White Hills (plus guests
The Bear and Nylon 9) at The Musician, Leicester, 9th April 2013
Bellowing his
introductions The Bear (usually one part of Preacher and the Bear) stomped
straight into a raucous and intense opening set of guitar abusive
blues. Drawing from choice blues topics of family, sex, misery and
mistreatment the first half elaborated upon how the blues chose him (not the
other way around) and stories of “Sweet Black Angels”, with some chaotic, free
soloing. Switching to telecaster, a loose connection / static sound was
ever-present and judging by the verve by which The Bear chose to turn it up and
forge ahead through a raw “Please Don’t Go” / “I Wanna Be Your Dog” medley and
a song about Marijuana usage, it seemed pre-planned and produced an excellent
lo-fi effect. Taking time to retune he abruptly called it a day – a
spontaneous and unexpected end and really enjoyable stuff.
Leicester’s Nylon 9 graced the stage under a small cloud of dry ice. The
female fronted, five-piece combo performed their five songs, including “Dancing
With The Dead” and “Let’s Talk About Love” set to a visual backdrop of edited,
looped and reformatted B-Movie nuggets and much frazzled and eccentric dancing
– a nice touch. Their wonky and searing tales of fantasy and come downs -
inset with filmic dialogue, organ, elements of punk, new wave, disco and
psychedelia - rocked with a garage-come-Patti Smith groove. They join the
musical family tree with dotted lines drawn from Stooges, Spacemen 3 and Wooden
Shjips - with emphasis on the dancing.
Their second time at The
Musician touring on the shirttails of 2012’s “Frying On This Rock”’s cerebral
meltdown of astral jazz, spacerock and power riffage, this time round White
Hills’ formula is largely unchanged, with more extended drills propelling their
bombastic supersonics to transcendental heights.
Taking to the stage at
about 10:30pm with a layer of plush velvets, floral and androgyny, a slow and
seductive intro directed their psychedelic juggernaut, careering into a strong and
energetic groove, which fixed the mood. When vocals do emerge some ten or so
minutes in, the sheer volume levels render them largely inaudible (though an
audience member did approach the sound desk concerned that the guitars weren’t
loud enough…).
Getting seemingly louder
for the pursuing hour Dave W and Ego Sensation blasted out their brand of
elongated, overdriven, fuzzy spacerock with Nick Name drumming like he meant
it. With only occasional interludes for pre-recorded sci-fi and dialogue,
slow and spaced-out reverberations, their sound leant more towards Motorhead
than Hawkwind. Employing all available devices to wring the buzz saw sound
and dentist drill shrills from the guitar, I’m sure many were left with ears
ringing.
A night for the weird, wired
or freaked out space cadets.
Willsk
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