Shocking material gets a far more original airing in Fish El Fish’s set in The Vortex, a blacked out, and sometimes unbearable stuffy stage hosting many multimedia shows. Accompanied by visceral collages of images from medical textbooks, and over rubbery squelches and thick gloopy effects, a pitched-down voice recites a barely comprehensible monologue dealing with corporeal disgust, sexual shame, and a shocking new interpretation of the children's TV show title Johnny Ball Reveals All [Can we check with Ginny Lemon’s lawyers before publication?]. Far from a harrowing experience, the set is hilarious, especially when the speaker sounds like Mark Radcliffe’s Fat Harry White persona stuck near an equine orgy in a traffic jam. Appealingly appalling. Other acts who harness the power of the Vortex’s large projection screen are Wojciech Rusin, whose digital animations of mutating classical architecture are joined by harp, contrabassoon and a mezzo singing parts that wouldn’t be out of place in a Handel opera, all of which are inevitably electronically fucked with, and Susannah Stark, capturing Sheila Chandra’s folk-drone vocal style alongside single accordion notes and hushed percussion beneath a huge abstraction monochrome drawing. But La Brea Pulpit work the venue the best in compete darkness except for two thin blue spotlights, making their oppressively complex, restless electronic noise all the more intense. If Space Invaders were filmed with the merciless detail of Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene, then cowering under one of those crumbling bombed bridges might sound exactly like this.
Punk of course finds its place on the line-up, picks being Bristol’s Gimic, who bring a surprisingly groovy shimmy to artcore bludgeons, Fashion Tips’ Chicks On Speed energy, and the barely processable skree-treble wall of Cuntroaches, who destroy grindcore beats and Motörhead riffs with digital noise and whose version of ‘Happy Birthday’ makes Hendrix’s ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ sound like James Last. Some acts are punk in outlook rather than sound, notably Slagheap, a joyous quartet who can hardly play, but whose inept, barely formed songs have a weirdly cohesive pop centre, and whose lyrics about eating too much pie are worryingly relatable. Some very young children also bash out a clunky stumbling creche and burn clatter after the GLARC workshop, and they are already making improv jams twice as well as Al Karpenter, a band whose vacuous jumble of charmless noises and cool posturing quickly irritates.
However, although a couple of acts gesture towards topics without expanding the discourse – sure, equality good, capitalism bad, but how about a tune? - there are very few missteps on the bill, and some towering highlights. Sister Punch is an indescribable piece of Commedia dell’Arse theatre in which a gone-to-seed Mario wrestles a slutty dogperson and bursts balloons, and Zohastre are drums, electronics, tape hiss through a wah-wah pedal, and an unnerving plastic owl – the part where it sounds like a hurdy-gurdy playing Underworld’s ‘Rez’ made us grin like fools. Also up there are Tristwych Y Fenywod, with misty and airy Welsh vocals, a tiny plucked dulcimer through delay, muddy dub bass and ‘Metal on Metal’ digital drums. Imagine Broadcast doing Clannad. Smote’s set builds from the machine-tooled repetition of Einstellung, through Can-tight grooves, to Pelican post-metal flourishes, and is bloody great. But perhaps the act we enjoy most is CHEWY SHE, who leap from a Hawkwind synth intro to ultra-tight Sparks-flavoured electro-disco, with impeccable choreography and even costume changes. Who’d have thought a pinnacle of Supernormal would be rehearsed, professional pop music? Even hardened alt-culture types can back look at their prior expectation at the end of this glorious weekend and say “Sorry, I haven’t a clue what this is”.
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