Skip The Budgie

A festival of Noise. And they weren't wrong either. The full listing comprised of Friday 15: Cephalic Inscription, A Lion, Big Joan, Tractor, Iron Hearse, Walrus and Saturday 16: Fruit of the Doom, Hunting Lodge, Lead to Wine, Mea Culpa, Thread, Geisha... The venue couldn't have been more appropriate, even though we approached in a spiral pattern having read some erroneous directions on the internet, Sk8 and Ride with it's corridors and small rooms (and obviously a big hall full of ramps and half pipes), provided a good little back room for encouraging deafness and tinnitus. As such, some of the more 'noisy' bands suffered greatly from sounding terrible. Or maybe they really were.

I had a brief discussion on the definition of noise with Geisha front man Tone, mainly because they are often described as such, in fact they insist that they are and laugh when I call them metal. So I asserted that I wouldn't call them a noise band because they have tunes, and music. When I think of 'noise' I think of indefinable sounds, sounds that cannot be given names like 'chord', 'note', 'harmony', 'melody'. When faced with sounds this heavy, the last two do seem a little out of place, but I hold that they are there, if you listen. So anyway, Tone says that it is more about the attitude of the band than the music. 'Most metal bands connect with the audience because they sing about things the audience hates so they have a camaraderie there', he said, 'Geisha don't do that we hate the audience as well, that's what being a noise band means to me'. I just think they're using the words wrong, but I told him he had to prove it to me when they play on Saturday. 'You love the audience', I said, 'No! we hate you all!' he insisted.

So anyway, on both nights we missed the first two bands… curse our casual lateness! This meant I missed Thread, Lead to Wine, Cephalic Inscription, A Lion and Walrus, some of whom I had wanted to see, others I have no regret about missing, since I had heard nothing about them anyway - sorry guys! Still there'll be other nights. Of the bands I actually saw, obviously some pleased me and some... well... didn't. It has taken me too long to actually go and see Big Joan, but fortunately they didn't disappoint me. The music is almost dance-like (that's 'dance' as a beats and breaks genre) but punk… like. The rest of Friday's bands were largely lost due to absinthe and being outside, but I caught the tail end of Iron Hearse, bluesy metal, as I recall, I also recall thinking they were really good. Sean, the drummer from Tractor told me I wouldn't like Tractor and he was right. Laboured, slow loud noise, probably everything the weekend was supposed to mean, I imagine, but not for me. Or anyone really.

I've wanted to see Mea Culpa for a while now, having heard the muffled shouting noise on their web site, and they were much much more accomplished than I had expected. Most metal bands have one person shouting, they have two. And a member who crouches behind a small keyboard with an ebow. Moments of staggering beauty break up the wall of noise, as the audience undulated to accommodate the hyperactive front men. The moshing was bound to happen, and when it did no-one seemed to be surprised, but I was too wrapped up in the music to mind so much.

Geisha followed, the moment I had been waiting for - Tone glowered at the microphone, I waited for the bile and hatred he had promised me. 'Alright,' he said, 'how you doing?' Not quite the torrent of abuse he had been waiting for. 'He loves us really' I thought, as I settled down to enjoy another storming Geisha set. They were followed by Hunting Lodge, whom I am assured sound a lot better on CD, but who have also been lauded by a lot of the people who attended (bands, anyway) to be the highlight of the weekend. I really don't understand the enthusiasm for a band that can ruin some apparently good songs with some terrible guitar sounds. The bass had no bass! Yes, mock my traditionalism if you want, you crazy experimentalists, but when I am assaulted by a wall of treble in a tinny room I get a bit cross that the bassist thinks it's 'groundbreaking' to play through a Big Muff PI with the bass turned down while the guitarists are playing at the top of the fretboard... I didn't stay very long. Long enough to get a headache, but like I said, the songs might have been a lot better if there had been a greater range of frequencies.

Fruit of the Doom - Like noisy Nu-Metal with rapping. Sounds like some other similar bands - I don't want to insult them further by making comparisons. Well practised, but annoying I'm afraid! So having drunk all the absinthe and watched the ups and downs - on Saturday there were people injecting in the toilets - mm nice! But overall the Sk8 and Ride was actually a pretty cool venue for this kind of thing. It probably won't be open for longer than a year so we'll have to make sure it gets used as much as possible before then...