Audioscope 2005 Sunday

Right then. The only good thing about typing this guff out again, is that it involves sitting down and I have a huge blister on my foot.

Bet you thought I was going to say something crude about sailors, didn't you?

And so Sunday's feast begins, with somewhat blearier eyes, but just as much excitement. I'll admit to having seen (and reviewed) The Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element twice previously, and been left uninspired, but since Stuart Fowkes informed me they were probably the two worst gigs he'd ever played, I was happy to give them another shot. This proved wise, as SNSE kick off the day's festivities with a clattering fanfare. Despite a couple of technical hitches the rhythm tracks are crunchily glorious, sounding something like a crackling longwave radio broadcast of a rabble of origami fiends let loose in a Zildjian warehouse. On occasion the guitar parts that overlay them feel like a mildly stodgy attempt to translate studio music into the live arena, but when the penultimate tune seems to be a series of baroque variations on the "I Wanna Be Your Dog" progression, these concerns are put away for another day.

N0ught play an ornate jazz-metal-math hybrid, and they do so incredibly loudly. They've often been described as "difficult" but I actually find them very pleasant to listen to: like a Pollock painting or a dense forest it's impossible to take in all the details individually, but this doesn't necessarily transalate into a challenging experience. Nothing today quite has the sheen and power it did a mere week before when N0ught supported The Fall, but one still feels in the presence of one of Oxford's great art bands. And come on, it's on four pm on Sunday - we're knackered and we've only got to listen to this music, let alone perform it.

Speaking of art rock, what would N0ught sound like if all the musicians were replaced by minor characters from the Super Mario universe? A little like Quack Quack, I'd wager. Their jazzy, slightly krautische instrumentals are played in a crinkly, faltering style and might be the type of thing you'd hear if miniature Neu! members came free with Kinder Surprise. Whilst there is a minor air of the self-congratulatory about it all ("Look! I'm playing my keyboard slightly badly! What do I win?"), they do have some surprises up their sleeves, including the penultimate number, which very strangely threatens to turn into "Morning" from Grieg's first Peer Gynt suite. Quack Quack are hard to categorise and most satisfying.

Call your band Lords and you'd better be good, it's too much of a tempting target if not. Luckily, this Nottingham troupe delivers the goods, along with some unexpected oddments that must have accrued in transit. If you cut "Sweet Home Alabama" into tiny pieces and threw it to some guitar wielding wolves, you might just end up with the opening track. Things continue in a similar vein for thirty minutes, Lords repeatedly sounding like the crippled ghost of a roadhouse boogie band being pummelled by a hardcore wrecking crew, or a post-Shellac trio meeting Beefheart's "China Pig" head on in a messy collision. "Makes you want to dance like a Russian," claims the programme; makes you want to drink like a Texan, too, such is the intermittently exposed bluesy underbelly.

Continuing a recent trend in the larger dance labels of realising that full bands can often get far more toes tappiung than pasty technogeeks, Ninja Tune have picked up Liverpool's Super Numeri. They perform one extended piece with free jazz sax and guitar throwing high end skreeks over a chugging funk backing. At times it does sound like a firy new hybrid of styles, but mostly it just sounds like a busload of seagulls divebombing The Exeter Hall's Sunday jam session. The only proper dud of the weekend.

I thought we might have exhausted the post-rocking guitar instrumental angle by now, but Billy Mahonie spring into life proving me thoroughly wrong once again. Unlike their peers at the festival, Billy's pieces sound like wordless songs, rather than unkempt opuses, and are all the more successful for it. They may not be The Shadows by any means, but there is something of taut funk generals The Meters about the elastic snapping of the guitar lines and the clipped urgency of the rhythm section. The third number (details uncertain from my vantage point, due to the band forgetting to ask for a microphone!) almost sounds like "Take Me Out" might if Franz Ferdinand had spent more time in James Brown's boot camp and less in their publicist's waiting room. Like I say, brains, great hooks and more funk savvy in one snare crack than Super Numeri could manage with a coachload of spangly vests, all adding up to make Billy Mahonie a fierce contender for best set of the festival.

Like a palette cleansing sorbet, there's a wonderfully refreshing quality to Scout Niblett, and it was an audacious move by the promoters to put such a simple act in this slot. Scout herself is on guitar and vocals, knocking out incredibly simple blues riffs with fascinating restraint. It's the sort of distillation of great rock music that PJ Harvey would sell her catsuit to be able to make. When Shellac's Todd Trainer joins her on drums, his relentless style should cut across her songs, but somehow the power of Trainer's parts heightens the purity. It does no harm that he's the kind of superbly natural drummer that you'd happily watch hit a haddock against a brick in 4/4 for twenty minutes. Perhaps there's a hint of contrived coyness about Niblett's music, most evident in her approach to sexual lyrics, but overall she has a huge command over the audience...which comes as a surprise to those of us who have watched her hare round the venue all day in a flourescent jacket looking like a distracted lollipop lady.

In complete contrast to Four Tet's wire strewn table, Luke Vibert is mostly using a laptop balanced on a beer crate. Hell, he doesn't even have a mouse! His set could prompt the typical questions - Is he playing or DJing? Is he doing anything at all? Is it actually him? - but I for one couldn't give a fuck. Listen, I was twelve for most of 1988, and used to tune into fuzzy radio stations, wishing I could sneak off to an acid night. Seeing Vibert, a man whose recordings have brought huge pleasure over the years, playing out some spiralling acid squalches is like the culmination fo a long love affair. For less romantic (read "drunk") people, I'm sure it was just a pleasingly danceable end to a wonderful weekend. If you want details, I'll let you know that Vibert dropped a bit of Kraftwerk, FSOL's evergreen "Papua New Guinea" and Squarepusher's incredible "My Red Hot Car" into the mix, but beyond that I'm far too tired and happy to turn in a meaningful review.

So, a glorious weekend, all in all. Maybe Phil from Fell City Girl is right, and in 2010 Audioscope will be a huge international festival. Somehow, however, I doubt that he's correct in predicting that Bon Jovi will be playing. I like to think we can trust these promoters a little more than that.