From Michael Upton Sent Fri, May 28th 1999, 10:17
From Michael Upton Sent Fri, May 28th 1999, 10:17
Eat yer heart out John Cage. ;-) I went and checked out the first night of the Labradford organised (?) Second Festival of Drifting last night. On the bill were Matmos, Pole and Labradford. It was held in a church, which lent (heehee) an awesome atmosphere to the whole thing. Admittedly it was also a little awkward, particularly during Pole's set when I think a few people wanted to leap up from their pews and boogie in the aisles. Ah well. When I got there Matmos were into their set already. There were 3 on stage, which was my first surprise. My second surprise was that one of the guys was making funny chirpy squeaky noises into a microphone, sounding alternately a little like Sweep from 'Sooty and Sweep' and Morph. :-) I _think_ these were then being processed and coming back all crazy and bonkers through the laptop in front of him, but it was sort of hard to tell. The two others were making slowed down, pitch shifty crash and bang concrete noises - things like doors slamming, suddenly looping, and falling into the depths of hell. :-) Over the time big rhythms built up in a style more like some of the stuff on their first album, still with all kinds of mayhem on top. The man at the mic kept putting weird whistles and spray cans and so on upto it, and basically doing bizarre found sound games. I admit I have a bit of a problem with most concrete music, in that I don't really find much to connect with, so when things got a bit more rhythmic I was happy. It was also really nice when they worked in guitar textures, and very polite of them to thank the guitarist for "being here in media form" at the end. :-) Essentially I thought the show just got better and better, and I'd encourage anyone who enjoys the albums to check out the live show. They do it very well, and don't just repeat material off the albums either. Next I had to suffer the incredible tedium that is Pole. ;-) He ruled. On the flip to Matmos, I did find a lot of his tracks pretty damn faithful to CD versions, despite the fact he was clearly jamming. He seemed to be having a lot of fun, bashing out a few runs on the grand piano on the stage during the first track from '2'. The dub thing was right in my face throughout - a slightly different arrangement, particularly with regards the percussion and it really would've been quite straightforward modern dub. At the end of the set he got a massive round of applause and even came back for an encore. Labradford, were, well, Labradford. I don't really know their material, but was surprised to hear some of the changes since the albums I'd heard (the first two), most notably little clicking percussion, loud bass stabs and muted kick drums. No wonder they invited Pole along! This was still under a wave of twin reverbed twang guitars, Moog and piano lines, so it wasn't particularly revolutionary. It was really nice, although I didn't find it particularly absorbing. Another night and I probably would've been lost in, but I have a cold coming on and ended up just heading home. Michael Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com