Tuesday, December 12, 2006

None more pink


Another gig I can remember going to was by ((((SUNN-O)))). They were supported by some dude who used to be in other bands (at least one of which might have been Napalm Death). For all that he just faffed away on a laptop I liked his set a lot, as it reminded me of music by shoegazers and proto-shoegazers. ((((SUNN-O)))) themselves played behind a wall of dry ice so thick that it took me ages to realise how many of them there were onstage – last time there were two, this time there seemed to be seven. They've gone a bit false metal by adding in a keyboard player, but they had also brought in a vocalist who did lots of that subterranaean glossolalic murmuring. The moving of his hands was the most striking thing about him, as the vocals sounded like a music instrument and nothing else of him was visible. The hands were moved in a very expressive manner.

So yeah, the gig was a bit different to the previous time we say them. Maybe not so loud, but there were still lots of people giving them the rock sign. I was the only person returning their rock salutes with my hand in the lock position - I don't know what it is with metal kids these days, can no one do the rock lock any more? I can't even find a good reference to the rock lock on the Internet. Goddamn Google.

I bought their White One album. The record features a good bit more vocals generally than the others, but is still of a piece with them. It has the track with Julian Cope doing vocals on one track. Check out ((((Sunn-O)))))’s website sometime, it is chortlesome the way they have to explain to their audience who Cope is (and they conveniently forget to mention his early success fronting a psychey pop band). Or so I thought... I cannot now find this webpage to link to.

But yeah, great gig, though somewhat marred by all the camera phone cockfarmers who seem to find photographing dry ice exciting. In the future cameras and camera phones will be BANNED from all gigs, like in the olden days when breakers of the law were ritually sacrificed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a fantastic photograph.

And I take photographs at gigs as a sort of diary to remember what my night was like, how I felt, and what I experienced. I take care not to stick it up in people's faces and continually have my arm/hand in the air, though.

Kealo said...

The support act was Justin Broderick who was briefly with Napalm Death in the 80s (Scum era I think). He's better known for being in Godflesh who released the excellent Streetcleaner. I saw them in 2001 and I wasn't overly impressed, mostly because they didn't play the title track from the aforementioned album. Anyway, I thought the guy at SunnO))) looked nowt like him.

Good gig BTW.