Saturday night, The Packhorse in Leeds at the wrong end of Freshers’ Week - no place of promise.
Tall, thin and Victorian, it watches as a rag-end of locals (sixty years to drink their brain cells dry) creep home and a tide of students (set to achieve it quicker) take over.
A bit of paper stuck to the door signals a clandestine upstairs meeting, FoS vs GZH.
Local promoter, Forest of Sound and local label Gizeh (as in “Gizeh Record”, geddit?) fielding four bands apiece.
But all is not well. Winter North Atlantic, having spent seven hours failing to fix a broken computer have pulled out. Winter North Atlantic, is actually Ed Carter of Sheffield, and it is sad to miss him because doing homework for the gig I loved his myspace quite enough to buy his records.
As it is, the night kicks off with Manchester’s Spokes, two of whom live in the “rough part” of Salford, (possibly an overfine distinction). They make a fine noise do Spokes, in the “Explosions in the Sky”, “God is . . .” tradition. But that is the trouble: they are copyists.
Of course it sounds good, it sounds right. Because who in their right mind would copy rubbish? But they bring nothing new. And that is a waste.
We shuffle across the landing to t’other room (five minute changeovers observed to the dot) for Phantom Dog Beneath the Moon, half of whom, “multi-instrumentalist / spooky electronic dude Scott” is absent for the trivial reason of a PhD viva. This leaves Garfunkel without his Simon. Aaron won the prize that night (and it was a close run thing) for the most wayward hairdo and (more easily won) the shyest stage presence. But he has a voice. The voice does thin, glassy, ringing, but the voice also does dire, abrasive, barking. Here, you think, is one soul who may not see out the year intact. Ghosts stalk the songs of Phantom Dog . . . I am not being metaphorical. When not busy thinking about equations, Aaron spends his time writing songs about ghosts.
Which I suppose leaves little time for the hairdressers.
Chantal Acda (Dutch) playing as SleepingDog confesses a preference for horses and rabbits to people and has two podgy red ponies perched on the monitors and two fluffy white rabbits nearby. But is one of the rarest of things, a real woman. Her songs: sad, intense and beautiful, natural as breath, hold the room still. She has been on tour with Glissando, thinks they’re nearly as nice as horses and pinches their violinist, Sophie, a happy collaboration, for two songs.
Downstairs, students dressed as schoolgirls, shirts and faces covered in felt-tip pen, clog the bar.
Across the landing it is Pan Am Scan, who are three: two blond, one oriental, all male. One applemac, one vibraphone, one drum set plus etceteras.
This is only Pan Am Scan’s fifth gig.
They improvise.
Neither of these facts is apparent !
The applemac person samples and re-jiggles. A human pedal! At one point the wee chap at the vibraphone (you could pop him in a pocket) lies a large chain over the keys, the percussionist pulls a thread up through the drum skin, beats small copper bowls with woolly sticks and generally works himself to a frenzy over tiny tiny sounds. They make curtains of sound coalesce like Northern Lights in that dark Leeds night.
Downstairs, students dressed as clowns crowd out the bar.
Back across the landing, Glissando, who everyone in Leeds knows, settle down to produce elegant music with breathtakingly awful lyrics. Maybe the Cocteau Twins knew a thing or two.
Cramming eight bands into four and a half hours was always going to be a challenge, especially as many of them are musicians. (!) But all goes tickety boo till The Boats. The Boats look to have fetched along some bloke they’ve found propping up the bar as their singer. The rest of the band’s shambolic efforts make him look a consummate professional.
The Boats spend loads of energy making little scritch-scratchy noises only to fall in bits over an unearthed lead offering all the scratchiness they could ever want – free.
If it were not for the appalling reality of the first years downstairs, you’d be tempted to say The Boats act like a load of students. Here, for sure, are men who drop their underpants on the floor at bedtime. But the sounds they make. Oh. Like a curlew over a marsh, mist over a river, autumn leaves in a dry wind are, luckily, much prettier.
Downstairs, tigers with black whiskers, (by now VERY drunk) lurch on the rolling deck of the pink marble floor.
Rather late, and with audience attrition having taken its toll, it is Rothko’s turn. It is rather nice that, in the week Rothko return up north, the Rothko exhibition kicks off at theTate. Both are simply magisterial.
At one point an unopposable wall of sound bears down and it seems succumbing to drowning might be soft as a falling into a little sleep. Mr Beazley, head Rothko honcho has a habit of expecting things of his bass most basses have not even dreamt of. And he does not take no for an answer. Unmistakable as a Rothko painting, hear one note from a bass and you can tell when Mark Beazley is playing. Chefs have signature dishes, Mark a signature touch. In a set of a mere five pieces their wine list is by turns: coarse, noisy, abrasive, rich, plummy, rotund, sharp, acidic, blackcurranty.
Vodka drinkers – schoolgirls, clowns or tigers – need not attend.
The billing Forest of Sound vs. Gizeh, implies a competitive element.
Judges, your cards please!
FOS
fall at the first hurdle, losing Winter North Atlantic NULL points
handicapped by losing ½ of Phantom Dog . . . 2 points
hit a winner with Pan Am Scan 4 points
choose an unreliable steed in The Boats 3 points
total 9 points
Gizeh
take an unimaginative option with Spokes NULL points
sign SleepingDog 3 points
play their solid card: Glissando 3 points
persuade royalty to attend: Rothko 5 points
total 11 points
*** Winners Gizeh ***
(and hence, perhaps, for want of a PC, a night is lost.)
Thanks to Wendy Cook for this review.
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We’re currently on the drive to Birmingham, the potential of tonight’s show being a full-scale disaster is fairly high due to the promoter (Robot Professor) not returning emails for the previous few weeks… it’s a worry.
