Camden Crawl 2011 – Day One
As last minute step-in for BIYL’s Mark who was off honing his culinary skills for a rather important anniversary, I took on this job with trepidation and an uncharacteristic lack of planning….
…But if there was ever anywhere where trepidation and an uncharacteristic lack of planning were actually a bonus for the survival kit, the 2011 Camden Crawl was surely it…
My brief was simple, witness a brace of memorable sets by (mostly) not so well known bands.
Hopefully my efforts will help change this fact for them and for us both …Don’t forget to click on the bands names for some linkage to sound and vision…
*Cue ‘24’ Opening Theme music*
Becoming Real: 18.15 – @ Koko.
Right now Electronic / Dance music is having something of a twister of important activity, and although this hasn’t gelled exactly into another ‘Summer Of Love’, the disparate forces of acts such as FaltyDl, 2652, Boxcutter, Factory Floor, Instra-mental, Demdike Stare, Scuba and Lone (to speedily check the first names out of my mouth), are making such huge waves, anyone with a serious head about them simply can’t ignore. Suffice to say, Becoming Real belong in this group with relative effortlessness.
So then, Dubstep with bells on?…
Nah-uh, Much more…Producer Toby Ridler opens up the evening’s events in a 1/200th full Koko with his haunting (used here in the words purest form – ie: damn scary) and tripomatic palette of Urban sounds with almost literally laxative beats.
This is music manufactured from experience of the nooks and crannies of 4AM London backstreets and alleyways., that he can round the angular edges, produce music this lush, have fan nods straddle in both Indie & Dance circles and still show a nice view of the gnarly Garage dissonance underneath is something we’ll all hopefully be able to uncover more about in the coming year.
To his credit, Ridler & his laptop do get what crowd that are there moving from the start, although it’s actually quite disorientating that he should be playing this early, he’d clearly tear the venue a new one if he was on in the Midnight spot.
Just standing in full view of the venues grand early-1900’s decor while being tasered with one of the warmest and most futuristic low-ends ever was somehow at odds, but he nailed the unsuspecting Crawl punters to a sub-bass crucifix when he played his soulful classic ‘Closer’ and it was a great set to kick off my first Crawl’s delights with.
Check Becoming Reals’ ‘Closer’ here
The Russian Futurists: 19.15 – @ The Black Heart.
Belting back into Camden central from the relative calm of Koko’s axis, I was immediately swept into the oncoming carny, and skidding down the side of the ‘Worlds End’ and chucking a right, I checked in at the bar, (only to find out where the band were playing you understand), proceeded up some very narrow stairs and saw Futurists head honcho Matt Hart marshalling his merry men (and woman) onto the tiny floor level stage in a space that resembled someone’s loft conversion.
I’ve been a fan of this Toronto based outfit for quite a while now and was intrigued to see how they’d pull off their strangely lo-fi, wistfully experimental, but resolutely classic Pop songs live and as the first words out of Hart’s mouth were “We’re gonna play you some Pop songs” my question was uncannily answered.
Where their records have, (not to their discredit may I add), a slightly bedroomry production value, live, they go for an AM Radio jugular with the sort of hyperactive glee I’ve only ever seen at Polyphonic Spree or Go! Team shows while delivering songs worthy of inclusion in Beach Boys or Ben Folds Five canons.
Matt’s clearly a huge fan of a huge range of good music and he’s assimilated it originally and honourably into the bands sound. There are not many bands I’d like to see filling stadia, but these guys seem natural for the part. It’s fine stuff.
The anthemic ‘Let’s Get Ready To Crumble’, the wickedly fun Male/Female call and response of ‘One Night One Kiss’ and the euphoric Old School Hip-Hop meets Van Dyke Parks romp of ‘Paul Simon’ (Check here) being the highlights.
Lulu & The Lampshades: 20.20 – @ The Black Heart.
As the size of the venue shrank back to its normal size, I decide it’s time to try and get a spot where I wasn’t basically hugging the rather shrill PA and slowly walk to get a more sensible viewpoint for the next act who are (wo)manfully trying to set up their truly curious array of instruments in time for their spot, as always at the Crawl…The clock is ticking.
This walk backwards however, almost leads me to the exit and beyond as the room has suddenly become almost fatally full. I know BIYL has been putting the word around about Lulu & her crew, but I’ve got to come to the conclusion that we can’t be the only ones, and it’s here, the Camden Crawl becomes the Camden Crush.
I manage to check four animated and admirably strong tracks before the spirit of the event really took over and I was no longer actually touching the ground for short periods of time. I’d love to say this was a dreamy by-product of the music, but it’s literal fact and as I can also barely hear their highly original take on Folk / Pop / yogurt carton mash-up over the cacophony of sounds from all angles, I decide it’s time to bail…Plenty of time for these lovely people later, I’ve absolutely no doubt.
S.C.U.M.: 20.45 – @ The Electric Ballroom.
Arriving bang into an almost empty venue, I watch five mysterious silhouettes take the stage.
There is a nicely chaotic wall of sound emanating, elements nicely merged so as not to be able to make out exactly who’s doing what. Closest to me, vocalist Thomas Cohen & Bassist Huw Webb model cheesecutter profiles that are SO slender you can barely see them when they turn sideways inside the red fog onstage.
Cohen’s moves are insectile, a little reminiscent of Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy or Birthday Party era Nick Cave and mentioning both those names brings me rolling headlong into a frustrating dilemma concerning the band.
Myself being *coughs age through hand*, I’ve seen this before, the solid droning basslines, the semi tribal drumming, the waspy electronics and shredding guitars, indeed, Killing Joke’s Youth, who watches a few tracks from the side of the stage is probably thinking much the same thing, so mention here of S.C.U.M.’s similarity in sound to many bands from the Post-Punk era is not going to be a surprise to anyone following them or I’m sure, the band themselves, indeed, it’s practically impossible to start anywhere but.
There are strong hints of Modern English’s metronomic grandeur, traces of Psychedelic Furs’ Anti-Rock twist, Danse Society’s deceptively speedy heft, Sisters Of Mercy’s cultivated mystique, a lick maybe of even early Japan in their clobber, but it’s all making the memories flood back, so in cases like this, the acid test has to be the quality of the tunes.
Fortunately, S.C.U.M. are suited and booted so I’d certainly not want to put money on them petering out at the first fence. There’s also a nice ‘fish out of water’ feel to their presence at the Crawl too as they’re one of the few bands here to step over from their more natural East London fashionista stomping ground to give this more earthy scene an injection of Shoreditch glamour.
Their cited influences such as Liars, The Residents and Throbbing Gristle are way more avant-garde than anything in evidence tonight, but I have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes and to judge from one 30 minute live set is unfair, but I’m in no doubt whatsoever that we’re going to see a flowering process into much darker territory.
Their recent signing to the always dependable Mute label is a sign of where they’re coming from and also hopefully where they’re going, as is their interesting approach to mobile recording and choice of producer on their impending debut album.
I also highly anticipate that their latest recorded offering, the breakneck Acid-Goth wall of sonic brilliance entitled “Summon The Sound” will still be among my favourite ten tracks at the close of 2011, check the literally blinding video here
So despite my accusations of a derivative nature, I’m thinking that if I was a 16 year old trying to find a band to call my own…My search may well have stopped with S.C.U.M.
Rainbow Arabia: 21.30 – @ The Black Heart.
“Sorry Sir, but I’m afraid it’s capacity up there”….
Hawk Eyes: 21.35 – @ Camden Underworld.
An unexpected flop into the unknown, but it is rather thrilling that one, for two nights only, can literally walk into a Camden venue, hold out your wrist and just saunter inside.
On checking the aforementioned Leeds Punk-Metallers, I was pleasingly impressed what turned out to be the last three tracks of their set.
There’s a touch of a more Math-y Helmet and a little more Techno-Rock Alice In Chains in the mix, maybe more of a US influence detected than a UK one but that’s no bad thing.
They’re also maybe a little too impatient sounding to totally convince me there is world domination awaiting, but there are some great jabs in there and they were genuinely so tight they sounded like they’d been welded together, extra spoils here to guitarist Rob Stephens who’s exploration of his fretboard was almost as if he’d never seen a guitar before this evening but was asked to find out everything about one against the clock.
An Off Licence in Camden High Street – 21.55 – Heads Saint Etienne at Koko…Tails…
Killing Joke: 22.00 – @ The Electric Ballroom.
Although there is a slightly disappointing vibe of nostalgia in the air from the punters point of view (in evidence when they play newer stuff), the Joke clearly haven’t wound up their mission.
That they pepper the first five songs with four of their most explosive tracks is proof they still want YOU and ARE coming to get you.
In this opening blitz of sound and (predominantly Middle Eastern political) soundbytes, and quickly displaying his typically sensitive touch in audience / band relations, front man(iac) Jaz Coleman jubilantly announces that ‘You’ll all be dead within sixteen months’.
The sheepish cheering that followed was almost endearing, but I was wondering if I was the only person not onstage who noticed he pointedly said ‘you’ll’ as opposed to ‘we’ll’…
Here, he undoubtedly doesn’t mean him and the rest of the band. Maybe the fact they’re still sawing fans heads off with their bone-shaking primal sound 32 years after forming means that they’ve not yet finished stocking up on supplies for their own personal nuclear retreat, 200 feet above sea level for when the shit really hits the fan, but if they have, it’s a nice original twist on word that they may just be in it for the money now anyway.
Coleman may not be the burliest guy in the room, but apart from wanting to check off a personal wish-list entry to hear his theories and philosophies on the state of the planet to see if he ever runs out of steam, (because he’s still saying things that people like Thom Yorke or Billie Joe Armstrong could only watch their brains run out of their ears on contact with), he IS however, perhaps the last person on Earth you’d want to see at the wrong end of a dark alley when he’s in this mood.
During the opening salvo of ‘Change’, ‘Requiem’, ‘Wardance’ & ‘Love Like Blood’, it strikes me that Geordie Walker strokes his Gibson ES-295 in the same sinister detached way that Bond villain Blofeld strokes his white cat and with pretty much the same apocalyptic outcome.
On the opposite side of the stage, newly returned original bassist Martin ‘Youth’ Glover once more puts his head over the parapet and jettisons his super-producer comfort zone to rejoin his welcoming troop. He may look like a Golf swinging Jimmy Corkhill in his visor and baggies now, but his manic grin belies the fact that he can still have your eyes out with one of his depth charge bass runs.
Similarly ‘Big’ Paul Ferguson, who’s dismantling of the classic ‘Rock’ style of drumming (which was still wildly prevalent in most Punk bands back in ’79-81) meant his more Tribal and instinctive style saw a whole bunch of imitators take up the instrument as he made ‘being the drummer’ suddenly a whole lot more interesting to a bands sound than being there just for the purposes of keeping time, he’s aped and underrated to this day…But, rarely bettered.
I’d argue also, although they were a little late to the party (at least as releasing records went) KJ could almost be classed as the ultimate Punk band.
That they freely flaunted their indulgence in Disco & LSD at a time when the media focus was only really reserving space for middle class poseurs, sneering and bouncing in £50 ‘Smash the System’ garb, who, along with the Pub Rockers who’d turned to Speed as their drug of choice and simply rebranded themselves as Punk, must have collectively been wondering what force of nature it was that had rushed past them in terms of pure untamed originality when the Joke sprang out of their Notting Hill squat and flipped them the bird with their truly alien mash of naked Punk aggression you could also do ‘The Hustle’ to.
This makes Killing Joke, in my book at least, one of the most important UK bands to have trod the boards since Glam, it’s a shame they don’t get credit to match…
Hopefully I’ll be able to witness this sweet assault at least once more, y’know…Before the end of the world.
(Thanks to Bootzilla for the KJ pic).
Flats: 22.35 – @ Camden Rock.
So straight from Punk Rock class of ’79 to Punk Rock class of ’11…What’s the difference then?
I like Flats…a lot, and I thought this was going to be one of the sparkiest most crammed sets on the whole of the Crawl. As it goes though, they were pitched directly against pretty much the strongest bunch of bands playing simultaneously in the whole weekend, so It’s here the Camden Crawl turns into the Camden Lottery.
Their brand of Punk is the more unmelodic, negative, but purer strain. Think: Discharge, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Crass, with a hint of the chaotic elements of later noise-based bands like Membranes & Wedding Present somewhere in the grind.
In their media life too, their lambasting of Paul Weller’s sycophantic lionisation gets a little nod from me as well for simply having the nuts to.
What they are a little short of though, is a focussed message to meld with their sound. It’s nihilistic enough, but they’re not putting across something I care enough about to really want to have a tear up about, and frustratingly, the goal is open wide right now in terms of sociology & economics.
If they paint themselves into a ‘Punk’ corner they’ll be dead in the water before album 3, but alternatively, if they go the ‘way of the weird’ like it sounds as if they may, maybe start getting some (more?) psychedelics down their neck, where do I sign? Reports of unaired 7 minute epics already nailed for their debut album plus random postings of Krautrock tour bus favourites on Facebook bode extremely well.
I’d say with a little more mouth and message on ‘em; they could really raise some hairs if they really want to bad enough.
Check the brilliant video for single ‘Never Again’ here
Ghostpoet: 23.35 – @ The Barfly.
The one thing I really didn’t want to do finally happens.
Roughly stretching to Chalk Farm tube, the queue to get into the Coventry based Rap rocket’s tiny space was insurmountable, and feeling the eyes of a thousand raging demons, I gingerly reached for my VIP pass and took the cowards way out straight into the sardine sandwich upstairs.
Signed to the mighty Gilles Peterson’s indie, Brownswood, in Obaro Ejimiwe, AKA Ghostpoet, we’ve got a genuine homegrown star in waiting.
All tracks this evening are from his brilliant debut, “Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam”.
There’s zero concession to the ostentatiousness of some of his US counterparts, just a brilliant intuition going on in the grooves, plus a genuinely weird exploration in sounds and rhymes while all the time keeping it clear, fresh, believable and fun.
He’s bang on point with the perils and trivia of the modern world too, laconically satirising the Google age, landing blows on subject matters people twice his weight class would be relieved to have worn down and finished off.
Flanked by live guitar, which gives things a spookily Prog feel, plus a drummer, so synced I didn’t even realise he was onstage until four tunes in, ‘Poets powdery voice scythes through any misconceptions that his somewhat narcotic delivery is bringing us words to match…
…THIS Ladies and Gentlemen… is POP, 2011, UK stylee.
Ejimiwe enviably, now has watertight credentials in both commercial; Indie & Future Dance circles as well as his own Grime & Hip-Hop root base too, I’d say it’s only a matter of time before Mercury comes-a-calling, (for whatever reward that’s perceived to have attached), But whatevah, Ghostpoet is going to run and run…Set of the day, hands down.
Check Ghostpoets ‘Cash and Carry Me Home’ single here
Outside Barfly – 00.10 – You mean I’ve got to do this all over again tomorrow?!
Tony this is totally brilliant and well worth the wait i hope felt the whole buzz of the thing well i can tell from this post you did. From my part i really appreciate such a great part one and hey the VIP pass is meant to be used it’s what we slave over keyboards for after all !!