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Music LIVE REVIEWS
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FESTIVAL HOME GAME Various venues, Anstruther, Fri 6–Sun 8 May ●●●●●
And you thought all your childhood summer holidays were gone for good. Then you discovered Home Game and times when people were nicer, music was to be absorbed and adored rather than just worn like a badge, and most things were still waiting to be experienced for the first time.
Home Game is the best fish and chips you’ve ever tasted, eaten on the harbour in the springtime sun. It’s the local community centre, children’s collages decorating the walls as King Creosote gently croons ‘Bubble’ and then an achingly tender ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, while Jon Hopkins squeezes an accordion that looks like it was dredged from a shipwreck in the Forth.
It’s Gordon ‘Lone Pigeon’ Anderson, having decorated his own attic ‘Space Cave’ in glowsticks and lava projections, fiddling with the sound and softly asking ‘wasn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever heard?’ during Austen George’s tender set, clearly unaware of his own unearthly ability. Somewhere around here, he’s probably built a rocket ship of his own. It’s Slow Club singing ‘Christmas TV’, unmiked and clear as a whistle, like a Sunday devotional in the Anstruther Town Hall.
It’s a pang of unease as bearded secular
evangelist Josh T Pearson (pictured), a man not unversed in upset, breathes the tinder-dry truth ‘we are not what you call over-comers / we are failures each and every one’ during ‘Country Dumb’, and then laughter as Randolph’s Leap express awe at having followed him: ‘we shouldn't be here, I saw his album in Fopp and it had cellophane and everything.’
A dedicated few hundred-strong hardcore of fans travel the UK to get to this singular festival, unmatched for its warmth, its scenic location or its amiable ability to let fans and artists mix, and there were deserved indications of wider industry recognition this year. Heavenly Records hosted a stage headlined by Liverpudlian singer Kathryn Williams, while Josie Long – friend and tourmate of stoic Homegamer-in-chief Johnny ‘Pictish Trail’ Lynch – curated a comedy line-up.
Home Game is the flipside of the T in the Park
coin and just as much reason for the nation to crow, an unqualified success built on hard graft, friendship and a most Fife-like lack of pretension. It’s a reminder that being Scottish, at its best, is a gentle, unpretentious thing which likes a good tune played with feeling and appreciates a simple sunny day. Here’s hoping its year off in 2012 is just that and no more. (David Pollock)
PUNK/HARDCORE FUCKED UP Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Tue 11 May ●●●●● ELECTRONIC BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Thu 5 May ●●●●●
Witnessing the media-shy, esoteric Fucked Up of the early 00s progress into the happy-go-lucky party band of recent years is a bit of a peculiar one. Gone is the menace and mysticism of earlier material in favour of hooks and festival appearances. Some recorded misgivings aside, their saving grace in the live environment is frontman Damian Abraham. ‘Edinburgh is one of the most underrated music cities in the world!’, he claims, before explaining they won’t be doing their excellent Shop Assistants cover in the band’s native town due to a lack of practice, and quips, ‘If you want professionalism, don’t come and see Fucked Up!’
Armed with a very long microphone lead, he stalks, gurns and cartwheels through the pit like a mad uncle – occasionally posing for cameraphone photos. Older highlights like ‘Two Snakes’ and ‘Police’ (or in tonight’s case ‘Polis’) bludgeon through the crowd in a spectacular foray. Finishing with a relatively raging cover of Black Flag’s ‘Nervous Breakdown’ – their sweaty whirlwind plants a slobbering kiss on Reekie. (Nick Herd)
Even on a quiet Thursday, faced with an array of geekish men nodding along while comparing notes on synth model numbers, Joe Howe still manages to put on a show. The sometime Gay Against You and Germlin member unleashes a wall of noise from the array of kit in the centre of the stage, barking at his equipment when it won’t make the noises he wants: ‘More music! Play!’
Wearing glasses and the kind of brush-like moustache you’d expect on a synth player in Cold War-era Berlin, Howe makes music that’s a welcome challenge. At one point he lays down a slice of austere ‘80s electro swathed in a brain- grating acid hiss, the next it sounds like he’s playing ‘Axel F’ and a Squarepusher track over one another, while‘Supermotion’ is like ELO played on a cheap keyboard by a teen musical prodigy with ADHD, while another song saw him enquire ‘if anyone knows where that keyboard line’s from, they win the next song.’ It all ended amidst prayerful dance moves, his hands together and his eyes to heaven. If he’s looking for inspiration, there surely isn’t much left to go round. (David Pollock)
POST ROCK LOW Classic Grand, Glasgow, Tue 17 May ●●●●●
Half-way through this intense and reverential set, Alan Sparhawk responded to a loved-up heckle: ‘After 18 years we add a fourth person and he’s the first to get a compliment?’ he deadpanned. His comment was a reminder that the Minnesotan alt- rock icons have been doing their unhurried and exquisite thing for nigh-on two decades, with no sign of dwindling. Indeed, a number of tonight’s highlights derived from their current (ninth) album C’Mon, not least ‘Especially Me’ – a dizzying, harmonic psalm that swirled round the venue like a kaleidoscope. While their newest keyboard-player (Retribution Gospel Choir’s Eric Pollard) provoked come-hither audience entreaties, the band’s (slow) core matrimonial duo of Sparhawk and Mimi Parker rendered us silent and made sparks fly. Parker cut a striking figure – beating a drum, voice like an angel – and the stars aligned when she harmonised with Sparkhawk on ‘When I Go Deaf’. Sparhawk was equally fascinating; his parting shot after the encore was, ‘Deep down, I want to shove a knife down every one of your throats,’ while smiling fondly. Tenderness and latent menace: that’s Low all over. (Nicola Meighan)
ELECTRONICA LAUREL HALO, GATEKEEPER AND KONX-OM-PAX AT KNOCK KNOCK! Art School, Glasgow, Wed 11 May ●●●●●
Among the current crop of hybrid synth nostalgists, the Dionysian headrush of rave is as much of an influence as obscure kosmische or Nintendo bleeps, as exemplified at tonight’s weekly clubnight Knock Knock! by Michigan-born artist Laurel Halo (above). The liminal tracer trails of her crystalline synth glisten among the lo-fi sophistication of her drum patterns. Her unfussy, forward-motion techno makes for a thoroughly engaging set.
Next Brooklyn’s Gatekeeper channel their kill screen Giallo impulses through an embankment of laptops and effects, bolstered by a row of flashbulbs; the spartan stagecraft belying the punishing stomp of their upright take on Goblin’s sleaze-ridden leather stench.
The only downside of tonight’s Konx-Om-Pax DJ set is not being able to bask in his day-glo visuals (as seen in online videos he’s directed for Oneohtrix Point Never and Errors, for example). Still, he finishes the night with a satisfying curatorial soiree through smoked out disco; entropic, bare bones bass frequencies (by way of aquatic IDM) that climaxes with delirious amen break happy jungle. (Daniel Baker)
26 May–23 Jun 2011 THE LIST 99