Amadou et Mariam, 3rd Mar

For some reason, although the Souad Massi takes the stage and although she is brilliant and sings beautifully, it is not until late into her set that the crowd begins to respond as if they are at a happening.

There could be many reasons for this. The average age of the concert goers seems to be about 50+, so perhaps it takes a while for their bones to warm up, or something. The younger generation traditionally turn up a bit later and the beautiful Algerian French Spanish Arabic music comes across a little bit desperate, echoey. The band have a lot of fun, there are some great drum solos, the guitarist plays a twelve string like no-one I've seen and the old dude at the back gets more sounds out of his little Arabic drum than anyone with a full kit at their disposal.

The great dance music dies out and we are left waiting for the next act, Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal : "one of the hottest rappers to explode out of the African music scene" (worldmusic.net ). His is an incredible tale of survival as a child soldier, rescue, rejuvination, Jesus, forgiving everbody and music. (Independent Article ). Unfortunately his musical calling errs too far on the bland RnB side of hiphop, there is a good tune in there, the lyrics and stories are all meaningful and relevant but I become too aware of the ache in my legs and the fact that everybody around me seems to be loving it. Is it because of his story that they are all so enraptured? The BBC World Music Award for being someone with a history that we can't even imagine? Yes, we should sympathise with his history, but someone needs to tell him his music is sh1t. There is one good song in there, reminiscient of MC Solaar - good sing along chorus, Jal is out-rapped by his backing singer but I am once again distracted by the age of the audience.

I don't want to appear age-ist. I am happy that a lot of people who don't normally go to gigs are at gigs. I become embroiled in a brief 'discussion' on Choke about the kind of people to expect at this concert and yes, they're all here. The stereotypical Gruaniad readers with blissful knowing smiles and the faint smell of patchouli, gyrating purposefully like hippies at flowers festivals. The older, well-travelled middle classes looking at each other as if to say this is Real Music! Those young people today don't know what Real Music is! But we do, and we're here as well. During one of Emmanuel Jal's more aggressive songs they are smiling, nodding, even dancing and yet you wouldn't catch any of these people at any other sort of hip hop concert. You wouldn't catch them down the Croft checking out some really exciting and interesting new music even though they might really enjoy (some of) it. Maybe if it was advertised in the broadsheets...

It only annoyed me a little bit. On the other hand, it was nice to see such a wide variety of people enjoying themselves so much. Even if some of the men were a bit too distracted by all the young latino girls to notice the music.

Back to the gig. When the bad beats finally stop and the stage is washed clean, Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia are brought on. They play some rousing afro-blues and all sorts of other Afrikan delights, even moving into disco for a bit. The music is full of the variety of influence that has been coming out of Mali, a fusion of Cuban and Western music with traditional styles.

I'll give up trying to describe it! We have a fun time dancing, I manage to stay in front of the tall people and while I am slightly disappointed that Manu Chao doesn't make a special guest appearance (his influence is all over the album) it's still a great night. If you haven't got the album yet, do so, it's well worth it!

Geisha Coliseum Lords, 6th Mar

A brief trip to the Junction on the day before my moment of glory at the University and the [skip:module fair]. It marks the first time I've seen Geisha this year, and it won't be the last! They have just finished a short tour and although they seem a little bit tired they still smash out yet another storming Geisha set.

For some reason, the bands are playing on the opposite side of the bar to the one they usually play on. The PA stays wehere it is however and so we have the strange effect of hearing the singers 'next to' the music. I am standing right by one of the PA speakers and while my left ear fills with tortured screams my right is bleeding from the noise.

It's a good sort of bleeding.

About half way through the set Geisha play their new Geisha meets the Mars Volta meets Pink Floyd and screams (tm) song, which I love, it has just the right balance of rock grooves, punk shouting, metal screaming and prog wibbling. I pray this song is on the forthcoming album, or I'll have to start bootlegging gigs!

Tonight the Junction plays host to two American bands. The first of these features a whirling dervish of a drummer, a big scarey man with a beard and a timid bass player. The guitarist has a strange setup of a Marshall JCM 800 behind him and a Marshall JCM 2000 that sits behind the bass player. You want quieter guitars? No problem, I'll just uses the one amp for 'quiet' bits. The 2000 produces a nice bright lead sound in contrast to the 800's rougher distortion Together, they are a powerhouse of metal noise. Apart from the odd dramatic slo-metal moment, Coliseum (sic) only have two settings: furious fast thrash metal and OFF. In the 'off' bits we are treated to soliloquies about the terrible state of America today and how we have to stop kissing Bush's ass coz our country is looking pretty stupid although it's great. The songs? Well at times it's pretty cool - fast driving loud shouting. Towards the end of the set I start to get a bit distracted at the sameness of it all though.

Following this, just in case anybody can still hear we have more rants from the singer of Lords and more fast metal. This guy had to go and see the dentist and it cost me twelve of your English Pounds! This country is great! In America it would have cost me 400 bucks. In ENGLAND it would cost me 200 quid you git...

I make my excuses and leave. Not because I'm not enjoying it, you understand, just that I have to get up in the morning, I have WORK to do. It will be hard enough being deaf.

Ack Ack Ack, Mar 24th

From what I'd heard, it didn't seem like going to watch a 'band'
called Fuck Buttons
would really be a good idea. (I try to be late, allowing myself to
get sucked into fixing mp3 tags on my jukebox before we leave. This is
no simple task. I have about 200 songs without track numbers, which
means my player will play them in alphabetical order, which is
annoying). But anyway...

Unfortunately, when we arrive there is the distinctive vibration of
white noise coming through the walls of href="http://www.myspace.com/thejunctionbristol">the Junction,
echoing out into the street and mingling with the sound of traffic. The
traffic sounds better, in that it at least carries an element
of indeterminism which lends some interest and the possibility of a
moment of quiet. Fuck Buttons allow no such respite. There is the
briefest of pauses between tracks before the next huge noise. Underneath
the wall we hear some primitive rhythms beaten out on drums, the noise
is filtered via the laptop into other forms of noise while the boys
scream into microphones and a Fisher PriceTM Karaoke toy.

It ends at last and we can finally leave behind this kindergarten of
pointless noise children who hit things. We only had to put up with it
for five minutes, but I think I'll try to avoid ever having to put up
with it again. href="http://www.myspace.com/scarecrows">Scarecrows offer a
refreshing contrast featuring music that sounds good at first, but they
don't seem to know what to do with the few good ideas they have. For a
couple of songs it is okay: decent grooves, amateurish drumming from the
violin player, a good baseline. After the fourth song starts I realise
that this is going to be more of the same until the end of the set.
My attention fades, my mind wanders back to thinking about how many
songs to which I could have assigned track numbers in this
time...

King Alexander
save the evening with their cheeky brand of shrieking shouty college
punk mixed with that 1994 guitar pop sound. Which is good, because
Ack Ack Ack are a bit, well strange and not
that exciting (no web site, but mp3 href="http://www.runningriotrecords.co.uk/download/ack%20ack%20ack%20-%2
0alley%20juice.mp3">here). Sure, they are loud but the ideas again
are few and the singing from inside a gas mask is a bit lame. In fact
the guitars aren't loud enough in my opinion, yet another one of these
bands that tries to play metal without heavy guitars and ends up
sounding thin and harsh. The drummer's displeasure at the performance is
evident at the end of the set when he throws his cymbals angrily behind
him. I didn't sense many mistakes, in fact the drummer is incredible,
but the teacher in me wants to write could try harder, lots of
enthusiasm, needs direction.

Choke Magazine Launch, 31st Mar

The Croft is packed on this fine Friday night, packed
full of people who are desperate to read more of my wonderful gig
reviews, in full black and white on Real Paper. Obviously there are
other writings in the magazine too. The pub is also packed with href="http://www.ttyc.co.uk">Chokers and the usual Friday night
crowd who just wanted to go to the pub, not realising that a full
invasion is in effect.

Knowledge of Bugs kicks off proceedings, sitting
behind a table in a scientist's white coat. The table is covered in
technical-looking things a little keyboard with a hundred red
buttons glued on, a piece of circuitry, boxes composed more of knobs and
switches than box and lots of wires. It appears that the coat he wears
is not just for show, because Tom Bugs has made all these things himself
and he is about to take us on a scientific journey of sound
creation.

Here we have a gentle drone created through buzzes and echoing
guitar. There he taps the table and records it to create a beat. While
this is bubbling away nicely through delay and other strange effects
Bugs throws in some home-made slide guitar, a dash of gentle melody with
his voice weaving around the echoing notes. It is captivating to watch
him at work, and the eerie soundscapes created keep you transfixed,
feeling the harmonies and melodies subtly changing, waiting to find out
what happens next, what that box will do, what sound, what
noise, what he will say...

Jimi Hendrix wakes me from my reverie. Tom has finished and the
DJ takes over. There will be no continuity of musical styles tonight,
this is a celebration of Choke 's
diversity and its far-reaching involvement with the world of new and
exciting music in Bristol. The magazine reflects this diversity in the
opinions of the writers and styles of music experienced therein.
Hopefully it will address some of the accusations that the Choke
community is elitist and only panders to its mates, but I still have a
housemate who believes we only write about our friends, without even
noticing that most of the music therein is from out of town bands.
Well they must be all noisey noise then he says, but I point
out that there are rock bands, electronic bands, dance music, noise,
punk, heavy metal, acoustic and folky. He picks it up again and starts
to read. I don't know what anyone can do to address this. It's only an
internet thing. It's not even like the forum's more important. The music
is important.

It has been a long time since I first encountered North
Sea Navigator at the Polish club right after a bad break-up and my
first ever Choke-related gig. Tonight they are on a mission to be the
best they've ever been. Although the added volume drowns out the cello a
bit, the three vocalists are loud and clear, the harmonium is
delightfully menacing and the songs from the album Make The
Blacklist are edgy, beautiful, driving, and much more dance-able
than they've been before. While I'm finding it difficult to describe
just how good this gig was, at the time of writing a week later the song
Aileen Wuornos is still reverberating around my skull with its
great rhythm and angst-ridden melody.

The genres swing off at another tangent when href="http://www.myspace.com/3hostwomexicansandatinofspanners">3hostwomexicansandatinofspanners hit their first chord, with
epic heavy guitar rock giving way to furiously paced speed riffing. The
two guitarists share vocal duties stroke shouting matches but the words
don't matter - it's the delivery, the rhythm of the words exploding out
of their mouths and how it fits with the music stopping and starting
behind it. The rock-metal-punk waxes and wanes, it builds to shrieking
hysteria with great timing and breaks down to almost funky rock before
the next hilarious assault. The musical term 'con fuoco' springs to
mind, which I always imagined to mean 'like fuck' although really it
means like fire. Later I discover through searching the internet that
they are just as good on record. Definitely one to add to the growing
list of discoveries through Choke...

The evening is closed by a set of Euro techno trance disco horror
courtesy of Antoni Maiovvi, A.K.A. My Ambulance Is On
Fire A.K.A. art noise metal group Geisha front man. This is no normal DJ
set, the music comes out of a laptop and Antoni has all his guitar
pedals laid out next to it. While the music kicks off, he is twiddling
knobs and pushing buttons. A microphone is clasped to his chest, the
crescendo begins to build and slowly it lifts...

 

The scream when it comes fills the space that is usually reserved for
the boring old snare / crash build up. It reverberates round the music,
filling all the spaces, distorted and resonating to my very core. While
he is screaming I know of nothing else. When he stops, I cannot imagine
how the scream sounded and the music seems to be all the more uplifting
because of it. As the set continues, we are treated to different forms
and sounds of screaming over dance music, the like of which I have never
encountered before and will probably never encounter again. There is
talk of a CD though.

I buy two copies of the magazine since obviously I am proud to find
myself in print and the GF wants a copy for her house. Something to
add to the CV, I think and begin to read. The quality of writing is
excellent, considering that most of us are just people who love music,
write about loving music and argue endlessly about why we love music.
Available in all good shops now!