Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons, Melbourne Festival Hub, Oct 25th 2013

Brilliant, just freaking brilliant but please don't ask me why! There were some vocals hideously treated by effects and yelled through a toddlers plastic tannoy at one point, and there was a token bit of bashing a floor tom but for the main part it was a show with all the rock'n'roll thrills of watching your nerdy nephews playing air hockey in a poorly lit garage.
The back projected shadows were cool though...how did they do that? And it was fun watching the little R2D2 robot spots doing their stuff.

Fuck Buttons..yesterday.

But somehow Id still rate the gig as brilliant : the bass was monstrous, felt in yr trousers and loins more than your ears and it was impossible not to get immersed and drowned in the rolling waves of noise, pulled in, down and apart by the undertow of tones, textures and vibrations, each song like an 8 minute long vertical black hole waterslide with no need to walk back up the steps (trunks chafing) before being sucked screaming into the next wormhole.... At one point scary vocal samples seemed to merge and match with the drumbeats, or did they? who knows? it may have been some devilish harmonic or one of the pieces of found/stolen/home assembled equipment on the operating table desperately reciting its prime directive as it was stressed to breaking point...

No Inxs Covers, no between song banter, no plugging the merch, no declarations of love for sweet planet Melbourne: just how it should be cos these boys are not born of soul and funk, they are the spawn of noise and punk, the legacy of Suicide not James Brown, Velvet Underground not Motown. There are drones not horns, breakbeats are distorted, everything here is twisted and bent: its dance but theres no way its disco. ..err its not Indie rock either though as a "fan" noted on the bands Facebook page after they played at Saturdays ATP fiasco:
"I saw you last night YOU WERE TOTAL SHIT, an insult to my eyes, ears and intelligence Fuck Buttons are FUCKED, you sucked!!! What a joke that you were on before the Breeders too!"

I used to have a drum machine with a button marked "space drum" , this button made an LED flash and inserted a couple of really loud "pooh-Pooh" synth drum beats into every bar and was pretty much unusable in any way since it drove you crazy before you got half way through the first verse....the "turn it fucking off" Button. 
Through the history of popular music use of the space drum has been attempted rarely and almost never mastered, Anita Wards' "Ring my bell " nailed it, and it doesn't get any better than Kelly Maries' "Feels like I'm in love"...and now in 2013 the Buttons wrestle it to the ground, strap it in-line with the warp drives and use it to power the epic "Red Wing" into the void.. my favourite FB tune  and the only song I recognised tonight which, though it was not exactly "note for note" faithful to the original, served the purpose of proving the whole lot wasn't improvised .

and all done by 10:15 too...

Polyphonic Spree



Polyphonic Spree, Melbourne Festival Hub, Oct 22 2013

...finally got around to seeing the 'Spree...after 10 years...and it was great: Gold old fashioned big band entertainment. I did enjoy it despite myself.. it would have been soooo good in 2003 though...
I quickly got over the moment of "wow: Harmony with horns!" and probably my biggest issue with this show (once you get past the front guys titanic ego) is the fact that the girls weren't loud enough...The mix was fine otherwise but I needed a bit more chorus line and a bit less "him". Then I kept thinking how much do you get paid in a band with 14 people? Are half the band "interns" getting paid in bread and cheese while Timbo goes 4 star?  Then I had another (expensive but nice ) beer and tried to relax and go with the moment.
Anyways these guys have long since moved on from the Aquarian-Cult-Gospel-Mutants that gave us that miraculous first album, and they're more than happy to earn a crust (or not if you are work experience tuba boy) as a(nother) pretty decent indie band with an excessive number of members...lets face it they have fared better than Arcade Fire and the Revs/Lips have completely lost it these days.....I recognised quite a few tunes though I only have that first LP  and the cover of Inxs' Don't Change was a highlight (it was better than Grinspoons'....) but there were enough hits from across the catalogue  to keep the crowd happy (and no Rocky Horror showtunes, thank Gaia) .

The venue was awesome : a temporary 500 people capacity wooden box with pretty good sound and lights built on the side of the Yarra for the Melbourne Festival : 'really looking forward to Fuck Buttons in there on Friday.

After a cursory and abridged stab at my favourite Soldier Girl, the singer finally convinced the band and audience that they should play a Tripping Daisy  cover (His old band from the 90's - getting 1/4 rather than 1/14 of the performance rights for that one!!))  but that was 2 and quarter hours after the set started and It was heard only as it faded into the rain as I crossed the bridge back to Flinders St. and the last train home...on a school night.



Yeh I know: I decided to tape probably the weakest song of the night, no idea what it is called...but he was carping on about Micky Dolenz for 5 minutes before...its really saying something when the least poppy/uplifting number in a bands set turns out to be a Monkees cover!!

Pioneers of Good Science

So, the football was crap: $100 for the tickets - 0:0 draw..I had a cold..I should've gone to bed .but we headed over to Nth Fitzroy for this thing...A yuppie bar full of hipsterettes drinking (as I did ) $8 stubbies of Czech beer that would cost 30c at their place of origin. The venue was a "Cinema" in the back with room for maybe 30 people...more like a TV/rumpus room in any mcMansion out Templestowe way ..but with less air con.... would be good for porn  I remember thinking ...but the p.a sucked ..ok I wasn't in the mood for anything other than quality time with my ever-faithful doona ..but I did enjoy a lot of what these guys did....


Who could resist those 3 word verse/choruse/refrains...and then theres that glorious chugging (foo fighters "Everlong") guitar part ..(I know..Im sorry ....(shame on me ( I recognised it)(now I cant get it out of my head)) .).. and at last: badly dressed, ugly...UGLY band people  - im soooo sick of cute bass players and bands who look like they got a stylist when what they needed was an idea..

ok: sometimes there was too much -almost-grungey-over-fuzzed-guitar-pedally shite thrashing around with nowhere to go : its another bloody 2 piece after all ...but potential fer sure...can I go home to bed now? pls?

The video back drop was great : road trip "out the window" footage with green screened rotating universe nebulas overlaid with synthetic rain/snow/ash drop.... how I imagine driving through a forest fire would look....

Anyway check out the bandcamp tunes: "the end always is"...has another 3 word vocal...and "the only way" slows it down for the ladeez with motown drums, colossally distorted spiralling guitar skating along replete with neck hair tingling golden lifestyle band vocal flash backs ..stupidly good stuff.

Masses

Masses/Vaarallinen, Oct 7th 2013, Northcote Social Club
We had a sneaky/surprise daylight savings change at the weekend so this was the first time this year I have left for Monday night mass in the daylight .. ok I got there 15 minutes early but that's not the point.


Masses..yesterday.

Masses are Sexy post-card-crust-Goths playing not-quite Xmal keyboard driven pos(i)t(ive) punk....sounds like it would be right up my  alley don't it? it wasnt.
All the songs were nice and short.. but something didn't gel,  singerBoy: overDelayed, bassChick : overFlanged,  synthGirl: overDressed, drummerBoy: overBandana'ed and ultimately the sum was less than its parts. Missing that vital ingredient ....

You'd park them in the same vacant lot as Adelaides Rule of Thirds and like them they are in dire need of RACV assistance before they find themselves up on bricks, with stereo and number plates liberated and nothing much to look forward to other than being torched by 13 year olds in expensive trainers.

....later that night...after a couple of Carltons finest....

So (screeched in a belligerent rant) Where did this term "finnish style" of punk come from? isnt it fucking old skool ENGLISH punk rock? VAARALLINEN have a Finnish name , are from Singapore and play Finnish Punk...and ...I didnt want their set to Finish!! ha ha : its the way I tell em.....

There was a decent crowd and heaps of chaos happened: I never thought Id see (or be an unwilling participant of)  a circle pit in the social club, on a Monday night...but it happened , I know 'cos I was there, in fact I was  knocked off my feet, I lost my glasses and smashed my camera to bits ..and I was just watching!!!
The camera survived but unfortunately the video clip didn't...I spent a couple of hours trying to download something to fix the file but the closest I got was an app that teased me by showing the salvaged footage then demanding payment to save the repaired file..b'stards.

The band really kicked it, supporting my pet theory that good music only comes from cultural (and/or economic)  constraints..have you been to Singapore? Clean, great food, warm, zero unemployment....a living hell.....the anti-Finland I guess!
I cant offer a better genre description (maybe Norwegian? Danish perhaps?) but it reminded me of that time  just before things got all GBH/Discharge but just after they were all Crass/Subhumans... a couple of grind bands  played on the night as well but I hate that shit and it just reinforced how good REAL punk rock can sound.
Top night out.

Dire Ears

Dire Ears , Loop. Sunday 6th October 2013
I'm always at a loose end on Sundays and normally just get depressed...Sunday afternoon gigs: love em!
We missed Penguins and Dire Ears (get it? get it? its a play on words, try saying it real quick over an over again) were in full flight as we walked down a deserted Bourke Street so luckily we were able to walk to the sound of the throbs , luckily that is 'cos I was just about to turn in completely the wrong direction and get totally lost..
Loop is up a laneway opposite the Old Metro and is probably some sort of arty trendy pseudo dive bar during the week, there were thick Perspex abattoir curtains on multiple rails and about a dozen projectors around the walls...and Stella on tap.

Dire Ears didnt need the projectors though, dude brought his own rig : 4 industrial strength halogen lamps mounted on a stand behind his gear facing the audience, Its easy to recognise this guy if you saw him on the tram though: the back of his neck and head will be pretty severely sunburnt.

The retina blazing worked really well with the harsh white noise screaming pulse he was coaxing out of a pile of gadgets on the desk.  I made a mental note to check my Non record when I got home to see if it was this good and ...errr..yes it was/is.

Pronouns projected images onto the wall as he did his stuff, it was , for me, a bit old hat though..nothing you havent seen a million times..I wondered initially if the images were the noise visualised but that that thought didnt last long: clouds, blurs, water..whatever. I didnt think the noise was as good as the first act either, there were more tonal elements and probably a bit more dynamics...but I liked Dire Ears relentless barrage better...

I didn't bother taping anything....check out Dictaphone weirdo for 13 minutes of Dire Ears audio bliss if you feel the need...