Warnings, Warnings, I is a Robot

[shermarama]

Memeage courtesy of lovelyoliver


I may be yet to realise my Masterful Assassination function. Unless you count the size 11s; I'm afraid to report I hear the crunches quite often.

(Handcrafted. Hur hur.)

Anyway I went to the best gig I've been to in a good while (do I say that a lot?) on Friday night. Centurions's Ghost were definitely metal, in a regrettably uninteresting if earnest way. They were at least better than Indesinence, who were selling a two year old demo and t-shirts with logos that it took some Death Metal font skillz to read. The singer looked like a skinny indie kid or stand-up comedian, which made his gurning exhortations to 'Come on!' seem even more ridiculous. People were not coming on because there was nothing to *do* with what they were putting out. Two guitars and a bass and they spent most of their time in unison, in plodding straight sets of time. While the drummer did his best to be the churning legs driving the serenely gliding swan, I'm afraid he'd stuck himself to a rubber chicken.

This gig is an excellent case study in the difference between a bunch of people on stage hitting things and music. Esoteric have three guitarists, a six-stringed bassist, a drummer with a vast array of crashes and chinas and two sets of hats, a keyboards/synth geezer, and vocals coming through a head-mike and a raft of effects. Everyone without a drumkit in front of them has multieffects boards to tapdance on. A setup I'd instinctively run screaming from; the knob twiddling can so easily take over, but here the impression was very much of the tech serving the music.

They played for ninety minutes and I'm told there were five tracks. Right from the very start, all three guitars had something distinct to be doing, even if it was just holding some feedback while the others moved around it. Almost continuous vocals, of which no words could be made out but which kept pulling everything together and being the fulcrum around which the time changed. The drums were mostly very slow and sparse but what was there was always well-placed, carefully chosen - the beat moved around in a pleasingly abstract way, getting to some strange number of count before turning at an unexpected corner and coming down into a different pattern, rather like Khanate but without the nihilism dial turned so high, going to freer places. All the way through there was a lithe, living central beat, being reflected in a jagged pattern of facets like a broken mirror, but always there and making people stare, draw together,
sway a little differently to each changed reflection as it arrived. It was powerful and affecting stuff. When they finally finished there was massive applause, slightly dazed smiles all round, everyone shaking their heads like they'd just woken up from some hyper-real dream. Very glad I saw that and am also pleased with the double album of recording, too, impressed that it's been captured so well.

It had been a whole six days since I'd last played drums when I got behind the kit on Monday night. That might help explain why Monday was such a shitty day, why I was grumpy and taking everything personally. From the pouring rain to measuring shelf parts wrong to still being sat on my doorstep trying to keep my paper out of the drizzle, locked out due to key incompetence and waiting for my flatmate, when my lift to band practice turned up to find my cymbals still locked indoors too, it wasn't a good day. Until we did a song about Jesus going out for a night on the town, with a chorus drum part that kills my right leg, cos of course that was bound to help.

Oh no! The one for my secret real name is even better!

Comments

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

oh grief you the only person I know who spell her first name the way I do

[shermarama]

It's a common spelling in my immediate age range, it's terribly 70s.

I rather like being a Kinetic Technician Hardwired for Rational Yelling, meself. Hard to get it through people's head's that there's no 'e' in it anywhere, mind.