I managed to amuse myself, if few others, over the course of the weekend by telling them that I was covering the Supersonic Festival for “the online home of metal, FACT Magazine”.
To be fair, while Birmingham justifiably takes a lot of pride in its position as if not the home, then at least the birthplace of metal (your Zep, your Priest, your Sabbath, your, er, Death), the Supersonic festival is not strictly a metal festival. The lineup for the eight edition of this Birmingham institution did, however, feature a not unimpressive number of metal acts, as well as an even greater number who create new forms from its constituent elements. In addition to building the links between hardcore rock and dance forms, it followed the path into the blackest of noise and showcased non-metal artists who seemed to draw on primitive and even quasi-religious sources, as well as providing a venue for those who wanted to celebrate the riff in all its ridiculous, repetitive glory. Perhaps the most unifying theme was that whatever the form, be it metal or drum’n’bass, noise or krautrock, it was almost always loud. And wherever we are from, we can all get with that.
The Friday lineup was about extremes, represented by two very different Midlands institutions. The night ended with a trip to the aforementioned Birmingham grindcore factory, Napalm Death, but they were made to sound a little on the feeble side after a visit to the harshest jungle as represented by PCM. The duo have appeared at every Supersonic festival so far, and I can see why: their quickfire succession of high bpm drum and bass made heads spin in the most reliable of fashions. During the rest of the day, various acts tried to find ways to bridge the gap from metal to electronica – from Gum Takes Tooth’s electrified Sabbath riffs, twisting and breaking drumbeats in real time, to Drumcorps’s one-man-metal-band, recreating an entire thrash metal troupe from samples and guitar – although none truly convinced.
Cloaks
More successful were the occasions where electronic musicians attempted to cross the divide in the other direction. A DJ set from Cloaks featured dubstep and industrial beats so scarred and distorted that they could only be indentified by dental records. It sounded like they’d tossed all of their records off a cliff before playing them. Kevin Martin’s King Midas Sound project was also transformed beyond recognition on the Supersonic stage. All the huge cavernous spaces of the Waiting For You album were filled with electrical hum, swathes of noise, shrieking guitars, and, of course, that massive bass (you could hear the roof rattle). As this heavy sound swirled around, even more than before vocalists Roger Robinson and Hitomi sounded like they were chronicling 4am dancehall psychosis; indeed, if the set had one flaw, it was that it was on about seven hours too early. It ended with five minutes of Martin alone on stage, mistreating a sample of howling heavy metal guitar in a manner which reminded you that in a previous life he shared a band with Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick.
As Martin had shown, the pursuit of noise for its own visceral sake is a worthwhile endeavour, with the right guides, and a member of Wolf Eyes will always show you the right path. Wolf Eyes’ Nate Young has teamed with Werewolves’ Steve Kenney to form Demons, an audio-visual broken synth noise project. Tonight they budged up to let their touring partner Sick Llama share the stage, adding his muddy tape loops and clarinet drones to the mix. The music built and shifted slowly and powerfully, sounding like the first ten milliseconds of a nuclear explosion stretched out to thirty minutes. They occupied the whole frequency spectrum, from an almost dub-like pulsing bass echo at the bottom to some high end hypnagogic bleeps at the top, but with so many layers and so many textures in between; combined with the visuals drifting in and out of focus in the background this became a full-on assault to the senses.
Pages: 1 2
-
Jahdi
-
Anthony
-
Jim??