Big Cat Sensuality

I'm getting old, my attitudes to sex are changing.  Last birthday party, someone brought in a curvacious woman in a bikini...a flap on her stomach opened up and out poppped a cake.  Best birthday ever.

This gig took place the day of the US election results, in case you can't guess.

THREE TRAPPED TIGERS/ THE PHYSICS HOUSE BAND/ KID KIN, Club.The.Mammoth, O2, 9/11/16

Received opinion states that prog and math rock are introspective, self-justifying genres, with no relevance beyond their complex musical conventions.  Maybe so, but on a day in which the US electorate has made a decision with vast international ramifications, the inward gaze is a tempting option.  Kid Kin provides a warm, amniotic space for reflection, with stately keys and meditative fuzzy guitar.  Sometimes it’s feels a bit too pretty, but then he brings in a bass synth that sounds like the Matterhorn clearing its throat, and we are swept up again.  He’s adept at live looping too: make a mistake with that and you have to live with it for a fair while - a bit like voting in a president.

Received opinion states that contemporary prog is a rollercoaster music, that can only retain interest through continually switching direction.  Whilst The Physics House Band’s set might have so many time signatures that it could be some sort of muso version of bingo calling, they are also fantastic at setting the controls for full steam ahead.  They’ve got the intricate synths and the twiddly guitar phrases, but they aren’t afraid of chugging out a chunky groove that could almost be Rainbow.  Despite their nerdy name, it’s great to see that tricksiness can be wonderfully augmented by sweat, passion and Whistle Test hair.  They sell T-shirts after gig; given the comprehensive demo workout we’d just witnessed, they might have done better selling drumkits.

Received opinion states that prog is a backward facing genre, but Three Trapped Tigers show us what can be done when math rock is influenced by the sounds and structures of electronica.  They are a little like prog jesters Focus signed to Warp, and their music is very silly, although in a world containing the phrase President Trump, “silly” may need recalibrating.  Regardless, their maximalist monkey seizure music is firy, fun and surprisingly funky.  Received opinion says that technical performers like this can’t be joyous and exciting, but then again, received opinion had fifty quid on Clinton to win.

Truck 2012 Saturday Part 2

The programme tells us that things have “been a bit quiet” on the King Charles front between the execution of the English king and the arrival of the singer of the same name, which would be some of the worst promotional writing we’d ever read even if there hadn’t actually been a second King Charles to invalidate the point.  Still, we won’t hold that against him, as his set is good dumb fun.  His music is one of instant gratification, a melange of “Eye Of The Tiger” rhythms, huge vocal lines like protest chants, pseudo-Prince gestures, and hilariously awful hair.  Can’t argue with that. 

All sadly unlike British Sea Power, who always offer a heady mix of classic indie, literate lyrics and performance art, but always actually deliver a bunch of hollow anonymous songs, drably inflected vocals and some onstage shrubs.  Still, we’re bet they could do the Guardian cryptic.

Into the home straight with Three Trapped Tigers, and even as exhaustion kicks in, you can’t argue with a trio that sounds like a cross between Aphex Twin and King Crimson.  Using some serious chops to make music along classic IDM lines could be a vacuous muso exercise, but when there’s such elegance in the melancholic Plaid keyboard lines, such invention in the live drums, and a guitar pedal rack the size of a suburb, it’s futile to argue.  What’s great about the band is that, far from being some rockers who own a couple of techno LPs, they clearly understand the melancholy beauty of a Selected Ambient Works style synth line, whilst knowing precisely when it’s time to drop a fast clattering beat all over the top.  If they’ve never played on a bill with Squarepusher, somebody should rectify the fact, pronto.

The festival officially ends with The Temper Trap, but we find their show all puff and bluster, so we prefer to imagine otherwise.  They sound a little like Echo And The Bunnymen having a crack at Chaka Khan, and we feel as though it ought to be fun, but it simply isn’t.  It’s flat, and empty, and crass, and can we go home now, please?  So we do, and later, back in Oxford, on the night bus home, we hear two blokes talking about their plan for the summer.  “I’m not going to go to some festival where I’ve never heard of the bands”, claims one.  We would write him off as an fool, if he didn’t come up with the genius line, “The Red Hot Chili Peppers just remind me of washing up”. But, the point is, that Truck isn’t aimed at people like him.  The new organisers have done an amazing job of capturing the atmosphere of the best Trucks in years past: the crowd is friendly and varied, the site is perfectly balanced between intimacy and breathing space, and even the weather is about right.  Next year, hopefully they can capitalise on this success - and a sell out crowd, need we mention? – and take a couple more risks with the lineup.  At the very least, they could find someone, somewhere to make music whilst The Temper Trap are on, surely.