Choke Magazine Launch, 31st Mar

The Croft is packed on this fine Friday night, packed full of people who are desperate to read more of my wonderful gig reviews, in full black and white on Real Paper. Obviously there are other writings in the magazine too. The pub is also packed with Chokers and the usual Friday night crowd who just wanted to go to the pub, not realising that a full invasion is in effect.

Knowledge of Bugs kicks off proceedings, sitting behind a table in a scientist's white coat. The table is covered in technical-looking things a little keyboard with a hundred red buttons glued on, a piece of circuitry, boxes composed more of knobs and switches than box and lots of wires. It appears that the coat he wears is not just for show, because Tom Bugs has made all these things himself and he is about to take us on a scientific journey of sound creation.

Here we have a gentle drone created through buzzes and echoing guitar. There he taps the table and records it to create a beat. While this is bubbling away nicely through delay and other strange effects Bugs throws in some home-made slide guitar, a dash of gentle melody with his voice weaving around the echoing notes. It is captivating to watch him at work, and the eerie soundscapes created keep you transfixed, feeling the harmonies and melodies subtly changing, waiting to find out what happens next, what that box will do, what sound, what noise, what he will say...

Jimi Hendrix wakes me from my reverie. Tom has finished and the DJ takes over. There will be no continuity of musical styles tonight, this is a celebration of Choke's diversity and its far-reaching involvement with the world of new and exciting music in Bristol. The magazine reflects this diversity in the opinions of the writers and styles of music experienced therein. Hopefully it will address some of the accusations that the Choke community is elitist and only panders to its mates, but I still have a housemate who believes we only write about our friends, without even noticing that most of the music therein is from out of town bands. Well they must be all noisey noise then he says, but I point out that there are rock bands, electronic bands, dance music, noise, punk, heavy metal, acoustic and folky. He picks it up again and starts to read. I don't know what anyone can do to address this. It's only an internet thing. It's not even like the forum's more important. The music is important.

It has been a long time since I first encountered North Sea Navigator at the Polish club right after a bad break-up and my first ever Choke-related gig. Tonight they are on a mission to be the best they've ever been. Although the added volume drowns out the cello a bit, the three vocalists are loud and clear, the harmonium is delightfully menacing and the songs from the album Make The Blacklist are edgy, beautiful, driving, and much more dance-able than they've been before. While I'm finding it difficult to describe just how good this gig was, at the time of writing a week later the song Aileen Wuornos is still reverberating around my skull with its great rhythm and angst-ridden melody.

The genres swing off at another tangent when 3hostwomexicansandatinofspanners hit their first chord, with epic heavy guitar rock giving way to furiously paced speed riffing. The two guitarists share vocal duties stroke shouting matches but the words don't matter - it's the delivery, the rhythm of the words exploding out of their mouths and how it fits with the music stopping and starting behind it. The rock-metal-punk waxes and wanes, it builds to shrieking hysteria with great timing and breaks down to almost funky rock before the next hilarious assault. The musical term 'con fuoco' springs to mind, which I always imagined to mean 'like fuck' although really it means like fire. Later I discover through searching the internet that they are just as good on record. Definitely one to add to the growing list of discoveries through Choke...

The evening is closed by a set of Euro techno trance disco horror courtesy of Antoni Maiovvi, A.K.A. My Ambulance Is On Fire A.K.A. art noise metal group Geisha front man. This is no normal DJ set, the music comes out of a laptop and Antoni has all his guitar pedals laid out next to it. While the music kicks off, he is twiddling knobs and pushing buttons. A microphone is clasped to his chest, the crescendo begins to build and slowly it lifts...

 

The scream when it comes fills the space that is usually reserved for the boring old snare / crash build up. It reverberates round the music, filling all the spaces, distorted and resonating to my very core. While he is screaming I know of nothing else. When he stops, I cannot imagine how the scream sounded and the music seems to be all the more uplifting because of it. As the set continues, we are treated to different forms and sounds of screaming over dance music, the like of which I have never encountered before and will probably never encounter again. There is talk of a CD though.

I buy two copies of the magazine since obviously I am proud to find myself in print and the GF wants a copy for her house. Something to add to the CV, I think and begin to read. The quality of writing is excellent, considering that most of us are just people who love music, write about loving music and argue endlessly about why we love music. Available in all good shops now!