Gig Reflection Part 2 Mother at Fylkingen Staer (Nor) 13th of February 2014

After a beer or two its time for the main event, the Noiserock trio Staer from Norway. 

The band has positioned themselves on the floor. Im not sure but Ive always felt a bit annoyed when people set up flat on the floor but with Staer its a blessing. It feels like a privilege to be close to see what is going on. The trio is placed with drummer Thore Warland firmly placed in the centre. 

As some of you might know Im originally a percussionist. Thats were I started and I always look for new and interesting drummers or percussionists. I like everyone from Ringo to Aphex Twin to Tom Waits and Harry Partch and back again.

So when we were about to start up my old band Änglagård again I started to look around to see what was going on on the drumming scene. I wanted to do my homework, find out what was going on...and I must say I wasnt really too impressed.

This is sort of what I found or things quite like it.

Hours and hours of practise.

And to me it sort of actually feels like this.

Complicated drumming.

There are amazing drummers out there but when I listen to them all I hear are chops, math and endless hours of practising but sadly enough....almost no Ideas or visions. No personality. To me Bill Bruford, Stewart Copeland and Jaki Liebzeit are still people I admire and look up to as their feel is so personal and strong. The superdrummers nowadays that are perceived as being great are of course very impressive. But their drumming never moves me, it leaves me cold. 

Staers drummer is very much the opposite. He has chops but his ideas and approach are filled with personality and a very unique dialect. His way of moving around a kit is inspiring and his body language speaks volumes.

The start of the show. 

The bands guitarist and bassplayer build a massive stompboxlaced wall of dark noise. I have to come clear though on one point...when you have two musicians with a whammy pedal each and multiple Moogerfoogers you know that clean harmonies and sing-a-long choruses arent on the menu. They sound more like two tuned tanks trying to pocketpark in downtown Dhaka. 

Its a rivetting display of sounds and layers but not exactly hummable.

But to my immense joy even though bass and drums lock occasionally the playing field is pretty much open for this truly remarkable drummer.

The encore 

His style is very loopy which I love. His drumming is based around a open doublestroke moved freely around the kit. I have never heard a drummer play in this manner before. The actual drumming technique is definitely not new, he uses a very simple basic foundaton of drumming but utilizes it in a refreshing and exciting way. As a bonus I can also tell you that it is very uncomfortable playing like this for extended time. Well atleast for me.

He also used a very cool sonic technique. Contact miking his cymbals and then pulling them out thru a mixer and into an amp. In my experience cymbals generally dont need too much miking 

but this added another dimension to the sound.

From the first note to the last I stood there with a big stupid grin on my face.

I have played the clips to my wife and some of my friends and they all look at me with a slightly confused look on their faces. A mix between Why? What? and a splash of Whatever....

But I was there and I saw the light. 

And it came in the shape of an exceptionally talented Norwegian Drummer.

Gig Reflection Part 1 Mother at Fylkingen Horatio Pollard (UK/Arg) 13th of February 2014

A rainy thursday night in Stockholm and I go to two gigs by myself. The promoter is Gavin Maycroft. A wonderful positive force in the Stockholm underground. Gavin is always amplifying the odd, illuminating the noiserdden dark and poking old farts like me in the chest saying the way I view music is stale, dead and with very little hope of surviving this spring.  We all need that from time to time.

So to the first gig of the night....

A wonderfully abrasive loopyness emanates from the table packed with cables and stompboxes. Detuning sirens and freeform ambulances slither over stitched together rhythms. And it sounds amazing. Collagey but with a strong force forward. The music is rhythmic but often collapses over deconstructed barlines. People in the audience bobbing their heads as if the was the grooviest funkmachine exploding and in a weird way it is. The audience consists mostly of younger men but there are a handful women as well.

Due to the rhythms it has some weird leanings towards messy deranged Hip Hop. But as a recipient I realize my limitations...without the intelligent drums and rhythms I would find this almost unlistenable but with rhythms now it becomes quite attractive, multilayered with a dynamic sense of tempo and texture.

Horatio Pollard looks like a mix between a member of Steve Zissous crew and a hungover Icelandic fisherman. Which oddly enough is exactly how his vocals sounds. Slightly mumbly and with loads of echo the lyrics seems to consist of mainly two words. Erm and Aom.

But dont get me wrong...both erm and aom are sung with confidence and gusto into buckets of dubby delays. Im just worried that if god by chance decided to talk thru Horatio Pollard on this rainy February night I might have missed the message. Come again? Come again?

The films shown behind him are collagey. Stockfootage of german pensioneers and paratroopers practising. B-movie aliens and model trains. Pollards music both amplifies and detracts. I find films during gigs difficult. Wether you like it or not its hard to not watch. Is it random or super thought out? Is it supposed to sync? Are the old people in the movie a symbol of decay in our moral values and the fact that I need to pick up orange juice on my way home? Sometimes its hard to tell.

As usual at gigs in 2014 its hard to tell how much was prerecorded. Ive never been a fan of the whole two monkeys and a apple scenario so I took the chance and asked Horatio about his setup. I was happy that I did.

There are no apples involved at all. Hooray! The heart of his setup is Korg DDD-1 drummachine and it triggers samples and all the weirdness. There are several outputs running thru delays and stompboxes. The small cut up horn samples are played from the DDD-1. Knowing this changed my whole impression of the gig to the better. All of a sudden it felt like a organic performance instead of someone pressing spacebar 19.45 to start the music and then one more time 20.15 to turn it off.

Now playing: Tom Petty - You dont know how it feels