HOKABEN Dec 08 - brick lane

Three rooms, three days and a vast array of underground noise acts leaves us spoilt for choice.
Part Chimp bring their brutal beauty to the fore in order to start Friday night’s proceedings.  A tidal wave of sound engulfs the venue, underneath it all; a groove emerges, repeats and is strangled slowly into submission.  Thus is the accustomed Chimp formula, but as new tracks are previewed this evening further ventures into structure and precision are exhibited.  ‘StarPiss’ demonstrates this during seven tempo-transforming minutes of blissful white noise combined with the theme-tune to the Banana Splits.        ‘Trad’ ends it all.  A mass surge of ZZ Top riffage, locomotive power and full-throttle velocity all car-compacted into 4 and half minutes of solid sludge
...you can only pity Fucked Up as they try to follow such punishing vigour.  Sounding like an irritating fly trapped in it’s own ear-drum, their piss-weak sound, samey songs, and not to mention self-conscious, smug, uninformed six-form political ramblings evoke embarrassment of the highest order.  Sure, they might’ve read ‘Get in the Van’, but when your conviction appears to be on constant vacation it’s impossible to hide your validity-bypass behind a 22 stone ‘McPunk’ frontman.

Fucking Shit morelike....
however, for a lesson in something truly ‘fucked up’ simply venture to the back room as Trencher spray a hot and sticky anoxia of sadistic spaz-rock out into the faces of the crowd.  Playing the musical soundtrack to every pervert’s erotic asphyxiation, every chord played splices a fresh knuckle, every bass-kick a splintered shin.  Nasty, grumesome and sick, Trencher happily sit in the one-band genre of Casio Grindcore with a spike up their arse.
“You lucky, lucky motherfuckers”…when arrogance is justified it’s a thrilling prospect. Don Caballero practically have it oozing from every available orifice this evening.  Absolute masters of their craft Gene Doyle, Jason Jouver and founder member Damon Che offer a relentless display of methodical and clinical sculptures in rhythmic texture.  Such is their wizardry that part of the delight in their performance is just watching every movement lost in an ambidextrous maze of flair and aptitude.

Saturday begins with an array of wild-screams and mutterings as a young man named Team Brick carries out his own personal musical exorcism. Spitting sonic vitriol in an incredible array of vocal styles, we experience demonic chants, Arabic-like hymns and pure cathartic rage before Mr Brick lets rip in turn on synth, guitar and percussion.  Difficult to absorb in the moment, yet strangely hard to shake after it ended, it was a beautifully hypnotic performance.
Not quite so subtle, Hey Colossus practically obliterates the stage when the first chord strikes.  During 35 minutes of relentless shock therapy, no pause for breath is taken, just a one-way collision course of meat-cleaver-subtlety, nail-bomb intensity and geeky looking grown men who frankly should know better, making a noise bigger than the Gods.
Back in the backroom **K leads us down his usual jet-black downward spiral of droned-out loops circling the room as double-dutch beats pound our senses.
As the journey deepens it’s not dissimilar to being slowly lowered into a tarpit, the last gasp for air slowly approaches, asphyxiation beckons until Hemoglobin suddenly circlates the body just as the set climaxes, soaring to a breathtaking tornado of noise.
In the main hall Ramesses rock out like it’s 1986 with more effort going into the head banging that the music, but Dethscalator soon make amends in the front room with their messy, musical car crash grooves.  It ain’t pretty, but the serious lack of tunes are somehow made-up by the sheer mentalist conviction of their frontman who is clearly trying to make the most of his time whilst out on day release.
Neptune tragically clash with Flower-Corsano Duo and despite every intension to see half of each it the Duo’s hypnotic fusion of intervallic textual moulding that keeps me gripped throughout the entire set knowing full well that the recurring rhythms are slowly building toward a heightened crescendo that may well not exist.  This risk is part of the appeal as whiz-kid Chris Corsano weaves a web of lightning fast strikes as the set finally reaches its’ moment of clarity awash with vibrant harmonium.
Italian three-piece Stearica amaze first musically, then secondly due to not having heard of them before.  With a massive blast of on-stage-energy, the trios power embarks from the back in the form of monumental powerhouse drumming leading to an almost aero dynamic-like force that carries the bands’ music out in to orbit.
With new lp ‘Oltre’ featuring artists as diverse as Dälek and Jessica Lurie, despite 10 years in the making, a promising future comes to light.
In an appropriate end to the day the cosmic space-jams of Acid Mother’s Temple take us yet again on another zoned-out celestial epic trip that goes on and on until time goes backwards.  But looking to the future Hokaben can be credited as an immediate success and here’s to next year.