Team Brick, Desdemona, When they know you they will run
It seems obvious to me now, the place I mean. As I cycled up and down the long road as directed by the reliably unreliable Team Brick I very nearly gave up and went home. 'Past the Louie, up the longroad it's on the right somewhere by the marina', he'd told me. Several dark and foreboding industrial estates later I found someone looking as lost as I was. 'Hello, you look as lost as I am', he said. Amazingly, we had encountered each other right outside the very place we were looking for! Why they don't put signs up outside the building I don't know.
The mission I'd chosen to accept was to take as many drums and percussive things as I could carry to be part of an improv / percussion / choir under the 'guidance' of Team Brick. Of course you can't have expectations for this sort of thing, so when I encountered toy drum kits, pots & pans, glasses, a traffic cone with Perspex strapped to the bottom… I knew it was going to be interesting. 'Right I'll start, we all sing and everyone can join in playing - let's see what happens.' A bit later: 'Right. When it all gets quiet and I'm sawing my cymbal like this (saws cymbal) I want all the big drums to play really loud… and then out of time...'
So on the night, as all the other bands and their mates watched we hit stuff, chanted, got loud - quiet - loud, screamed for a bit and then lay dead for an age.As we lay there and the confused clapping died out, the silence became filled with nervous whispers and giggling. At one point someone walked into the room, some people standing at the back and some lying in a circle, and asked what was going on. 'There's some people lying on the floor', 'I think it's art', followed by a mobile phone going of which cracked everyone up.We had fun playing some good rhythms, it certainly felt intense from where I was sitting, we definitely made a terrible noise and all those watched claimed they had enjoyed it... Photos courtesy of Dec (Clicky)
On Choke, someone said: "The first wave of the English resistance to the new weird America movement in full force this evening, never entirely sure whether they want to be NNCK, the master musicians of Joujouka or a bunch of pseudo-art students playing improv. The closing scene of a load of (not-dead-looking) dead people in silence meets with awkward laughs and coughs, either a Cage-ian tribute or an art-school gag gone right."
Brick replied: "art, schmart, i just wanted to make some more fun music, originally we were going to run out of the place, but it woulda been slow, so we died." Isn't that just the way it goes?
Desdemona picked their way through the pieces of broken tambourine on the floor and claimed it was the weirdest gig they've been to. They then proceeded to play some poppy indie songs, with a woman singing outrageous melodies over the top. Occasionally she comes back to the right harmonies and sings with the keyboard player, but generally sounds well off the pitch. We'd been told it was 'some hippy band' and I guess that's a good way to describe it. Individually, all very good musicians (especially the bass player), but the collective sound doesn't seem to gel consistently enough.
When they know you they will run a three-piece, like Mogwai / Godspeed but much more impatient. Not for these boys the eternal build up, they set up their melodies then cut straight to the loud noisy part. I stayed for the intensity, because I like the ringing Big Muff - Delay - Reverb guitar sound. But after a few songs it gets a bit samey.