Mac Lack

Here's an interesting one: I am pretty sure most of the crowd thought this a much better gig than I did. A lot of friends and peers were there, and whilst they've all been too polite to bring it up, I am certain they raised their individual eyebrows whilst reading. In fairness the gig wasn't bad, or even disappointing, it was just frustrating: I recall a story about Derek Bailey accidentally whacking his guitar against the wall behind the stage making a right old racket, and instead of worrying he looked interested, then did it again a few times - that's what this gig needed, less apology and flustered worry when things went  wrong, and more leaning into the experience. Also, who gives a fuck if your synth is out of tune when you're arsing about, just carry on, because stopping to retune is really uninteresting.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER/ MEANS OF PRODUCTION, Heavy Pop, The Jericho, 11/10/24 

When Means Of Production first unveiled their stark industrial mantras in Oxford seven years ago, they immediately became one of the city’s best live acts. A swerve towards acid house a couple of years ago only pushed them up the rankings, and any chance to witness their cold mélange of found texts, mundane yet inexplicably unnerving projections, and ruthlessly honed electronics should be grabbed. Perhaps the first track or two don’t quite gel tonight, but doubts evaporate by the time they get to ‘Resuscitation Status’, a squelching cousin of Bam Bam’s ‘Where Is Your Child?’ which creates mortality-paranoia just by listing fragments of a hospital discharge letter: it’s the sound of time’s wingèd chariot drawing near with Hardfloor blasting from its tape deck. 

Two things are impossible to miss about Look Mum No Computer. One is Sam Battle’s charming exuberance – he's a wide-eyed, motormouth suburban urchin like you’d ordered Damon Albarn off Wish – and the other is his stage set-up, dominated by a vast modular synth which barely fits on the Jericho’s stage, and looks like Optimus Prime sneezed LEDs onto a Welsh dresser. His first piece is a swirling buzzing blizzard which sounds like two Tangerine Dream albums playing at once whilst being pulled into a black hole, and his next is a digipunk banger with howled vocals. This is excellent. But the rest of the set feels like scientific research into the best way to kill momentum. Songs stop with an apology halfway through because something doesn’t sound right. He repeatedly asks for cover suggestions from the audience, that he ultimately can’t play (a lengthy attempt at ‘Tainted Love’ is eventually abandoned in favour of a brief burst of Adamski’s ‘Killer’). It’s interesting to watch someone work in real time with complex equipment, but it’s much more satisfying when something cohesive is created - and this rare cohesion sounds fantastic, with banging rhythms and some Sakamoto-influenced lead lines. We respect the risk-taking – if your improvising doesn’t come with the fear of disaster, you’re not improvising at all – but Battle could lean into the unexpected more instead of grinding to an awkward halt. Back in the 80s people got called “synth wizards”. On this flustered evidence, Look Mum No Computer would be Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. Actually, Dukas’s ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ would sound awesome on this rig...unless it ended up as Adamski’s ‘Killer’.

Sleeping Partner

I'm hungry.  Might eat something.

DREAM WIFE/ VIENNA DITTO/ SUZI WU, Heavy Pop & Dork, Bully, 16/10/17

We’re a little confused.  We’re sure Suzi Wu says onstage that it’s her debut gig, but there’s already stuff on the merch table, the promoters felt unable to announce her presence beyond special guest, and she enters to a sprightly little bass and drums riff like a conquering hero.  Perhaps the last of these is just stagecraft, as Suzi certainly squeezes the maximum live impact from her bouncy dub pop.  At her best, such as an intriguingly asymmetrical Tom Waits cover, she sounds like Tricky channelling Gwen Stefani’s sassy nous, but at other times we’re kicked queasily back to 1994, and a well-meaning but ill-conceived crusty knees-up featuring Nicolette and Back To The Planet.

Good advice to a new band is to play every gig like you’re headlining Glastonbury, no matter how small.  Even better advice to a band that has won its spurs is to play every gig like you’re performing direct to your mates, to avoid the pratfalls of pomposity and choreographed bombast.  Vienna Ditto are so relaxed and unhurried during this set, they only actually manage to play 4 songs, spending more time laughing with the crowd, vainly poking at a drum machine trying to get it to make the right noise, and looking like a Dickensian urchin and Chicago blues singer had met each other in a time warp and decided to get stoned instead of trying to work out how.  All very unprofessional, maybe, but the second of these 4 tracks is a glorious 10 minute reading of old favourite “Long Way Down”, which is half enticing torch song and half sonic abrasion, complete with rando-speed breakbeats and a guitar rubbed against the stage barrier.  The best possible advice for an aspiring band?  Be Vienna Ditto.

If Vienna Ditto look mismatched onstage, two of Dream Wife seem positively polar, the guitarist sporting an austere white bowl cut, like Joan of Arc meets Mr C from The Shamen, and the vocalist stalking round the stage in a tied off shirt looking like a 50s cheerleader gone horribly wrong.  Or, we should say, horribly right, as Dream Wife is a band that marries feminist ire to well-honed tuneful garage, and any soda fountain pin-up would be the better for sneering their way through new wave anthems and hand-picking a coterie of moshing “bad bad bitches”.  If there’s one criticism to make of this pleasing set, it’s the they never quite lived up to the promise of their opener, where the vocals were all taut, Talking Heads supercilious intonation, and the band pummelled poppily, like a whipped cream Ramones.  There’s a new strategy, get the patriarchy to dance themselves into submission.