Broadcast #011

***New Signal****

1. Hatebeak - God of Empty Nest
2. Matmos – Spondee
3. Munly & The Lupercalians – Grandfather
4. Oxes – Half,Half and Half
5. Lightning Bolt – The Sublime Freak
6. Pre - Nope Fun
7. Chamber of Sorrows – An Angel Shall Watch Over Me
8. The Lonesome Organist – Blue Bellows
9. Virus - Road
10. Wolfmangler - The Death of Geryon
11. Bob Log III – Clap Your Tits
12. Grails – Reincarnation Blues
13. Girls Against Boys – Learned It

If you want us to play your band/noise/whatever, drop us a line at behindcloseddoors@sittingnow.co.uk.

Peace

***Signal Ends**

Lightning Bolt pretending to be gnomes...wrestling gnomes!

About two hours before this gig I started to make involuntary noises and exhibit facial tics. I think it was a result of being way too excited about seeing Lightning Bolt. It is a very small venue but Capsule have done a beautiful job (as usual) making the place look great. I notice immediately that this has something in common with every other gig I go to… almost everyone there has a beard and glasses. I have glasses but damn my hormones for not being manly enough to grow a beard. Maybe one day.

Pete Prescription

Pete Prescription – We arrived part way through Pete Prescription’s set. It was confusing as it veered from happy hardcore covers to guitar infused twitchy electronica. I wasn’t entirely sure about the happy hardcore (I’ve done my time there thank you) but the other stuff he was doing was pretty good and worth checking out. The only problem I could see was that as a one man band with a lot to do he couldn’t engage with the audience at all. Hence a pretty flat live show but good for the ears.

Tweak Bird

Tweak Bird – Another band I have never heard of but someone said the words “progressive rock” as they took to the stage so I was happily expectant. Or expectantly happy. Not sure which.

There were progressive elements to what they were doing (gongs and synths) but at the core this band were 70’s heavy rock through and through, right down to the hair and beards. Enjoyable but not overly memorable, I will though make an effort to listen to some of their music.

Lightning Bolt - looking happy as ever

Lightning Bolt – Regular readers might know how I feel about Lightning Bolt. If you’re not a regular reader, suffice to say I nurse a continual and substantial hard on for this band at all times of day and night, and this was my first proper chance to see them live (excluding the Release The Bats fiasco). Ever since seeing the awesome “Power of Salad” live DVD, I realised that seeing Lightning Bolt live was the only way to fully appreciate them and that was proved to me in no uncertain terms. I have never worn earplugs to a gig before but I had heard that they are an essential when watching Lightning Bolt due to the fact that they play VERY, VERY LOUD. VERY, VERY LOUD INDEED.

The next hour passed extremely quickly. I heard “Colossus” and “Nation of Boar”. I heard something off Hypermagic Mountain and Ride The Skies. I heard some tracks I have never heard before. Just as my face began to hurt from grinning they finished. I was confused. I don’t think I have ever been less prepared for a gig to finish.

I regularly tell people that Lightning Bolt are the best band in the world but I never get a chance to tell people why, usually because they walk away or stare at me blankly. Their “songs” are not really specific to any genre, their playing is unique. It’s like they are channelling everything good and primal in music then fine tuning it by playing it at volumes that transcend simply listening. When you add the little touches like Brian C’s mask mic, and Brian G’s hybrid bass / banjo you have … well something special. The sheer joy that transformed the grumpy, stand off-ish audience of bespectacled and bearded thirty somethings into an actual mosh pit was really quite touching and I look forward to seeing this band again as soon as possible.

I would just like to say a big thank you to the two girls who run Capsule. This gig was part of their tenth birthday celebrations, and as part of the décor at the venue they had a list of all the different events and gigs they have put on over this time. I didn’t really realise how good their taste has been, or how many of their things I had been to, but it is fair to say that their efforts have made Birmingham and the world of music much better place. Long may they continue.

Kim Monaghan

Thanks to http://www.katjaogrin.co.uk/ for photos.

Release The Bats – ATP/Capsule Halloween Party

Lightning Bolt

When someone told me that Lightning Bolt were playing here in Birmingham, I started to run around making a high pitched sort of girlie noise. I love Lightning Bolt and I firmly believe that they are the best band in the world. If you don’t agree then take it outside. So imagine my surprise and horror when I turned up at quarter past seven (have you ever got to a gig that early?) and while walking in I thought “…that sounds like Lightning Bolt.”

It was Lightning Bolt. Finishing. I am not having a good year for gigs, having missed Secret Chiefs 3, Dillinger Escape Plan and Nine Inch Nails in the last year. Anyway, it sounded like a new tune so hopefully they have an album coming out soon.

Pissed Jeans

I had never heard of three of the bands in the line up and this was one of the surprises. The vocalist came out and stripped to the waist before he’d even started, but he had reason to because when they began their Neurosis / Isis style assault, he expended a lot of energy. I mean a lot. A disturbed hybrid of Mick Jagger and Ian Curtis, I can’t make up my mind whether or not he was a genius. Lyrics that were the very model of banality (“I’ve got a headache….And this rash on my back”) teamed with a diaphragm of steel, he veered between Henry Rollins and a sort of doom metal Bez. I will investigate further.

Wooden Shjips

Another band I had never heard of, they came on and asked for the lights to be dimmed to a civilised level, so I warmed to them straight away. They looked like they’d escaped from the seventies so I wasn’t surprised when they started playing a feedback infused psychedelic rock that I eventually decided sounds like a Butthole Surfers record at half speed. I also couldn’t make out a single word he sang but I did like their expansive solos. In all honesty though, I felt compelled to wander off half way through their set pulled by the long, long queue at the bar rather than pushed away by the music. Honestlywhen we walked in we went straight to the bar and it took half an hour to get served. And it being a fancy dress night, we had the very galling experience of someone in a sailor outfit turning up after us in the queue and managing to get served before us. That pissed me off but not as much as discovering the second “bar” was actually outside under the railway arch through which wind and rain were literally howling.

OM

Capsule and ATP, I have a question. Why, oh why, did you put this terrible, terrible band on at this time and Lightning Bolt on first? If you’d swapped them on the bill the place would have gone mental, as it was this Spinal Tap-esque bore fest took the wind out of sails of the whole event. They played two very dull songs in 45 minutes and by the end of their set, the place was awash with chatter. The only people who seemed to enjoy it, were people who would have enjoyed the sound of rubber bands and arse clapping, such was the quality of the drugs they had managed to snare. Total shit.

 Shellac

The only other band I had heard of out of the lot, and I was quite excited, even if (to my enormous shame) I have never heard any and don’t own an album. This situation will not last long now I have seen them live. Steve Albini was responsible for Big Black and Rapeman (also never heard…sorry) prior to Shellac, but most people know him as the producer of Nirvana’s In Utero album. The first point in their favour… the drummer and bassist dressed as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster respectively, and stayed in character throughout their performance, with bassist man lurching about and groaning while the drummer pulled some awesome Dracula poses. This was a mere decorative frosting on the real attraction which was their cerebral, visceral, post-hardcore, pre-math-rock sound. They are a very tight band who straddle the divide between arty and shouty, clever and dumb, funny yet serious with great panache and I look forward to getting acquainted with their back catalogue. Great…just what I needed…more records to buy. 

Daddy Tank