do that kind of slower, heavier, yet still riff-orientated stuff without having to hide behind a ten-second blast beat immediately afterwards, as if embarrassed by the fact that they can play and write actual songs. I'm sure there are bands that do that. Anyway, I just played the band-diva-out-the-back-drinking-and-talking-with-mates thing; when you get to your fourties you can get away with it easier, I think.
