War Against Sleep, 10th Feb

War Against Sleep / SJ Esau / Cult Of Eris, Team Brick,
The Croft, 10 Feb

More noisy madness from Team Brick, I entered the room to multi-layered vocals building in intensity before being destroyed by horrible screaming noise. When you think it's getting too much for your ears he somehow manages to scrape some sort of melody out of the mayhem. Oh thank goodness, he's picking up his guitar� It's hard to describe the song that followed, starting with a single chord and building to a shouted chorus, TB is joined on stage by violin, trombone, bass, drums and SJ Esau on white delay box, who sampled the music and turned it into noise. I don't know whether this was just a one off, it could be an exciting new direction, or maybe he's just proving he can do it. Which he can. The song was great.

Unlike Cult of Eris, who suffer from a guitarist who sings what he plays, thus rendering all his wonderful pedals and fantastic noises useless because it's just not interesting. It is a real shame because there is gothic screaming darkness in the music and it could be much better.

SJ Esau played a star-studded set featuring guests such as Joe (Twocsinak) and Freeze Puppy as well as all his usual friends, playing other people's versions of his songs. Or theirs. I couldn't really tell. It was patchy, some stuff worked, other bits didn't.

War Against Sleep are at times funky, others quasi-jazz crooning, their songs recalling the early days of the Divine Comedy, but with a bit more edge. Show tunes with a sinister bent. It's scary, but it works.