Wednesday. It's the day after In the City. If there's one thing that's usually certain about Manchester the day after In The City it's that gigs are generally under-attended: reserves of cash and energy are running low, and even those who still have some of both left (yesterday was day-job payday for me, and I've spent most of today in bed) are generally feeling a little musically jaded. I have to admit that had I not bought a ticket I might not have gone out myself - but then I knew I'd feel like this, which is precisely why I did so. As I brandish the piece of cardboard at Ciaran on the door he looks at me like I've grown an extra head - Ruby Lounge is effectively MM's "home venue" these days; and they always let us in if we're reviewing. I'm not, though, as I tell him "I'm having a night off." Which basically means I can wander in at the end of the support band's set and not feel bad about missing them (the Ruby Lounge crew have been working as hard as we have, and with only two bands on the bill I guess they decided to get it all done relatively early) and just enjoy the band I've come to see without making notes...
At the end of 2007 I asked nine friends whose music taste I respect to recommend me one album of the year I might have missed; the tenth item on my catch-up list being The Twilight Sad's "Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters" largely because a regular contributor to both I Like Trains' and The Longcut's forums banged on about them so much there had to be something there. And there was - everything from that title (I was a midwinter child myself and interestingly so were a disproportionate number of my favourite musicians/songwriters) to the stirring darkness that permeated its tracks. There seemed to be a lot of death and other fucked-up shit going on in there, inasmuch as I could actually understand James Graham's heavily-accented vocals. It's defbinitely one of my favourite albums of the decade, but it was more of a slow-burner than an instant love, so after less than five listens I'm not sure exactly yet how the recently released follow-up "Forget The Night Ahead" compares, but it's good - very good, and in a year where most of the best music has been electronic-based, it stands head and shoulders above most other "indie" released in 2009.
Tonight's set is a well-chosen balance between the two. James Graham is on stunning form; shaven-headed now his intensity is almost frightening. Sometimes he crouches at floor level, eyes closed tightly, rocking on his heels, or he stands side-on, microphone held high so he's effectively projecting at it. Sometimes he effectively does it a capella, his voice as powerful as it is chilling. The passion in the man is just incredible.The band, too, sound incredible tonight. Ruby Lounge does have a particularly good sound system and everything is perfect, from the claustrophobic clatter of drums to driving bass and atmospheric guitars. And I think yeah, there's your Interpols and your Editors and the monochrome photocopy brigade, but if you're looking for a true heir to the likes of the Chameleons and golden-age Bunnymen et al, then this band is a serious contender. There's no encore after the hour's set, but you get the feeling this is largely because James has given everything. I'm quite pleased at the relatively early finish (home for 11) but equally glad I bought that ticket.
Thursday I swap to my other work head; after a day pounding the streets of Leeds flyering and postering for the Air Cav / Daniel Land gig there next week it's time to load up the car for Air Cav who are supporting Alaska In Winter at the deeply strange Nexus Art Cafe - a place in which I'd never set foot prior to Sunday's In The City gig. It's only slightly less weird tonight; the large crucifix stage adornment has thankfully gone, but the equally large teddy-bear's still there.
The incredibly talented Charlie Barnes is first on - as he will be at our Leeds gig next week - and the promoter admits the last-minute booking (replacing a band who have gone off to university and "sort-of" split up; naming no names largely as I can't remember who they were, but seriously, whoever you are, why did you take the booking in the first place?) is a result of my raving about the lad. No pressure, then. He doesn't let me down. Tonight's set seems more vocal-and-piano-based and less post-rock than my previous experience of him - this, though, is equally remarkable as everything is multitracked live and utterly spellbinding.
As with Sunday's ITC performance Air Cav start with their newest, as yet untitled, track and continue with the blissful hazy jangle of "Keychain" - and as with pretty much every support gig they've played they make an instant and positive impression on the headliner's crowd... and then a bass string snaps. Yep, you read that right. How often do you see a bass string snap? Mark looks as surprised as I am, and I've been to a good 15 years' more gigs than he has. Unfortunately it's one of his most-used ones (the jokes that most basses and bassists only have four to start with are obvious, if unhelpful) and it has to happen on a night where there's not another band with a bassist on the bill... he has little choice but to soldier on without it. He, the rest of the band, and I, of course, hear everything that's not right as a result. However, the audience hear a brilliant set and a few say, either to me or within earshot, that they'll come and see them again. Job done.
I'd been quite looking forward to seeing Alaska In Winter (whom I've been confusing all week with Winter North Atlantic, to the point where I've had to check pretty much every time I've done any promotion for it - amusingly, I discover there is also a band called Winter Un Alaska whose webpage starts with the words "Winter in Alaska was a band before Alaska in Winter was a band" - technically fairly indisputible given that Brendan Bethancourt AKA A.I.W. is a bloke, not a band) and seeing how he recreates his lush multi-leveled orchestral electronica live, but sadly we've got to get the gear back to the rooms. Seems I didn't really miss much. Reports from those who stayed say he basically did live vocals over a completely prerecorded set of music and projections: I'm probably more accustomed to live electronics than most of the Mushaboom crowd and quite aware that some of it will always be ready-prepared, but when you watch (say) Maps or Fuck Buttons or Ulrich Schnauss or whoever you can see that things are being played live. I don't know if he caught any of Charlie Barnes' set earlier but it gives me great pleasure to say that the internationally acclaimed and Pitchfork-loved signed recording artist could learn a lot from the kid from Huddersfield.
Friday it's the first date proper of the Maps tour and it couldn't really be much closer to home for me - we're off to The Warehouse Project. For the uninitiated (or non-local) this is a temporary multi-room club which aims to recreate the atmosphere of old-school warehouse raves in suitably urban-cool locations around Manchester. Its first incarnation in 2006 was in the then-recently closed Boddingtons brewery site at Strangeways, which I believe is now a car park. In 2007 it was in an actual warehouse, specifically the Princess Street one which had previously housed Factory Records' dying days and then the Paradise Factory club. This year it's stuck with 2008's tried-and-tested location; the vast arches under Piccadilly Station on Store Street: once a wartime air-raid shelter, occasonal home to somewhat less legal rave activities in the 80s, and now - a car park. The arrows on the floor do become quite useful later on when the smoke machine's been going for a while and you need to fnd the toilets.
I'd really wanted to go and see worriedaboutsatan at the King's Arms, but annoyingly the promoters have decided to stick Maps on about second. God only knows why.
Higher up the bill are the likes of Jon Hopkins and Jack Penate (Jack fucking Penate?!) and as if that's not bad enough someone's made the immensely stupid decision to stick Gold Panda (who's supported Maps before and is likely to appeal to the same sort of people) on at the same time in the other room. Thank goodness at least that they've given Maps more guest list than they could possibly need so me and four mates are saved the £20 entrance fee. I think this is why I don't usually go to the Warehouse Project actually - £20 seems a lot even if you do usually get a pretty big list of names (live dance music in all its forms, and DJs) and most nights sell out, so you have to plan ahead somewhat. Once inside we're pleasantly surprised that the drinks prices aren't as colossal as they could probably have got away with, and the unadorned arches do give the place a very Hacienda-like feel. Django Django are on the main stage in the largest arch when we get there; earlier in the pub someone told us one of them was the brother of one of The Beta Band and there are actually musical similarities there too, along with the traditional Scottish art-school Devo-revivalist indie-funk. We rather like them. Even if they are wearing safari suits.
By the time we've had chance to check out the other rooms - and the festival-like Portaloo compound (in which much later on I will open the door of an unlocked cubicle and interrupt two rather pilled-up looking girls mid sexual act; my male companions are all keen to know exactly which cubicle, for some reason...) - it's time for Maps.
This is how Maps should be seen and heard. Not in the indie clubs and pub upstairs rooms that comprise most of the rest of the tour, not in the overly well-lit Deaf Institute, but in a proper rave atmosphere where people are actually dancing and strobes are bouncing off brick walls. Smoke billowing behind them, I swear "It Will Find You" has never sounded so perfect - and the thing about this crowd, too, is unlike the regular "indie" gig crowds we've seen elsewhere and doubtless will again as the week goes on, they don't give a shit that there are no guitars or bass or drums; they don't care that there's not a lot off the first album here; because a fair few of them probably have no idea who they're watching or less still care. They just know a fucking great thundering electro tune when they hear one, and when the end bit of "Papercuts" breaks into something Balearic there's a sea of hands in the air.
More people pile in (the place is open til 5 but last entry's half eleven so a lot are coming in to beat the post-pub scramble) and feels like a full-on party now with James and August gleefully at the helm. August says something incomprehensible. "Um, he's Danish" explains James. I get the feeling this might become a tour in-joke. By the time they finish on a truly brickwork-trembling version of "Love Will Come" they basically own the place. Yeah, they should have been on later, shoul have had a longer set, but this was a half hour of euphoria of the very highest order. This band should be out there on the LCD / Soulwax circuit. This band was made to play in railway arches and warehouses and air raid shelters. This is one of the many reasons why I love them.
We can't really be bothered watching any more bands after that. The chill-out room's pleasant, even if it does smell very strongly of cooking rice. There's the aforementioned lavatorial incident. By half one I've run out of fags, can't face another drink, and am aware I have a very long train journey ahead tomorrow. On which, incidentally, I've written the entire blog up to this point.
Saturday. OK, look, I do love Maps and I do love awaydaying but there was no way I was going to go all the way to Southampton. That would be silly. As such, a couple of weeks ago I checked TheTrainline in order that the extravagant prices charged by rail companies these days would be the final nail in that idea. (Un)fortunately, the cheapest available ticket was 15 quid and I'd bought it before the common sense bit of my brain had chance to intervene...
Southampton is weird. I'm not sure I ever found the city centre. None of the roads on my Multimap print appear to exist in reality, Gadgetphone's SatNav has gone mental and refuses to believe I am not at Bristol Parkway railway station (the last place, I guess, I used it) and the locals polite but astonishingly useless at giving directions around their own city. I give up and get a taxi, and having located the venue settle in a nearby gay bar, on the grounds that it's the only pub in the close vicinity of Joiners that doesn't look like a stabbing waiting to happen.
First support Last Action Hero is quite definitely a punch in the face waiting to happen. It's not just that his blend of emo and electro, with agonisingly loud grating vocals and fairly bogstandard beats, is quite horrible - although it is. Now you know I don't, on principle, usually do out-and-out slatings of up-and-coming / support acts - but I'm going to make an exception here: half way through his set a charity collector wanders in, and the nasty little twat has a go at her, instructing the crowd not to give her any money as she's "probably a fake". I find myself hoping one of his close family succumbs to whatever it was she was collecting for. He also tells his mates, effectively, not to bother with the headliner or main support and to go to some bar with him instead. That said, good riddance.
Tour support is billed as It Hugs Back, a band I remember seeing once supporting Holy Fuck, and described them as "a bit shoegazey, a bit American college lo-fi, possibly in possession of some Jesus And Mary Chain records" - tonight it's a solo set from singer Matthew, just him and an acoustic guitar, and what with his hazy tunes and slacker hair I'm reminded a lot of Evan Dando. A pretty odd choice to support an electronic band but pleasantly enjoyable nonetheless. Seems he's doing the whole tour, anyway. The name It Hugs Back still really gives me the creeps, though.
It may not be a strobe-addled rave in an undergound car park but it's kind of space-age in a different way: by the time Maps walk onstage there is so much dry-ice billowing round the room all we see is two silhouettes working their banks of machines, in whatever lurid shade the spotlights decide. It slowly disperses to reveal our deliriously happy looking protagonists, still buzzing (and in one case possibly still actually up) from last night.
This is the full-length set and it flows beautifully, travelling through space towards the euphoric climax and once again the slight worries of the summer, that audiences might not connect with the guitar-free format, are roundly dispelled. The inclusion of "You Don't Know Her Name" is a good idea - probably the closest thing to a hit from the first album's haul of great singles - but what strikes me is the fact that this beautiful sun-blazed song, my official Festival Anthem Of The Summer 2007 which I don't think I went a day without listening to from about May to September that year, is actually one of the lesser moments here. By the end people are dancing again and Southampton on a Saturday night doesn't seem too bad a place to be.
A couple of days later I'll visit a friend in Nottingham who used to live in Southampton a few years back. She confirms that I was correct in identifying at least one of the nearby pubs as scary. Working in the betting shop over the road, sometimes went in the pub after befriending some of the locals, including one nice polite chap... whom she eventually discovered had served 20 years for killing someone with a machete. Turns out he wasn't the only one, either; many of the regulars owed their very presence there to the Good Friday Agreement...
Sunday - is it? Yep. I know this by the fact that train services are even more rubbish than usual. I leave Southampton just before 8am, and - despite the sort of tight connection that involves a sprint the entire length of St Pancras Station (and there's a hell of a lot of St Pancras Station) arrive in Nottingham at two in the bloody afternoon. That's OK though, the first band I want to see's not on til quarter past three...
Another all-dayer. Not content with hosting Dot To Dot in May, October sees Nottingham's sort of edgier all-day venue-hop, the Hockley Hustle. Hockley being the road most of the venues are on. Not Hockley Road or anything, just Hockley. The bargain-tastic £10 ticket (£7.50 if you bought it far enough ahead) allows access to 20 different venues, where the discerning music fan could experience such delights as Spam Chop, Pee Wee's Funk Salad, You're Smiling Now But We'll All Turn Into Demons, Ocean Bottom Nightmare, the Yeah I'll Play It Later DJs and - our favourite - Arse Full Of Chips. The variety of genres on offer is far greater than these all-dayers usually afford: indie, drum'n'bass, dubstep, samba, hip-hop, rock/metal and whatever the hell Arse Full Of Chips do (we guess at grotty pub punk) and you have to hand it to them for co-ordinating such a mammoth task - but I had quite enough venue-hopping during In The City. At the top end of Hockley, DrownedInSound have colonised a nice pub called Bunker's Hill, the sort of place that offers a 15p discount on its real ales to CAMRA members, and stuffed it full of shoegaze and space-rock of various sub-genres.
I have some preconception as to what 93 Million Miles From The Sun will sound like, as they come recommended by the most fundamentalist shoegazer I know. And sure enough, they are so old-school fuzzpop (as in variable stations along the MBV/JAMC axis) they have a stand-up drummer and cover The Telescopes' Perfect Needle. Along with several of their own songs that sound rather a lot like it... we're also amused by the fact that they're, well, not exactly 20 any more. Might even have been there first time round. This doesn't matter. The drummer appears to be completely bonkers, too, exclaiming mid-set for no apparent reason "Anyone for ice-creams!?" We never quite work this out. A week later in Stoke, a member of Lovelust who have played with them before tells us he's prone to that sort of thing. Um, OK...
After catching them a few times around the start-up circuit (Live At Leeds all-dayers and Dry Bar's Thursday sessions) I haven't seen I Concur for a couple of years. I always said they were the offspring of The Chameleons and I Like Trains - in a good way - and certainly these days it's the former that's risen to the top. The textures and crescendos are still very much intact in the guitar work but the rhythm section seems to have hardened up, the vocals intensified. Stirring stuff indeed.
Daniel Land And The Modern Painters go on ten minutes early, in order to squeeze a 40 minunte set out of the regulation half hour slot afforded each band except the headliners - they've had no soundcheck whatsoever, they just walk onstage and they're straight into the zone. Sometimes when you watch a band you can pick out which guitarist's doing what - lead here and rhythm there - but here the three guitars are more like the conduits by which all the sound-waves in the universe are channelled into something coherent and beautiful. One criticism sometimes levelled at (for want of a better word) "shoegaze" (and sometimes rightly so) is that it can all end up being a little amorphous, directionless even, and it's the salvo of tricks up their sleeves with which Daniel Land And The Modern Painters avoid falling into this trap that makes them special. The deep sonic whirlpool just before the vocals kick in towards the end of "Within The Boundaries" which echoes (unwittingly, as none of the band had actually heard it) a similar moment in I Like Trains' "Terra Nova" with the same pine-tingling effect. The amazing coda to "Off Your Face Again" which sounds like Ride jamming with the Stone Roses rhythm section, drummer Jason Magee taking the whole thing up a level: shoegaze you could actually dance to?! And then there's that ear-splitting ending, a sort of kaleidoscopic multi-hued cousin to My Bloody Valentine's "holocaust" of pure white noise.
At which point we retire to a nearby pizza restaurant to refuel and make sure our ears are still working...
Back in time for Worriedaboutsatan. With the clocks having gone back last night, even their relatively early slot sees darkness outside - and inside, too, as the rather sweetly unassuming looking pair are lit by just their regular backdrop of Géla Babluani's "13 Tzameti" plus a single swinging bare lightbulb which seems oddly fitting. Now I always knew they were good, but sometimes they are so much more and tonight seems like one of those nights. You think Fuck Buttons' introsuction of techno to their post-prog recipes was a good idea? These guys did it first. Only they threw in a third dimension, too; the creepy, Burial-esque dark end of dubstep. During their continuous piece guitars are bowed and fed through boxes until they don't sound like guitars any more, waves of synth rise and fall, and a thousand little clicks and pops fill the spaces.
They finish, and at first there's silence. Then applause. "More!" shouts someone. They've had their 30 minutes, but it's not like they've a drumkit to strip before the next band... the shouts are growing now. This may be their first ever encore. It's a piece of deep fluid techno, like Ulrich Schnauss in dancefloor mode. It's brilliant.
There isn't much time to retune our heads to guitar mode after that, but it helps that the next band have some rather big tunes to their name: they are The Domino State and they exist somewhere around the blurred line between post-punk overcoat pop and shoegaze, like the Bunnymen gone Ride. You know that massive coda on "The Cutter"? They have one song that just basically does that for the whole song. The Chameleons and Psychedelic Furs also loom large in their shadowy but uplifting sound.
A heavy schedule of support slots, culminating in those high-profile Bunnymen warm-ups earlier this month, have left Exit Calm the undisputed kings of the half hour slot. There is, quite simply, not another band on this earth who can put so much into thirty minutes, make you feel like they've done an hour and still leave you wanting more. But then how many still-unsigned bands have a travelling army of fans, some of whom make my gig count (this is the 18th time I've seen them) seem utterly pathetic, and some of whom fly from overseas just to watch them? They're just... intoxicating. You can feel like you're tripping watching them even if you're stone cold sober. I know, it's happened to me, it can make the drive home afterwards interesting. This is the standard four-epic 30-minuter, and from Rob Marshall's first sheets of interweaving guitar in "You've Got It All Wrong" to Nicky Smith's cheeky appropriation of a few lines from the Mondays' "Wrote For Luck" in the closing stages of "Hearts And Minds" you're just literally drowned in sound. The leading light of said music website is in fact standing next to me throughout this, and he very much is, too. Oh yeah, one more thing. You will see a load of Verve comparisons when this band finally get their debut album out early in 2010. I know I'm guilty of making them myself in the past - and at the start, that was kind of where Exit Calm were coming from. They have long since transgressed that. I saw Verve right in my face in tiny venues back when they were just Verve and a bloody good band; I saw The Verve at one of their last gigs at the end of 2007; they were never this fearsomely powerful.
They are not, as I have said many times, an easy one to follow. Tonight this unfortunate task befalls The Boxer Rebellion. A band whom, despite wide admiration for them amongst a great number of my friends and a resulting effort on my part, I've just never been able to get into. There's nothing wrong with them. All the ingredients are there: rolling bass, guitar delay, impassioned vocals, stage presence, darkness and light - but they have neither Exit Calm's nuclear power, The Domino State's way with a tune nor The Twilight Sad's hairs-on-back-of-neck factor. Sure, they get some way to all three, but other times they're only one step up from Editors, and I need at least two before I'm interested. I know it goes against popular wisdom and I appreciate they're loved and respected - and their rise from the ashes, re-signed after being dropped and sticking out their next album themselves - is still a victory for the grass roots that anyone who cares about music should celebrate - they just don't do much for me.
Not that we're complaining. It's been a quite astonishing day of music with all profits going to Oxfam. Daniel and co head back to Manchester, but I won't be home for a few days yet. I am officially on holiday...
So, Monday afternoon and I'm back in London. Maps are playing at Cargo and I'm quite worried it's going to be a bit quiet: I'm told The Longcut played a brilliant gig there last Monday but the crowd wasn't massive. People don't like going out on Mondays. The worry flips to the complete opposite mid aftermoon when a message from Maps HQ says it's sold out - bugger, one of my mates hasn't got a ticket. Turns out to be neither - my mate grabs one of the last few tickets and they play to a full venue. Result. The bloke from It Hugs Back is opening here; sadly his rather quiet sort of JAMC-gone-acoustic tunes seem to bypass most of the early arrivals. We're stood about three metres back from the stage and he's barely audible even here; further back the bar chatter is probably winning.
Main support tonight is Banjo Or Freakout, whom me and my mate definitely remember being two people when we (separately) saw them before: just the one of them tonight, though, although he does seem to be playing rather a lot of instruments at once. Sometime the following evening another mate will comment to me, after watching Fuck Buttons, that he can't get used to just seeing two blokes and a pile of electronics onstage "instead of a band", whereas this week I seem to be seeing quite a few one-man versions. All of whom I can't help comparing to Charlie Barnes in much the way all the two-man versions are measured against Maps and/or Worriedaboutsatan. Banjo Or Freakout is good, a kind of edgy post-rock variant on the theme. Unfortunately I am distracted from his set by the sudden and unexpected death of the Gadgetphone.
Oh god, what am I going to do now?
Gadgetphone has been my loyal and trusted companion for two years. Much of what you have read here over the past two years started life on its little screen, either as keywords or full reviews. Even during this year's In The City with laptop in tow, you can't exactly get a laptop out and start hammering at it when a band's onstage can you? Moreover I am a long way from home, halfway through a major away-trip and I now have no clock, no way of checking addresses or emails without getting out a fucking computer (which I'm now very happy I have, but still), and nobody's phone number. SHIT. My good friend and BSP regular legend Boom responds to this by buying me lots of vodka. It doesn't mend my phone, but it does help me postpone the welling panic and enjoy the gig. Thank you Boom.
Maps have played a gig in Birmingham since I last saw them and the pair of them still appear to be on a rolling buzz. It's not the best gig of the tour, sure, there are a few technical hitches too many, but the vast majority of the crowd don't notice this. There's a slightly disturbing interlude where James starts apologising for being rubbish - we all know he is anything but. The general atmosphere in the crowd is great though - not quite the Warehouse Project but that was Manchester on a Friday night, this is London on a Monday. There are more people actually dancing than I think I have ever seen at a London gig of any description before.
The last thing I remember is Boom heading off in a minicab with Maps producer and Death In Vegas man Tim Holmes, having deposited me back where I as staying, thanking my lucky stars I decided to get a laptop. Most of Tuesday is therefore spent not doing the vast number of really important things I had to, but desperately trying to get a new phone. Somehow I end up with a Blackberry. At the time of writing I'm not sure if I like it or hate it. I do manage to find a little oasis of calm in all the chaos, though: the little sanctuary that is PureGroove Records opposite Smithfield Market.
Last time I was in there, maybe a year or so ago, it still looked mostly like a record shop. These days it certainly has elements of the record shop about it - records displayed on the wall which you can buy and a pile of magazines in the corner - but it seemsw to have more elements of a cafe-bar. Like comfy armchairs, tables and, well, a bar. It's an interesting survival strategy in an era where indie shops are up against the internet - and I am guilty, I'm afraid, stocking up my Amazon basket throughout the month to hit the checkout button on payday. Sorry. The bar is an extension of the shop's frequent and popular instores, which happen a few days a week both at lunchtime and in the early evening. And today's guests are the newest discoveries of Sonic Cathedral, Yeti Lane.
Yeti Lane are French and very indie-pop; their single "Lonesome George" is a reference to a particular Galapagos tortoise believed to be the last of his kind (yet again, music sends me off on an interesting learning experience (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geochelone_nigra_abingdoni ) - some vaguely Krauty synth work and Byrdsian Americana guitar however holds their sunshiney pop the right side of the twee line.
Later I meet up with a few of my London mates - we're going to Heaven. No, really. As Belinda Carlisle once helpfully informed us, Heaven is place on earth - it is, too. Specifically a gay club near Charing Cross whose foyer posters tell us is rather more used to hosting Gay Porn Idol than electronic duos. I dunno, you wait all your life for a pair of blokes with a load of cables and then three come along at once - tonight's is Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, collectively Fuck Buttons, and from the volume of the Andy Weatherall DJ set I can heard from said foyer while the staff faff about being really not very good at finding anyone's name on the door pick-up tickets list, they are going to be seriously bloody loud. Inside we're impressed with the quality of the sound system; loud it may be but clean as anything. The venue itself is beautiful, too.
When they eventually start (we're thinking they're actually getting too big now to be doing all their own cable-plugging-in in full view of the audience: if you can't trust roadies to do it maybe get a curtain?) the sound is spot on, "Surf Solar" alone feels like a joyride in a spaceship, and for the second time in two nights I witness people at a gig in London dancing! Lasers fire, strobes flicker and the duo do their trademark bouncing their heads up and down while facing each other across their control panel thing. Obly occasionally do I have to do a double-take and wonder how the hell this peculiar band, two geeky looking boys seemingly weaned on the less melodic end of Krautrock, have got to be this successful? That they have can only be a good thing. And yet... and yet... don't get me wrong, I did a lot of my growing up in techno clubs and indeed to Andy Weatherall's beats; I think Fuck Buttons have made a great success of blending these sounds into their existing musical vocabulary and "Tarot Sport" is a great album (probably top five, even in this quite astonishing year for albums). But when they come back for an encore and that eerie bleakly repetitive drone cuts across the brickwork arch, accompanied at first by just a single green laser beam, this is when they are truly sublime. It is, of course, "Sweet Love For Planet Earth", one of the greatest tracks released this decade, and it still sounds like little else before or since. I shouldn't hold it against them that they've not quite equalled it yet.
If it's Wednesday, it must be... Bristol. The original plan was to try and catch Puressence first at the O2 Academy and then go see Maps at the astonishingly-named Start The Bus, but this appears to be the one night of Puressence's tour where they're on at a normal time as opposed to tea-time. Ah well. An old mate I've not seen for ages is out so we're at the venue pretty early and - yes - look, it's another two-blokes-and-some-stuff band!
This is Cajita (presumably pronounced to rhyme with "fajita", so rapidly nicknamed "Car Heater" by us) and their USP is that the Stuff includes a trumpet. This is not only less frightening than you're probably thinking, it's actually really good - danceable, a bit post-rock, lots of interesting looped sounds. "There is a story to how I got the name "cajita"", the Myspace page tells us, "but it's not as interesting as you might hope". Fair enough then, won't ask. The lad from It Hugs Back's set almost entirely passes us by, again. Oops.
It's a very weird venue. As in it's basically the back third or so of a food-drink-chrome type bar (local mate explains it used to be an Edwards, as in hideous Yates's-like chain) separated from the rest of it by a thick black curtain. At the far end, there's a step down to a little square of dancefloor with a tiny stage that would make for an interestingly imtimate experience for any band of four or more people. And the dressing room is upstairs at the far end of the public bit of the bar, so the band has to walk through the entire clientele to get to the stage, including those who have chosen to drink in the bar but not pay to get in the gig, which must be a bit odd.
This is possibly Maps' best performance of the tour to date. Despite the fact that someone has stolen James's tambourine. He asks if anyone's got a spare. It would be the funniest thing ever if someone did, but yeah, somewhat unlikely. This kind of sets the scene for a set peppered with increasingly incomprehensible banter, a real party spirit and demands for an encore. "We can do an encore, but it'll be shit" grins James (who incidentally is wearing about the fourth different extremely cool vintage Adidas jacket of the tour so far). It's "Valium In the Sunshine" and it's very much not shit.
Back at the Travelodge, I shudder at the sight of some dark-clothed men hanging around the open doors of a Transit van with guitars, but thankfully it isn't Puressence so I (a) don't get guilt-tripped for missing their gig and (b) do actually get some sleep...
I'm going to kind of wrap things up now, aside from a few pictures, as basically the rest of the week is spent watching the same bands.
Thursday sees the start of Daniel Land And The Modern Painters' tour proper, at Leeds Cardigan Arms with Air Cav and Charlie Barnes supporting. Sounds like a great line-up? I thought so. Which is why I hired a venue to put it on. Unfortunately despite a massive promotional drive it's pretty under-attended: people of Leeds, you will regret not being there one day, and the handful who were will remind you of this at every opportunity. I hope. All three play absolutely amazing sets, too. Oh well.
Friday Maps are at Digital in Brighton and I can't resist any excuse to visit my beloved Second City: again, it's not quite the turn-out I'd have expected (maybe the lowest of the tour so far, but the "indie" wing of the fanbase is very much split with The Twilight sad across town) but another spot-on set.
And Saturday, it's off to the utterly terrifying Stoke-on-Trent with Daniel Land And The Modern Painters.
Must give a mention here to local support Lovelust, who play an astonishingly good set despite two of their number having been already turfed out for doing something naughty and chemical in the bogs. They're allowed back in to play, and they've come on immensely since last time I saw them: deep fluid Wooden Shjips type drone psychedelia is the order of the day. Highly recommended.
Daniel Land And The Modern Painters play their best gig in ages, too. the tour continues for a few days yet - catch them before they go supernova.
It is also one of the weirdest nights out ever: a young man identified by Daniel as a recent Big Brother contestant is walking around with a video camera filming the band, crowd and indeed floor, another over-enthusiastic lad corners the band afterwards to tell them they remind him of Fleetwood Mac (eh?) and our regular companion Alex and the remaining members of Lovelust have a sort of unofficial competition to see who can steal the most of the venue's Halloween decorations. A mention must be made, too, of the outstandingly misspelt poster...
It is also my 20th consecutive night out watching live music, which I suspect is something of a personal record. I'm still half considering trying to make it to Norwich for Maps on Sunday, but by the morning I'm struggling to make it to the kitchen, and spend the next two days in bed with a really bad cold. I probably deserved it. October is amazing, but I'm kind of glad it only happens once a year.