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Audioscope is an annual chairty all-dayer of leftfield music, and I'm an enormous admirer, the events are always fun. Peppers Burgers is in Jericho, Oxford, and also gets my seal of approval. There you go, a day out constructed for autumn 2010 - you never know, you might even get to meet me if you do it...

AUDIOSCOPE – Jericho, 17/10/09


Audioscope’s reputation as an austere day of difficult music is smashed in seconds by Bitches, who may have had a liquid lunch. Their music has rock riffs and punk noise, but exhibits an eerie lack of propulsion, feeling excellently like a drunken Fluxus take on an early Sebadoh rehearsal. Cats & Cats & Cats charmingly announce that they hope to get their single into “the indie charts” which makes us feel at least ten years younger. They play a pleasant set of contempo-folk introspection, which is rather spoilt by unsuccessful leaps into grandiloquent climaxes, turning them into Arcade Embers. Talons turn out to be much better at the Godspeed crescendos and have two excellent violinists, but could do with some of Cats’ songs to retain interest. Call it a draw.

Worcester’s Theo loops tricksy Don Caballero guitar licks and accompanies himself fluently on drums, and this Billy Nomates Mahonie turns out to be our set of the day. He has some trouble with guitar leads and drum pedals, but we cynically wonder whether he fiddles with them deliberately to hide the fact he hasn’t quite worked out how to end his songs.

Ute have come leagues since we saw them in January, mixing rousing folk songs that wouldn’t be out of place during the miner’s strike with tremulous indie delicacy, before unexpectedly flipping out and going all Shellac unplugged. Occasional Thom Yorke vocal moments are less satisfying, but the set is a winner. Audioscope favourites Bilge Pump proffer the closest thing to sonic extremity on this year’s bill, with their well- honed take on post-McClusky artcore, and it’s fine but Bronnt Industries Kapital is far more exciting. He opens with what may as well have been an excerpt from Blade Runner, synching faultlessly with the video projections, that are like being overtaken on the autobahn by Petronus charms. He keeps up the Vangelist approach for some excellently sleek mid-80s synth romps, headbutting the keyboard to inject some John Foxx drama. The Ferris Bueller shades are a step too far, however.

We get a brief palate cleanser before the headliners, as Glasgow’s Remember Remember folds looped glockenspiel and melodica motifs in on themselves like Fuck Buttons lost in Toytown, which sets us up nicely for the disappointment of The Longcut. There’s nothing hugely wrong with mixing New Order with Doves and throwing a bit of NY funk over the top, but it seems that every third band in 2009 sounded exactly like this. The Longcut still don’t upset us too much until something sounding like Editors playing “I Feel Love” drives us to the bar.

We ask the organisors why they don’t have anyone famous on this year’s bill, like Kid 606, Clinic or a krautrock legend, to be told that Mercury nominees Maps are better known in the real world than those other acts put together. It comes as no surprise that we lost our grip on the public’s taste years ago, but it is eyebrow raising that they’ve gone for something that sounds so much like The Beloved. That is, when they don’t sound like Crystal Castles played by Candy Flip. Nothing revolutionary here, then, but Maps play a warm and unhurried set of comedown electropop that makes us wish we were watching at four am in a room made entirely from pillows and Gummi Bears, until we’re absolute converts. We were all set to bemoan the lack of a Shit & Shine, Parts & Labour or Datapanik epiphany, until we realised that the least adventurous Audioscope lineup had perhaps become the most consistent, and good music’s what matters ultimately, not its obscurity. That and the £1700 raised for Shelter, and an excuse to subsist on beer and Pepper’s burgers for a day.

I've Just Invented The Word "Paupette". In My Head.

This review isn't really up to standard, having reread it. Gets the point acrioss, but hardly memorably, wouldn't you say? If I didn't know better I'd say it was from the old BBC days. Still, we all have off nights; it's not as if some cunt has been unreasonable enough to judge my entire output on the strength of it. Imagine, what sort of scum would do something like that?

Charlottefield split up approximately 20 minutes after this review was published, so there's the reverse Midas touch in evidence once again.

CHARLOTTEFIELD/ ACTION BEAT/ THEO - Poor Girl Noise, The Wheatsheaf, Feb08

Like the first snowfall of the year, live looping is a minor miracle that never fails to impress. Theo once again proves how useful a tool an infinite delay pedal can be in his opening bars, twining thick guitar lines together to create a wiry cord of dense riffing. Then he drops the guitar and starts slipping some chunky drums behind the loops. The resulting noise is clinical but remorselessly insistent and effective, something akin to AC/DC tunes under construction on the Cowley car plant's conveyors. A secret part of us wonders what it might sound like if we could have drums and guitar at once (you know, like a band), and whether there might be another way of ending a piece than simply overloading the pedal and puffing out a hiss of white noise, but this ultimately feels like cavilling. Go and see Theo, his music amply repays the patience needed to watch its genesis.

Adventurous locals might like to think of Action Beat as a cross between The Corvids' kraut thump and the fuzzed reproach of The Holiday Stabbings. The aural density of the thunderous noise initially excites, but the (unreasonably short) set ultimately fails to convince: too regulated to be an eviscerating noise, but too messy to succeed through hypnotic repetition. You could have the time of your life watching Einstellung or Ascension, but it appears that they don't mix well.

Let's get one thing out of the way before we go any further: Ashley Marlowe, Charlottefield's drummer, is phenomenal. He powers into the kit with force yet restraint, and the contrast between prog embellishment and punk incision reminds us of Karl Burns' work on the first Fall album. Frankly, for the first ten minutes of the set we barely noticed the rest of the band. Eventually our senses returned to normal, and we discover that the band make a most pleasant sound, shot through with flashes of Fugazi and tiny flecks of Part Chimp whilst a monolithic bass gels it all together. However, just as we had them pegged as a riotously adept and entertainingly generic alt.rock act, things start to shift. Slowly the music is changing gear, until finally we are left in the midst of endless deserts of guitar tones with deft cymbal flicks dancing above them. After a simply wonderful set, it's easy to see why Charlottefield are always so welcome in Oxford, and we wonder how we've managed to miss them before.