| The most talked about performance before the gig was the debut #3.02 performance of a reformed Oswald III. Their music was markedly different from previous performances but overwhelmingly more powerful. The sweet yet droned vocals of Lucy Humphrys were set through a flanger and combined expertly with sonic guitar playing by Dominick Allen whose experimentation with sounds is comparable to Glenn Branca and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen but with a beauty which neither of the previous could ever fully capture. His masterary of effects and of pure sounds is as finely crafted as an mirco-artists sculptures and his playing achieved new levels at this virgin performance of the new line-up. Matt Alston's bass playing underlined the performance and the deep, distorted sounds he made with his bass were incredible. Him and Adam Bird the new drummer kept the experimentation of Allen within the music in an amazing way and glued it all together. Throughout the performance a shy Humphrys' rarely made eye contact with the audience and looked away with a forlorn beauty which somehow expressed her emotions and being in a musical way through the telepathic frequencies of the mind and soul. Allen was hunched over his effects and was completely lost in himself and the music while Alston stood stationary like the rock his playing was to the music. Bird hit his percussion with the regularity of a metronome and his complex crossrhythms and polyrhythms amazed. |