Konono No.1 / Tarwater / Cas Pas Cap

These were on the same bill as part of this strange free festival of stuff happening down in the docklands area of Dublin. This was during the summer, when I was meant to have been working on my thesis.

Cas Pas Cap were on first, and were not that good at all. This was unfortunate, given the lineage of some of the band's members, but I didn't really like their record that much either (and in fact forgot to mention it until now). They combined annoying vocals with uninspiring chuggy music, although they did occasionally lock into an entertaining groove. But not entertaining enough.

Tarwater are German fellows, who played electronic music and looked really kewl. Me bird liked them more than me, but even I was somewhat impressed by their cinematic sounds. Er, I can't actually remember anything about what they sound like, but I do remember thinking they were at least quite good.

Konono No.1 – well, if are a member of Frank's APA and have been paying attention then you will understand that these people are the Congotronics sensations from Kinshasa who play thumb pianos through home made amps and loudspeakers, accompanied by multiple drumming and chanty vocals. I do not know how famous they are to people who are not yet part of our gang. On this occasion, the audience maybe took a while to get into this – but I did not, spending a lot of the time up the front, where the people near me hovered on the fringe of event people hell (doing a lot of photographing each other, and I think there were some of the Alps-Plane posse here too. But yeah, deadly stuff, I loved it… it was truly an honour to see these people, including Mr Konono himself, who was sporting the same shirt tonight that he does on the record.