Kn0wn, 24th March, 333 Club, London
Mar. 27th, 2005 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaThe five past midnight would have done me no good. Club timescale, London club timescale at that. Messed up trains meant I didn't even get there til half eleven but that was an hour before the first set started. Given free rein all night Kn0wn did two sets of about an hour each and split it along the line between the two bands in one that they are.
It seems lazy to call them Hendrix for the 21st century. But if Lewis is going to go round in that afro with that guitar tone and that singing style, and playing with his teeth, I mean, he might have stopped wearing the braided jackets these days but he's not going out of his way to avoid it. With the rhythm section steeped in blues and jazz from that era, though, it must have been the only musical place they could start. Other inspirations are stuck on top, more recent urban stuff, mutterers as well as singers, but the essence is laid-back delicate heart-break, for lying in the sunshine and thinking about peace, for looking out at the grey and thinking about everything. This is the material on a new EP recorded months ago but only just now coming out, and a whole set of it is too light to satisfy but they would rule Brighton beach. [1]
Okay, I thought, not what I was expecting but nice enough and well done. Lewis has himself a tiny-bodied Yamaha semi-acoustic, and the contrast with Ben's giant five string semi-acoustic bass is amusing but look, all these semi-acoustics, albeit played through decent amps. The drummer is sat there doing his nice jazz thing and chilled out and, well, I thought there'd be more evil than this, but never mind.
The second set is what they're doing now, and this is where the evil lives. I'd like to tell you, in a spirit of musical open-mindedness, that I liked both sets equally but you know I'd be lying, give me the evil stuff every time. The change wasn't abrupt, the underlying essence is the same, just, what happens if you ramp up the attack a bit *here* and let that drummer get a bit more fired up *there* and let that mutter rise til you've got a *shout* and then let it all *twist* and there you have, well, music that knows how to unnerrve, to unseat, to, in fact, take the mashed and trashed of a London basement at three in the morning and make a moshpit out of them.
There's no doubting the band's ability to make music, and with the newer stuff they've found a way to add in the other, the dark stuff that's not supposed to connect to that, the doom metal they listen to at five in the morning on the way home, North to South across the Thames in the Strange Rover. I'm going to have to see this again.
Overcome with technnological fervour (I blame being on my way to see Jarrett, faux-Luddite extraordinaire [2]) I tried various means of recording bits of it and hit my phone battery a bit hard in the process. That died on Friday afternoon and in Cambridge there was nowt to charge it with. I'd checked earlier in the week that there was definitely a practice this Sunday and I thought, well, then I shall do like they used to do in the Olden Days of five years ago and stick to a previously arranged plan, rather refining and zeroing in on the hour by phone as is the Modern Way.
And look where that got me.
[1] Then again maybe I associate that too closely with a day I spent trying to learn to windsurf. There was a Hendrix tribute act going on at one of the bars; they have to crank the volume to be heard along the line of the lower prom so it carries a long way out to sea. I kept falling in every three seconds but with Crosstown Traffic and Voodoo Chile for backing I didn't mind half so much.
[2] Faux Luddism. If you're a Luddite, right, you're supposed to fear technology. I suppose the problem is working out where the dividing line is between acceptably traditional technology and the horrible new stuff, so you can, eg, still drink the beer when you've burnt your office down and scarpered to the pub. With your fancy modern glasses instead of tankards and these here new-fangled metal barrels. I've seen him with my laptop, see, that's only three years old and twice the spec of his best computer (the one I gave him) and he likes that. But the loyalty with which he clings to his ten year old computer is frightening.
It seems lazy to call them Hendrix for the 21st century. But if Lewis is going to go round in that afro with that guitar tone and that singing style, and playing with his teeth, I mean, he might have stopped wearing the braided jackets these days but he's not going out of his way to avoid it. With the rhythm section steeped in blues and jazz from that era, though, it must have been the only musical place they could start. Other inspirations are stuck on top, more recent urban stuff, mutterers as well as singers, but the essence is laid-back delicate heart-break, for lying in the sunshine and thinking about peace, for looking out at the grey and thinking about everything. This is the material on a new EP recorded months ago but only just now coming out, and a whole set of it is too light to satisfy but they would rule Brighton beach. [1]
Okay, I thought, not what I was expecting but nice enough and well done. Lewis has himself a tiny-bodied Yamaha semi-acoustic, and the contrast with Ben's giant five string semi-acoustic bass is amusing but look, all these semi-acoustics, albeit played through decent amps. The drummer is sat there doing his nice jazz thing and chilled out and, well, I thought there'd be more evil than this, but never mind.
The second set is what they're doing now, and this is where the evil lives. I'd like to tell you, in a spirit of musical open-mindedness, that I liked both sets equally but you know I'd be lying, give me the evil stuff every time. The change wasn't abrupt, the underlying essence is the same, just, what happens if you ramp up the attack a bit *here* and let that drummer get a bit more fired up *there* and let that mutter rise til you've got a *shout* and then let it all *twist* and there you have, well, music that knows how to unnerrve, to unseat, to, in fact, take the mashed and trashed of a London basement at three in the morning and make a moshpit out of them.
There's no doubting the band's ability to make music, and with the newer stuff they've found a way to add in the other, the dark stuff that's not supposed to connect to that, the doom metal they listen to at five in the morning on the way home, North to South across the Thames in the Strange Rover. I'm going to have to see this again.
Overcome with technnological fervour (I blame being on my way to see Jarrett, faux-Luddite extraordinaire [2]) I tried various means of recording bits of it and hit my phone battery a bit hard in the process. That died on Friday afternoon and in Cambridge there was nowt to charge it with. I'd checked earlier in the week that there was definitely a practice this Sunday and I thought, well, then I shall do like they used to do in the Olden Days of five years ago and stick to a previously arranged plan, rather refining and zeroing in on the hour by phone as is the Modern Way.
And look where that got me.
[1] Then again maybe I associate that too closely with a day I spent trying to learn to windsurf. There was a Hendrix tribute act going on at one of the bars; they have to crank the volume to be heard along the line of the lower prom so it carries a long way out to sea. I kept falling in every three seconds but with Crosstown Traffic and Voodoo Chile for backing I didn't mind half so much.
[2] Faux Luddism. If you're a Luddite, right, you're supposed to fear technology. I suppose the problem is working out where the dividing line is between acceptably traditional technology and the horrible new stuff, so you can, eg, still drink the beer when you've burnt your office down and scarpered to the pub. With your fancy modern glasses instead of tankards and these here new-fangled metal barrels. I've seen him with my laptop, see, that's only three years old and twice the spec of his best computer (the one I gave him) and he likes that. But the loyalty with which he clings to his ten year old computer is frightening.