Posts Tagged ‘Leeds’

TVAM / The Sick Man of Europe – Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds, 3rd March 2026

Posted: 7 March 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

A couple of mates had picked this one out and suggested I might like it, and, as my diary was looking pretty sparse at the time, I thought ‘why not?’ Some brief scanning of releases led me to expect a night of electro-based post punk, some synth-pop of a darker persuasion. The reality was considerably darker than that, and pretty much straight-up goth, even if the majority of the crowd didn’t recognise it as such – by which I mean, they looked more like they’d be into Gary Numan than The Sisters of Mercy. So where are we at? Goth by stealth? Said crowd was an interesting mix, an almost even split of old sods, and lanky buggers young enough to be their kids – or mine, I suppose.

The Sick Man of Europe – raved about by a mate who’s more of an indie persuasion – are in some respects reminiscent of early Depeche Mode but darker, heavier, more industrial. They bring the pulsating repetition on Suicide, with a heavy leaning towards DAF. For the second song, they segue ‘Movement’ and ‘Obsolete’. The studio versions are tight slices of Krautrock, and nice enough. Live, everything is amped up and the result is something more like covers of ‘Ghostrider’ as performed by The Sisters of Mercy, or even Foetus. The flat baritone monotone of the studio recording takes on a new dimension live, too, at times reminiscent of the booming grave-and-gravel drawl of Chris Reed of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. The sick singer spends considerable time charging back and forth in front of the stage and occasionally ventures further into the crowd. They take things up a good couple of notches live in comparison to the studio recordings, the clinical sterility converted to crackling energy. They’re tight, tense, and gothy as hell.

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The Sick Man of Europe

The same is true of TVAM, an act I’d always taken as being a bit 6Music electro-indie. Again, the difference between their studio work and live show is the key here. The work of just one guy in the studio, the live act is transformative, with live drums and guitar. They play the new album, Ruins, in full and in sequence. It takes confidence in an album to do this, but it’s an album to have confidence in, without a weak track. The song titles and lyrics flash on the screen at the back of the stage in real time, with striking images projected during instrumental passages. In combination with the lighting and smoke, it makes for a strong visual performance. The sound, too, is fantastic, the swirling guitars hazy, the drums crisp and bright.

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TVAM

On the bass-led ‘Real Life’ they perfectly replicate the drums from ‘Lucretia My Reflection’, and ‘Powder Blue’ is indisputably a dark pop gem with a dense shoegaze feel.

The final segment of the set piles into the depths of the back catalogue with relish, hitting us with ‘Porsche Majeure’ and ‘Double Lucifer’, before closing with ‘Total Immersion’, the last track from their 2021 debut Psychic Data.

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TVAM

Oftentimes, studio-based projects can lose something in the translation to the live setting, but by taking a completely different approach to the format, TVAM show different aspects of the songs and imbue them with new depth and energy.

As a lineup, the two acts compliment one another well, and in both delivering punchy sets (Sick Man’s set was bang on half an hour, TVAM played for 45 minutes), they gave us an exhilarating night.

The 113 – Scour

Posted: 25 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Launchpad+ and EMI North – 25th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

From Interpol to Editors to White Lies and far beyond, including, at present IST IST, dark-edged post-punk acts displaying strong Joy Division influence have been emerging for the last twenty years now, and more. Some are better than others, some capture the mood more effectively than others.

It’s perhaps because they’re from Leeds that The 113 are particularly good at capturing the mood: the spawning ground of goth in the 80s, the Leeds scene has always stood apart from not only the mainstream, but other major cities of the north, particularly Manchester and Sheffield, which in turn have always had their own identities: in the early 00s Leeds was hotbed for innovative post-rock, and has, over the last decade, yielded ever noisier, ever more angular, ever weirder bands, but also bands of quality who simply do – or did – their own thing, from Hawk Eyes and These Monsters to Castrovalva and I Like Trains, Thank, Post War Glamour Girls, Beige Palace, Black Moth, BELK, Irk, and of course, the mighty Blacklisters.

The 113 aren’t nearly as abrasive or far-out as many of these acts with whom they share turf, but their debut EP, To Combat Regret, released last March packed some blustering urgency to the familiar post-punk template. Both ‘Scour’ and previous single ‘Leach’ continue the same trajectory – lean, dark post-punk vibes, driven by dense bass, insistent percussion and some sinewy guitar work, creating tension and using it to powerful effect – but if anything, this is tauter, tenser, and more nuanced: the melodic, shoegaze mid-section adds significant impact to the song’s explosive conclusion.

This, in conjunction with ‘Leach’ says that the forthcoming EP, The Headonist (out April 17th) will be killer, and the upcoming tours in April and May look like something to get excited about, too.

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Photo: Naomi Whitehead

Corpus Delicti / Auger – The Warehouse, Leeds, 21st February 2026

Posted: 22 February 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s very early doors this evening, even considering there’s a club night starting at 10:30. I arrive at 6:05 to find a substantial queue of goths who are clearly keen. When they open up at 6:15, I enter the venue to the full-length version of ‘This Corrosion’, followed by ‘Play For Today’ by The Cure. Welcome to Leeds, goth city. Making a brief jaunt around the UK in support of new album Liminal, Corpus Delicti couldn’t have chosen a better city, or a more fitting venue to stop by. It’s well-timed, too: the album’s been out long enough to have bedded in with those who’ve heard it (which it seems is a fair portion of the audience), meaning that they’re not all waiting for the older material, and are every bit as enthusiastic for the new songs.

They’re also pretty enthusiastic for support act Auger. For me, they’re rather harder to take to, but nod due to lack of assessable material. Quite the opposite, in fact. Auger are very much from the lighter, poppies end of the goth spectrum, with some anthemic moments and at times inviting comparisons to Depeche Mode. The live drums add significantly to the dynamic. The live guitar less so, as it’s not particularly easy to pick out in the mix, and it’s the programmed bass on the backing which really fills out the sound. With synths, additional percussion, and – possibly – backing vocals all coming from the laptop, there’s an element of feeling like the pair are only doing a third of the work. The sound is, as one would expect, pretty slick. Singer Kyle Blaqk emotes, clutches his breast, and bounces around, and at times they come across more like a goth Erasure than anything else.

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Auger

Corpus Delicti really are a cut above in every way. Sonically, they’re outstanding, and so, so tight. They have their sound absolutely nailed, from the meaty bass grooves and powerhouse tribal percussion to the brittle, chorus-heavy guitar sound, which rings out crisp and clear. And they give it all to the performance – not in a cheesy way, they don’t try for audience participation, but exude presence and radiate electricity. They seem to enjoy themselves, too: guitarist Franck is positively smiley throughout, and even when he experiences a minor issue with his pedals, he shrugs it off and is back in the mix in moments, still smiling and pacing about the stage with a restless energy. He and bassist Chrys are equally lively, swapping positions and constantly on the move. The whole band is very much stage forward, presenting what you might call an attacking field in football, bringing the show to the audience.

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Corpus Delicti

Liminal, their first in almost thirty years, is a corker, and just as it begins with the high-impact, drama-filled ‘Crash’, so they open the set. They attack it with a rare intensity, and an energy they sustain for the duration of the set. Said set draws substantially on the new album, but equally pulls from all corners of their extensive catalogue, with ‘Appealing Skies’ and ‘Motherland’ land back-to-back representing 1995’s Obsessions fairly early, and landing ‘Lorelei’ and ‘Chaos’ in the second half of the set. Singer Sébastien is a strong presence, by turns menacing and stoic, impassive: he’s got moves and shapes and at times, he looks at an individual audience member in a way that’s capable of penetrating the soul. I certainly felt it.

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Corpus Delicti

After closing the main set with the slower title track from the new album, they don’t take too much coaxing to return to the stage to deliver a triple-whammy of back-catalogue classics, with a bruising ‘Noxious’, followed by ‘Saraband’ and ‘Broken’.

They thank us for a great night, and say they’ve enjoyed themselves. So have we, very much indeed.

Irk / Algernon Cornelius / Care Home – Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 24th January 2025

Posted: 25 January 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Irk (not to be mistaken for Lancastrian newcomers Irked) certainly took their time over their second album, so the fact their playing its launch gig four months after its release is fitting.

The last time I saw them would have been 2018, in the now-defunct CHUNK, alongside Britney and Beige Palace (also now sadly departed), at the launch of debut album. Back then, CHUNK – a fairly basic rehearsal space which also hosted gigs – was the hub of an emerging DIY scene which spawned a bunch of noisy bands who emerged in the wake of the likes of Blacklisters, Hawk Eyes, That Fucking Tank. Fortunately, the Leeds scene is resilient and continues to thrive with new spaces and new bands popping up – and Irk are still here, despite geographical dispersal and general life stuff like jobs and families doing little to boost the time and energy available for creative work.

One of the new bands to have emerged more recently is Care Home. Care Home no doubt won themselves some new fans when they landed the coveted slot of supporting the Jesus Lizard last January. Tonight they’re a late substitute for Blacklisters, who were admittedly, an additional draw for tonight, but it’s hard to be too disappointed with the choice of replacement, kicking the night off in suitably noisy fashion. The interplay between the guitar and synths works well and affords them a greater range when it comes to the arrangements. The bass work alternates between a stop/start jolting and insistent solid four-four groove, and when paired with some busy, beat on every beat drumming, they’ve got a sturdy spine around which everything else hangs nicely. The vocals are straight-up, unpretty (post) hardcore shouting, an effluence of nihilism in t vein of Kowloon Walled City.

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Care Home

Algernon Cornelius proved to be an inspired choice, breaking up a rock-orientated bill with some highly inventive and energetic hip-hop. Pulling together a truly visionary array of sources, spanning jazz, punk, and metal and even sampling a Beige Palace song, it’s all going on during his lively set.

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Algernon Cornelius

Irk’s set is a squalling blast of noise from beginning to end. The bass is simply immense. Recorded, it’s not immediately apparent that the sole instrumentation is drums and bass – and not only because various guests add additional detail in various form, but this means that on stage, the fact they blast out such a dense racket with so little only accentuates the impact. But that bass… the sound is pretty varied and big on texture, from the rib-rattling mid-range, compressed sound which resembled tearing cardboard to the bowel-quivering low-end, there’s substantial range. Meanwhile, Jack Gordon hollers and howls through a host of effects and distortion, and this show – like the album itself – was worth the wait.

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Irk

With ‘The Seeing House’, they’ve really honed things and learned the benefits of shifting tempo and tone: ‘Eating All of the Apple’ is the perfect example of how they’ve absorbed the sparser, joltier aspects of Shellac’s output on board. Gordon’s vocal has more range, too, veering toward more gothic territory. And still they slam forth colossal riffs, paired with meaty beats and rabid yowling.

But for a serious band, they just can’t do serious when it comes to their shows: there’s a comedic elements to Gordon’s delivery and postures, not to mention the chat between songs, where he would take time to share wisdom he had discovered on that Internet from the mini-ons, printouts of which he would hand out to members of the audience.

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Irk

There’s something so, so quintessentially Leeds about Irk – quirky, self-effacing, a disparity between the abrasive noise and the affable nature of the people themselves – and they are genuinely nice guys. But this is so often the case: the music is the outlet. And the atmosphere tonight is one of warmth, of camaraderie. A lot of people know one another. This isn’t a scene in the sense of posing, self-importance or smugness, but one defined by camaraderie and mutual appreciation.

Irk’s set was punchy and abrasive, delivering fifty minutes of intensity interspersed with comedy, making for an event which felt like the perfect launch for the album. And I shall treasure my numbered, annotated minion forever.

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The 113 – Leach

Posted: 21 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

I find it most disconcerting shopping in my local Co-op. The self-service checkouts film you, and you can see yourself on the screen above your head while you scan your items. Surveillance and facial recognition is everywhere now. The other day, I passed a venue where a guy in a flat cap was ordered my security to remove his hat and “look into that camera” before being told he could replace his cap and enter the venue. We really have come to this: you can’t go shopping or go for a drink without a capture of your visage ‘for security’. I appreciate that shoplifting is at a record high and violent crime is rife, but is this really the solution? How about asking why we have these issues? And what happens with these captured images? Who views them? How long are they stored, and where? Are they being passed off to train AI?

The ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about’ argument is missing the point, and no longer holds water. The state of things in America with brutal ICE raids where countless American citizens have been mauled, detained, and even murdered (because regardless of the official line, Renee Nicole Good was murdered: those shots were not fired in self-defence, and we live in a horrible, brutal, fucked-up world). And this shit affects you. Well, it certainly affects me, and I know I’m not alone in feeling jumpy, on edge, endlessly anxietised by the prospect of what may happen next, the prospect of waking up to discover that WWIII has broken out while asleep.

This new single by 311 touches on this, significantly, as it happens. as their bio notes summarise: ‘Propelled by discordant guitars and thunderous offbeat rhythms, ‘Leach’ is an abrasive dystopian statement on surveillance, data harvesting and the quiet unease of modern digital life; both a rallying cry against the advancement and negative impacts of big tech, and an honest admission of powerlessness and inevitability in the face of it all.’

It’s a killer single and yet again evidence of just how fertile Leeds is as a spawning ground for fantastic bands. London, Manchester, even Sheffield receive so much hype, but despite being the epicentre of goth in the early 80s and the place for post-rock in the mid 2000s, Leeds seems to be criminally lacking in recognition for its contribution to music, despite Blacklisters, despite Pulled Apart by Horses… and 311 are another bands that should be flagging the city on the national – and international – radar. Because ‘Leach’ brings it all, from churning math-rock, angularity and anguish, colliding post-rock with post-punk and huge energy, they pack menacing and searing riff energy and… and… yeah. This is good.

It’s worth remembering punk and post-punk emerged from terrible times, where it felt like music offered a rare escape, both for those who created it and attended shows. And here we are again.

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Cwfen / Helve / Acceptance – Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 17th January 2026

Posted: 18 January 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

That a quarter of the tickets sold in 48 hours, and the show was sold out a full three months in advance speaks for itself. It’s been a huge twelve months for Glasgow purveyors of epic goth-tinged doom, Cwfen. It was only last February that they played their first show south of the border. Since then, they’ve toured supporting Faetooth and released their monumental and widely-acclaimed debut album, Sorrows, which has had Kerrang! positively frothing with enthusiasm. And they deserve all of this. There’s something quite special about Cwfen: they’re in a league of their own, and certainly not simply your run-of-the-mill doom band. Make no mistake, they’re full-on and heavy – in places gut-churningly so – but they have so much more going on, especially in terms of melody and dynamics.

This is an outstanding lineup. All three acts are heavier than lead, but each offers something quite different. This matters, because however much you may love a headline act, its tiresome and takes the zip out of an event if the supports are lesser versions of the headliners. I’m reminded of the mid 2000s, when you’d get four instrumental post rock acts on a bill, and I’d find myself crescendo’d out by the end of the second set and be falling asleep on my feet during the headline set, and also the time industrial noise duo Broken Bone supported Whitehouse at the Brudenell. Nothing like having a third-rate tribute act who think they’re amazing as a support.

Leeds is a significant spawning ground for metal acts of all shades, and both Acceptance and Helve showcase the depth of quality on offer. First up, Acceptance bring the weight with some heavy tom-led drumming behind the blanket of guitar. Theirs is a dense wall of screaming anguish, with billowing smoke often obscuring the stage. For all that, there’s remarkable separation between the instruments, and the remarkably thick but clean bass cuts through nicely. By the end of the set, the vocalist is crawling on his hands and knees, drained, having poured every last drop of emotion and energy into a blistering performance. When the opening act could easily be headlining, you know you’re in for a good night.

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Acceptance

Helve’s bassist is wearing a Swans Filth T-shirt. This is something I would consider a recommendation. As it happens, they sound absolutely nothing like Swans, being a full-on metal act, but they are as heavy as hell. With two guitars and bass and massive amps and piles of pedals, there’s no room for the lead vocalist on the small stage. Compared to Acceptance, who play everything at breakneck pace, Helve’s songs slower, more atmospheric, offering a sound that’s more post metal. Applying a screwdriver to his guitar strings, the first guitarist conjures some strange droning sounds at the start of their set. Their riffs are slow and dense, and whole there’s some nice mathy detail along the way, the end of the set brings a full-on chug-blast in the vein of Amenra.

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Helve

While Helve clear out and Cwfen set up, we’re treated to Shellac’s first album by way of entertainment, and when Cwfen hit the stage, opening with ‘Bodies’, it’s like a bolt of lightening. More powerful than even the volume is the stunning clarity of the sound, replicating all the detail of the studio recordings but with the added potency of the immediacy of being in the room and mere feet from the band. The song’s nagging lead guitar part is an instant, hypnotic hook.

Perhaps recognising that Sorrows is perfectly sequenced, the set is, essentially, the album played in order – with the addition of a new and unreleased song, ‘Revenge’, which is inserted – most comfortably – in between ‘Reliks’ and ‘Whispers’.

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Cwfen

For such a dark band, they seem pretty happy on stage, Agnes in particular beaming throughout the set. She’s every reason to: they’re on immaculate form, and the entire room is captivated and shows its appreciation. Each member brings something quite particular to the table: gum chewing barefoot bassist Mary Thomas Baker doesn’t simply play, but becomes the groove, a solid foot-to-the-floor low-end thud that’s more goth than anything else; drummer Rös is pure precision, while Guy deNuit manages to sound like he’s playing multiple parts at once, creating a magnificently textured, layered sound. Agnes, for her part, in addition to some tidy guitar work, is a formidable vocalist with immense presence, effortlessly shifting between commanding clean vocals to a banshee howl in a breath.

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Cwfen

The screaming metal verses of ‘Penance’ give way to a sweeping , majestic chorus, and I find myself blown away in the same way I was the first time I saw them. This is indeed a rare feat. But then, if anything, they’re even better now than a year ago, even more powerful.

Talk about an early peak. I may well see other gigs which equal this one, but the chances of a night which surpasses this before the year is out are, frankly, slim. Bad Owl have done an outstanding job in curating this lineup, and Cwfen are as good a live act as you’re going to find.

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Swans / Jessica Moss – Project House, Leeds, 7th November 2025

Posted: 8 November 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

The last tour of Swans’ current iteration, drawing the curtain on a succession of albums – and tours – which have been truly immense in every way: the build-up felt like the end of an era. The event itself, perhaps less so. At one point, someone calls out a request. “We don’t do that,” Gira explains, in a kindly manner. He seems pretty relaxed tonight, and smiles a fair bit. No-one in the band gets bollocked or scowled at, and they all seem to be having a pretty good time.

But no, they certainly don’t do ‘that’. You don’t go to see Swans expecting to hear choice guts from their extensive back catalogue. You don’t even go expecting to hear songs, at least not in any recognisable form. The versions of recorded songs bear only limited resemblance to their studio counterparts, twisted, stretched, and otherwise evolved while on the road to a point whereby they’re almost new songs entirely. Recent shows have seen the band playing sets spanning a full two and a half hours, while only featuring six songs.

Before we come to Swans, Jessica Moss, who, amidst an extensive catalogue of work over the course of a lengthy career, is best known for her contribution to Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and being part of the whole Godspeed You! Black Emperor milieu. Tonight, she plays a rendition of her latest album, An Unfolding, in its entirety, and it’s breathtaking. Her nuanced violin and vocal work is augmented with booming, resonant bass tones. There’s a lot of yakking at the bar and further back in the 1,000 capacity, sold-out venue, where the house light stay up toward the rear of the room for the duration of the night, but for those of us in the front two-thirds, it’s a spellbinding experience, which perfectly sets the tone for the main event.

Moss’ half-hour set is over by around 8:40, and Swans, after a few brief checks, take to the stage around ten minutes later. Gira politely asks that there are no cell phones – “at least not where I can see them”, before he begins strumming a monotonous at two strings. He does so for what feels like an eternity. Or perhaps not. When Swans play, time takes on a different meaning, and it’s been a feature of this current iteration that the songs evolve and elongate over the course of the extensive tours, transforming and transmogrifying over the weeks and months on the road. They’ve been touring Birthing and this ‘farewell’ for a fair while now, although the set on the most recent leg has only featured ‘The Merge’ from said album. With ‘Paradise is Mine’, from The Beggar, and ‘A Little God in My Hands’, from To Be Kind, this is as close to a retrospective set as you’re likely to get, but none of these songs much like the studio versions, and half the set therefore features material which is either new or so far removed that it’s been retitled as well as restructured. But as I say, you don’t come to a Swans show for the songs. You come for the experience. And what an experience it is.

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It’s fair to say that there is simply no other band like Swans. Their reputation for extreme volume is only part of the story, a piece of the equation. Older fans who saw them in the 80s love to regale with tales of people throwing up, passing out, and so on, and that they’re pretty tame these days, and I have no reason to believe that these are purely apocryphal. Gira just can’t do quiet: even his solo acoustic sets playing smaller venues circa 2003 / 2004 were fucking punishing.

Some time in, Gira downs his guitar and stands up, turning to face the band, and flails his arms as if experiencing some kind of rapture or episode. But every gesture is a signal, from which the band members – there are six of them, plus Gira – and his near-psychotic choreography guides them through ebbs and flows, to ever greater, more intense crescendos. It’s maybe half an hour before the full drum kit kicks in, and I feel my nostrils vibrate with the sheer quantity of air displaced from the speakers. It’s transcendental, euphoric.

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A number of people who had started the set near me in the front row dissolved. I didn’t really notice when: like almost everyone else, I was simply transfixed. And yet, this was by no means loud by Swans standards: while I can’t claim to have witnessed the nauseating brutality of their early years, or the notorious punishment of the Burning World tour (ironic that their gentlest album, released on a major label, should have been served by a tour of such infamous volume… or perhaps not, perhaps it was a statement to prove that they hadn’t sold out), their shows at Leeds Stylus in 2016 and 2017 were something else – something so intensely physical, it hard to find the words. Then again, on their last visit to Leeds, playing at The Belgrave, I found myself thinking ‘this isn’t so loud’ but before long finding myself dizzy and wondering quitter where that immense noise had grown from. And this is perhaps an indication of how they’ve evolved. The bludgeoning force is still very much present, not least of all with two basses and the return of Norman Westberg to the lineup – surely one of the world’s most patient and understated guitarists, content to stand, not playing for ten to fifteen minutes, before battering away at one or two chords and thirty BPM for the next fifteen minutes, creating noise and texture rather than doing the conventional ‘guitarist’ thing – but now it’s more subtle, growing building, slowly, so slowly. A tweak here and there, another player adds a later, and while you’ve been watching the dynamics of the two bassist and Gira’s windmilling, the volume has increased threefold and your ribcage is rattling and your brain is slowly scrambling. Kristof Hahn does things with lap-steel that is beyond comprehension, cranking out squalling, screaming walls of noise – but there isn’t a weak element in the lineup. They each bring something unique, and the collective output is something else.

If this is the end of Swans doing big band, big noise stuff, then they have certainly delivered a finale of spectacular proportions. And whatever comes next, we look forward with bated breath.

Jackie-O Motherfucker / Lo Egin / Sour Faced Lil – Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 23rd August 2025

Posted: 24 August 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s good to be back at Wharf Chambers. Personal circumstances have meant that the trip to Leeds has been largely beyond me, but stepping into the place felt like coming home. It’s unassuming, some may even basic, but it’s got a unique – and accommodating – vibe. There aren’t many small independent venues that can keep going by sticking to a programme of leftfield live music, or being explicit in a keen leaning towards inclusivity for LGBTQIA+ and anyone else who stands outside the fence of the normies, but Leeds is a big enough, and diverse enough, city for a place like this to not only survive, but thrive. It’s kinda quirky, a bit shabby chic, and it works: the beers – local – are cheap, the sound in the venue space is good, and it’s all cool, and tonight’s advertised lineup is a cracker. Diverse, but solid quality of an international reach.

Before we come to that, it’s a strange and rare occurrence to arrive at a venue to discover that there is an additional, unadvertised, band on the bill, and even more so when the band in question has effectively gatecrashed the event without prior arrangement with the promoter, but by dint of deception. But the first band on tonight have done just that. Perhaps it’s the only way they can get gigs. Because they sure do suck, and it was obvious that they’d never have been booked for this lineup in a million years. I head back to the bar after a couple of songs, having heard enough. When they’re done, promoter and sound man (in both senses), Theo takes the mic to explain that he hadn’t booked them and that they didn’t espouse the experimental ethos of the acts Heinous Whining exists to promote. The band did not respond well to this, validating the opinion a number of us had already formed, and they fucked off in a huff. Dicks.

Thankfully, normality – of the kind we’re here for – resumed with the arrival of Sour Faced Lil, the solo project of Hilary from Cowtown. Her set starts – somewhat incongruously – with a quirky electropop cover of Bright Eyes. I just about manage not to cry. Then she swerves into swooshing space rock noise galore, and she explores the weird and wibbly, and it’s everything you’d expect from a Heinous Whining night. Live drums, looped, live guitar, and warped, undulating synths create a cacophony of sound in layers. The performance is a little tentative in places, but the audience is behind her all the way. There’s something quite enthralling about seeing a solo artist juggling myriad musical elements and instruments, knowing what a balancing act, how much effort it is to remember everything and keep the flow, and the fact she manages it is impressive.

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Sour Face Lil

Also impressive are Lo Egin, but for quite different reasons. I feel I owe Lo Egin an apology, as it happens. When I reviewed their split release with Beige Palace a little while ago, I misspelled their name as Lo Elgin, more than once (although I managed to get it right when covering Volumancer in 2013) Hammering out reviews on a daily basis means I slip up sometimes. It’s not great, and I do try, to do better but… I did really rate that release, though, and I’ll admit that they were as much a draw for me as the headliners. And the fact is, they were worth the entry fee alone. On paper, they’re perhaps not the easiest sell, bring atmospheric post rock in the vein of early Her Name is Calla, with brass – sax and trombone – crossed with elements of doom – with the addition of screaming black metal vocals. They do epic. They do crescendos. They also do ultra-slow drumming, something I am invariably transfixed by having first become fixated during my first time seeing Earth live. The drummer raised his arms to fill extension above his head, before smashing down with explosive force.

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Lo Egin

Dolorous droning horns create a heavy atmosphere. Then, out of nowhere, from the delicately woven sonic tapestry they’ve been weaving, things turn Sunn O))) and the skinny baggy jeans wearing trombone guy who looks like a young Steve Albini delivers cavernous doomy vocals as he contorts and the mic stand and then all hell breaks loose. When they go heavy, they go heavy – and I mean HEAVY, the drummer smashing every beat so it hits like a nuclear bomb. To arrive with high hopes for a band, and to still be absolutely blown away is a truly wonderful experience, and one that stays with you.

I feel I should perhaps take this opportunity to apologise to Jackie-O Motherfucker, too: in my review of Bloom, I described them as a country band. And while there are without question country elements, they’re really not a country band. They’re not really a psychedelic band, either, or any other one thing. Instead, they’re a hypnotic hybrid, and they’re deceptively loud considering how mellow everything is. What they do is simple in many respects, but in terms of genre, it’s rather more complicated, not readily pigeonholed. I’d clocked them about the venue beforehand, and they seemed like really chilled folks, and while they’re not exactly chatty during their performance, it’s apparent that they’re humble, and simply really chuffed to be playing here. The room is pretty full, too. Tom Greenwood looks like he’s just taken some time out from doing some decorating to play. He’s got paint on his trousers, and is as unassuming as they come.

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Jackie-O Motherfuker

The current lineup consists of three guitars, synth, and some electronic stuff including subtle percussion. No bass, no drums. There are, however, many pedals and much pedal fiddling throughout the set, as they sculpt a wall of reverb and feedback and a whole lot more from this hefty – but ultimately portable – setup.

The resultant sound is detailed, but at the same time a hazy blur. Picked notes – and much of the sound is clean, with next to no distortion, but with all the reverb – bounce off one another here and there, creating ever greater cathedrals of sound. I find myself utterly transfixed. Their hour-and-a-bit long set features just seven songs, and they are completely immersive. There’s no real action to speak of, just an ever-growing shimmer which envelops your entire being. In some respects, their extended instrumental passages invite comparisons to the current incarnations of Swans, only without the evangelically charismatic stage presence or crescendos. In other words, they conjure atmosphere over some extended timeframes, but keep things simmering on a low burner, without any volcanic eruptions. The end result is a performance which is hypnotic, gripping because of, rather than in spite of the absence of drama. Low-key, but loud: absolute gold.

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