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.

 Emerging from an eleven-year hiatus, which left some writing Portishead off as mere soundtrackers for bourgeois dinner-parties, comes a bitterly acidic case of indigestion.  
Stripped bare of all the warm comfort and multi-textures of their past, the brilliantly avant-austere maze of the Third lp signified the work of a newly-focussed, invigorated band fresh from hibernation.  Transmitted into the live environment this beautifully restrained tension breaks loose from its enclosed cocoon with a fluid blaze of urgency and technicolor.  
Third track in ‘The Rip’ symbolizes this transformation perfectly, as the haunted dissonance and unknown pleasures slowly disperse, it builds and evolves into a Krautrock-shaped act of breathtaking vibrancy.
‘Wandering Star’ shredded down to just vocals and guitar, does credit to both Portishead’s ability of creating a musical mountain from a molehill as well as their cinematic sized pin-precision PA System.  And when the sound is pushed to the peak of its limits with the pulsating industrial grind of ‘Machine Gun’, it’s tech-relic analogues and clattered beats echo and soar with transverse lucidity.
Spending the best part of a decade hasn’t dimmed Beth Gibbons soulful, shining contribution to the band’s sound either.  Her vocals produce the missing ground that links Portisheads’s paranormal sounding past to their claustophonic present.  
And it’s the present that appears to be the most important aspect of their existence. If this resurgence in relevance continues then the future burns bright. If not and Portishead find themselves once again lost their own Pandora’s Box, then cherish and embrace their existence whilst it lasts.

Sweat-drenched, cat-scratched and snake-hipped, Matt Korvette, frontman for Allentown’s punk-savages Pissed Jeans, swings loose-limbed and pouting as if utterly oblivious to the amplified holocaust that whirlwinds around him.  One minute dancing on glass, the next swinging from the lights, his malignant spasms excel further as he begins dragging amps across the stage and licking the wall.  You wouldn’t believe that back home this guy sells insurance.  To his left feedback constantly shrieks from Bradley Fry’s guitar as he stabs thunderous bottom-end blunt-riffage into its pick-ups. Amongst this pleasure and terror is the kindred spirit of rock and roll, something that can’t be printed on a t-shirt or inked into skin.  It’s a force impossible to halt and despite a spit kick-drum, shredded bloody hands and a shitty sound system Pissed Jeans’ noise for noise sake deliciously caters in an age starved of genuine punk thrills.
This unquestionable conviction eventually earns Pissed Jeans their kudos as both equally exhausted, band and crowd finally settle their differences, embraced and at one with each other, sweet-clenched and smiling.

           .
Sporadic layers form and morph among taut multi-textured rhythms and subtle base-booms only to be fragmented and reformed once again, all remnants recycled into a fresh rainbow of fibres.  
Throughout the sonic debris Mary Pearson’s angelic vocals therapeutically wash throughout the scattered structures, her soothing, sturdy nursery-rhymed melodies drenched in reverb. And despite the child-like playfulness, High Places never veer towards whimsical and kitsch, instead displaying a healthy weight of abrasive volume and jagged displacement.
It’s the sum rather than the parts that play to High Places favour.  On paper an amalgamation of forward-thinking pop and shameless positivity mixed with the core structural elements of electronic music, scherzo samples, Dancehall and Calypso doesn’t bode well. However, once lost in this colourful cocktail of sonority it’s simple to understand that High Places may be subtly escalating current music towards new territories, albeit tropical and wonderful.            vvvvvspecial mega-thanks to the lovely folk at UPSET THE RHYTHM . x .