I
like Caffe Nero on Gloucester Green.
Whilst other chain coffee outlets cover their walls with sanitised snaps
of coffee growers, or vacuous statements like “give yourself a break: yummy
mocha”, Nero in Gloucester Green has, for some odd reason, some giant pictures
of a man arguing with a traffic warden.
In the 1970s. It’s only when the
usual facile decor is replaced that you notice how ubiquitous it is. It’s like the Bullingdon Arms; it used to
have an infuriating stage backdrop that read “LIVE MUSIC” in vast, ugly
letters. To which you just wanted to
shout, “I know! And?”. It looked as though it had been designed by
a Stalinist propaganda minister after six minutes on Photoshop.
Anyway,
The Bully has had a significant refurb and, as well as boasting a crisp PA and
a fetching space brothel design, the back room has replaced the vapid backdrop
with a nice tasteful logo. And if you’re
planning on dropping in for a visit, you could do a lot worse than do so during
a Haven Club promotion. Every Monday you
can expect this gaggle of Oxford gig veterans to provide a friendly night of
approachable music. The keynote is the
blues, but there are also outlets for elegant pop, heavy rock, good time boogie
and whatever the hell genre John Otway is.
We spend so much time sniffing out new bands, it’s easy to forget what a
difference a switched-on, thoughtful promoter can make. Why not nip over to www.havenclub.co.uk?
OOOD/ HARDCORESMEN OF THE
TECHNOPALYPSE/ LEFTOUTERJOIN, It’s All About The Music, The Bully, 12/4/13
It’ll be hard for our more
youthful readers to believe, but back in the 80s there was a huge debate about
whether electronic performers should be classed as musicians. It wasn’t just old bluesers who thought you
shouldn’t be allowed to make a record until you’d played the same chord progression
in a filthy cellar for 15 years straight that raised dissenting voices, the NME would be inundated with lilac-inked missives
of florid disgust if an indie outfit went techno crazy and made a record with
Flood or Andy Weatherall. The dissenting
movement has dwindled in size, and retreated from the barracks of Cool, but
believe us, it still has some staunch followers.
LeftOuterJoin might be
named after a nugget of SQL script, but keeps the Proper Music Police in check
by playing all the drums for his hard trance live on electronic pads. His set almost looks like a challenge: “Yes,
it sounds like a drum machine, but it’s a real drummer, yet some of it’s still
pre-recorded. Have your rules collapsed
yet?” In fact, what he really looks like
bobbling away behind his stand-up kit at great speed is a drug-addled member of
International Rescue, but that’s by the by.
The music is decent, a
sharper-edged version of the Platipus sound, although the rhythms inevitably
become a little climax happy, and a lightly latin-inflected section is the
standout.
Hardcoresmen Of The
Technopalypse endears himself to us by wearing a hideous raver’s onesie and
using the kit he clearly put in his loft after his last gig, a decade or so ago
– funny to see someone juggling minidiscs and turning pots on fat black boxes
after years of staring at Macbook backs.
In a reversal of the PMP’s dictums, the set would have been better if
he’d done less onstage. There were hints
of sweet deep house songs on display, with rich vocals and thick 808 toms, but
everything tended to get smoothed out with endless tweaks and squeaks.
Out Of Our Depth would
confuse the PMP. No real instruments get
played, no sweats are broken, and yet their set shows the immeasurable value
that years of experience can bring, and proves that traditional musical
concepts are just as important to psytrance as anything. Some witty Queen samples notwithstanding, the
material of their set is similar to LeftOuterJoin’s, but every hi-hat is crisp
and impeccably placed, and every newly introduced motif sounds exciting yet
logical. Quality and honed ability win
the day, then, and nobody had to play the solo from “Sweet Home Alabama”. Result!
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