VOLCANO THE BEAR >>>>>>>>>HASSLEHOUND>>>>>>>>> WEST13TH, 29th Oct 2002
Chilly Tuesday in Glasgow. All mates have gone to Fugazi gig. What is a boy to do? Go to West 13th of course, check out something random… Good choice………..
Before I get on to the subject of the first act tonight, a disclaimer. I am a fan of live musicianship and performance and old fashioned show making. I don’t dislike acts because they use backing tracks, samplers, laptops or whatever, I just want them to be worth looking at. When one has payed ones cash, as well as the sonic gratification one deserves, one expects to see a show worth seeing. Hence the use of a stage .When HASSLEHOUND took to it, therefore, my eyes rolled and my pint began to feel heavy. Here we go, I thought, one miserable techie bloke in hoodie will twiddle knobs and plug stuff in while one indiekid will play plinky-plinky arpeggios on reverby guitar while staring at floor. How moving. How innovative. How boring….? Thankfully, not. OK, so maybe they weren’t up to speed on the visual front, but Hasslehound made some of the cutest and funniest electronica that I’ve heard on the live circuit. They use mad loops, cut-n-paste Francophone robotic voices, strange spiritual nonsense rhythms and old fashioned disco funkiness to make something quite unique…. An intriguing electronica show. They carried it, in my opinion, by avoiding sounds that were too abstract, and keeping the audience occupied with neat yet unexpected samples and hooks. A quick flash of choo-choo train whistle blowing from the techie man went down a treat with the crowd. The plinky guitar made some very nice, atmospheric melodies. More of this please! Over all, though, you can’t help but think that you’d be as well listening to the record, which surely would be very interesting indeed, and well worth searching out.
Well now. Before moving on to the next lot, it’s worth pointing out that I had no idea what we were about to witness. Perhaps the selection of weird looking instruments should have been a clue. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the band members goatees, suits, and shades. It seemed someone had opened a window and let the Beatniks in.
Without doubt one of the strangest acts to have been seen around here recently, VOLCANO THE BEAR inhabit a bizarre sonic-performance-art universe where surreal exhibitionism mates with spiritual free jazz improvisation and begets bizarre experimental noise terrorism. They are wired, weird and transcendently wise. Tonight the audience at West 13th were perplexed and educated in equal measures by the extent of this touring band’s sonic vision. Their innovative use of live free improv, electronica, shamanic chanting, and surrealist home-made instrumentation made for a wonderfully fresh and humorous concert, full of madness and surprises. Hoovers were fitted with reeds, turned into spinning digeri-saxophones, the electric guitar played with pliers and a bow and what may have been an electric razor, insane jazz drumming and wild woodwind jamming, dark, brooding electronic background washes, the drummer wearing a tom-tom as a hat while reciting poetry…(?). The show was inspirational in its complexity and craziness, and, creditably, a Glaswegian audience weaned on power chords and angst were genuinely appreciative. It may have taken a wee while, though, for some of their brains to compute that what they had seen had actually occurred. No, you haven’t been abducted by aliens and transported to some alternative universe of abstract noise, yes, that is Planet Earth down there, under your feet, and you must drink up and go get the bus home. Searching the ‘net I’ve found a little more about the group, they are from England somewhere, have released several albums of this bizarreness, and are quite serious about it all. That’s a relief. You might have thought they were making it up as they went along.
Fittingly a strange fog had fallen on Argyle Street when I left the venue. I can't help but think VTB generated it somehow with their soundwaves. And this is the time of year for such wizardry……………