| #546 |
|
2001 |
Perilous 546 San Francisco part 2 : Last time you read this I was heading off to play a set at a place called the Oxygen Bar. What a strange place it turned out to be. A bar with no alcohol, no soft drinks, just strange herbal teas – no chai or normal herbal teas like chamomile, instead it was weird ‘new age’ mixed flavours. But the main thing being consumed was oxygen. Pumped through water with different ranges of essential oils, oxygen was delivered in twenty minute sessions for about US$10. People sat and chilled and the venue was decked out like a Punos chill room circa 1994. Very odd. The next night was the Tigerbeat6 showcase at a new bi-weekly night called Synth. In another bar venue, Blindtiger, this time in the middle of Chinatown, was also strangely set up. By the time I arrived the night was already packed and the limitations of the venue became glaringly apparent. For a start the bands were playing in the narrowest part of the club to the side of a staircase that led from one end of the bar to a tiny upper section. The undersized PA was set up their too minimising the even spread of sound throughout the venue. Nevertheless Goldchains and Blectum From Blechdom were quite entertaining with Goldchains taking the piss out of gangster rap, and Blectum sounding like a combination of Cindi Lauper and Mike Paradinas. Blectum made a terrible racket out of screaming and then singing like two Japanese pop girls over noisy analogue belches and offkilter 80s beats. Kid606 followed, again with cut up beats and cheesy pop samples put through a blender. Unfortunately, this sort of stuff tends to work only at a joke level and once you’ve got the joke it kind of wears a bit thin. As for it being ‘new electronic punk’, then it’s the electronic equivalent of Blink182. On the music front the most interesting purchases included – the new Anticon release Gigasingle. Released as a 17 track EP the whole Anticon crew is represented from Dose One, Sole, Jel and Sixtoo to Josh Martinez, Odd Nosdam and Buck65. The beats are drawn from non-funk sources which makes for a refreshing change from the current breed of indie hip hop and the rhymes, especially from Dose One are quirky and odd. Also strange is the Matmos EP, California Rhinoplasty that precedes the similarly themed album soon on Matador. California Rhinplasty features four tracks made of sounds of plastic surgery done by Matmos, Coil, Surgeon and Herbert. Rather than offer an original to be remixed, Matmos gave Surgeon and Herbert the same sample sources they used but no finished construction. The results are diverse, disconcerting, and stunning. Drills, vacuum sucking, wet sploshes and collapsing bone are twisted into almost funky constructions. A very worthwhile release to track down. More obvious but equally diverse is the compilation of Bay Area cut-up tracks Urban Revolutions put out by the people behind the Future Primitive nights in San Francisco. Urban Revolutions has tracks from Z-Trip, DJ Disk, Faust, Shortee, Jack Dangers’ (Meat Beat Manifesto) new project Tino Corp, and a stunning ten minute apocalyptic suite by Mr Dibbs and Jel from Anticon appropriately titled Invitation To Hell. That’s about it. Freaky Loops will be over by the time you read this. Frigid continues with excellent lineups for April. Check www.snarl.org for details. Yellow Peril  Goto
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