Illuminati On

I've seen From Light To Sound again since this review was written, and they were already about 15 times better. Really great stuff. I intend to take all credit for this.

FROM LIGHT TO SOUND/ THIN GREEN CANDLES, The Wheatsheaf, 14/3/09

A conspiracist who believed in an Oxford clique would be appalled by tonight’s lineup, a mixture of promoter, reviewer, celebrated musician and message board urchin, who are nearly all in other local projects. Grand esoteric cabal or not, even our paranoid theorist would admit that it was a strong evening’s music.

Thin Green Candles is the laptop work of one man, performed live with a further four musicians, who are presumably there because some undying Rock School niggle dictates that you’re not in a real band until you have real instruments, but who in reality just muddle along to some decent electronica. Take “Good Dead”, a lively kickdrum thumper with some raspily distorted Kaoss squiggles sounding like an old acid house record played down a CB, to which the live ensemble add little, aside from horrible headgear. In fairness, the occasional vocals are sweetly melodic, and the bass has a fruitiness that the synthesised music can’t capture, but the guitar is especially clumsy, frequently falling into default Pink Floyd arpeggios. Tellingly, on the final piece the band messes up, coming out of synch with the laptop, and by necessity comes up with an intriguingly noisy solution to ending the track. “Honour your mistakes as hidden intentions”, as Brian Eno might counsel.

By contrast, From Light To Sound’s music is impeccably put together, thoughtfully arranged and expertly dynamically controlled. This band’s members may have juicy CVs, but it’s still noteworthy how naturally they’re playing together after only a handful of gigs (some over-zealous guitar volume notwithstanding). The rhythm section particularly impresses, Mark Baker bringing an unhurried bass authority from The Workhouse, and Mark “Evenings” Wilden managing to make his drums brutal and cheeky simultaneously. They don’t quite have the compositions as yet to do such a band justice: sometimes their tracks resemble offcuts and scrapings from their parent bands, squeezed together like a frugal ball of soap slivers, whilst at worst they sound like a melange of Audioscope-type bands so obvious we can’t even be bothered to type them. Go on, have a guess.

So, two new bands which are entertaining and enormously promising, even if they might still have some developing to do.But we would say that, wouldn’t we? We’re in the clique.