This evening I was drawn to Fuel Cafe in Withington, Manchester, for a free show of Industrial Noise and Dark Ambient, tugging on the very furtherest threads of the leftfield Metal spectrum. The double headliners Caina showcased their new direction from their forthcoming album "Christ Clad In White Phosphorus". Crowhurst has come all the way from Los Angeles, California on a self funded world tour to perform his dense Harsh Noise. Plus there were 3 excellent support acts to open the show.
First up, apologies to HEXAGON TRAIL as I missed his performance, which I hear was only his 3rd ever live show. Though I arrived to the show on time, before he took the stage I had some kind of outer body cross dimensional shape shifting experience, where every atom in my body fragmented into the spectral ether, leaving me a ghost trapped in a alternate universe for about 20 minutes whilst he performed... (it happens!) This experience left me unable to catch his set. But I can at least tell you that there was a strong crowd upstairs in Fuel cafe from the start. The lights were dimmed and this one man entity from the decaying abyss of Salford (you know, the one across from Islington Mill on the Crescent, easily my favourite decaying abyss in the UK!) opened up the show. His face was covered with a black hoodie and he had a table in front of him with a laptop, a switchboard and an MPC. Hexagon Trail's music covers many genres, mixing Dark Ambient, Harsh Noise, IDM, Experimental Hip Hop and even a Black Metal finale with screaming vocals. Apologies again for missing more of this mysterious musician, but please check out his debut EP "A Beginning (Descent)", released by Legs Akimbo Records.
Fortunately my physical body managed to escape from the black hole in which I was kept prisoner to catch the second support act of the night, ROASES. This one man act is one of the band members of Manchester based Punk band band Sump. He had an array of pedals set up on a table, and what looked like 2 old laptops facing each other. His speciality was a large metal chain that he would scrape and clang around violently. His choice of microphone placements strategically added to the sound, using amp feedback and different pedal effects to build a cacophony of noise. He also added raw screaming vocals here and there to add menace to the chaos he created. Roases was hindered briefly when the sound cut out, probably because he was hitting his equipment with his chain (or was it the curse of Friday the 13th?), but he carried on in silence without losing his nerve and eventually the sound kicked back in, causing some confusion in the crowd. His set ended with him whacking all his equipment off the table and onto the floor! Roases successfully created a piercing and unsettling set of sounds.
Sandwiched exactly in the middle of the show was RITUAL OBJECT in his debut live performance. Ritual Object is a new project by Caina's Andy Curtis Brignell (unless he has a spot on lookalike) favouring a calmer sound that draws from Electronics, Ambient and Modern Classical. From here on the acts performed in almost total darkness as night fell on Withington, meaning it wasn't possible for me to get any coherent photos any further. Ritual Object performed with just a laptop and he used the keys to trigger different layers, sounds and transitions. Though there wasn't much in an actual performance, thankfully the patient crowd all got involved and kept quiet during his set as you should at any Ambient/Classical performance, so it was lovely to see such respect from the audience. His music began with drawn out sorrowful synths and a hum of choral sounds drifted in and out of his music. Over about 20 minutes, his music grew in intensity ever so slightly, but without tipping into the extreme noise zones of the other acts. One of my favourite parts near the end was when more synthetic Electronic whirls and buzzes came into effect. His sounds were like a merging of Max Richter or Eno's "Music For Airports" kind of sounds, but eventually grew into something more akin to Tim Hecker or Helm. There were a few glitches in sound and some of the transitions didn't quite hit, but nothing to majorly detract from the experience. In deep contrast to Andy's main act Caina, Ritual Object delivered something genuinely beautiful, relaxing and moving. The kind of music that allows you to close your eyes and relax, enterring a deep state of inner concentration. This could have easily been scoffed at by fans in the crowd wanting something more extreme and noisy, but thankfully it went down really well.
Our first of tonight's double headliners was Salford based CAINA. Though the band have performed as a 4 piece Black Metal band in the past, this tour has seen them reduced to the core duo of Andy Curtis Brignell on electronics and Laurence Taylor on vocals. If you caught my review of them supporting The Body at The Ruby Lounge last month, you'll know they put on a very awesome and intense show. Whilst their sound at The Ruby Lounge was incoherently vague, tonight's performance sounded fantastic and I could hear every part of their dense, layered sound. Andy had a whole table of various pedals, allowing him to manipulate waves of extremely harsh layers of fuzz, noise and blips and beats, backed up with Industrial synths from his laptop. Vocalist Laurence Taylor emerged from the darkness wearing a balaclava and black face paint, bare-chested with cuts on his body. Like Roases before, he grasped at chains, swirling them in a bowl to add eerie dungeon-like sounds to the mix. He then got right in the faces of the crowd, screaming like a mad man, with his microphone wrapped around his neck like a noose. There were times when he was flat on the floor screaming, and he even was hitting the microphone into his head in a display of utter rage and inner torment. His lyrics from what I could decipher sounded very abstract, political and thought provoking. What I love about Laurence is that in person he is a really calm and nice guy, but when he takes the stage he takes on a complete transformation into a disturbed and confrontational mad man, like he has just escaped from the asylum.
The highlight of Caina's set for me was a cover song (I'm told it was a Ministry cover). Above the pulsing Industrial chaos, both Andy and Laurence came together, adding blackened rasps and growls. The way the pair's vocals bounced off each other and traded off was magnificent and for me this was something that took their performance to the next level over their Ruby Lounge show. Caina is genuinely one of the most intense and extreme live performances I have ever witnessed in my life. Laurence especially is the ultimate physical performance, pouring everything into his craft. The way he gets right up into the faces of people in the crowd is genuinely terrifying. When you see Caina live it is more than just an experience of live music, but also something that verges on watching a Horror show unfold before your very eyes. Approach these maniacs with extreme caution!
Finishing a fantastic night of violent noise was CROWHURST (aka Jay Gambit), one of the modern masters of the craft. This extremely prolific Noise artist has already built up a vast discography over the last 10 years or so and is flying the flag set by artists such as Merzbow and Lustmord before him. Armed with just a microphone and a laptop, he sat before us, shrouded in darkness, building dense layers of buzzing noise and swirling layers of piercing static that seemed to grab at every corner of the room. Like most of the acts before him, he added in blackened shrieks over his music as well as ethereal tribal chanting. Just as I was really getting into it and zoning out into a hypnotic trance it ended way too briefly with a set that felt about 10-15 minutes long. This lovely dude from LA certainly left me wanting more and I hope that next time I get to hear more sides to his sound as my ears and my brain weren't quite molested enough!
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Big thanks to promoter Brandon Smith, plus an excellent sound engineer and Fuel Cafe for putting on this show. There was a great turn out and the best part was that people left this show having their expectations shattered by noises and sounds far into the leftfield of modern music. Tonight I saw some of the most extreme acts in modern music.
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May 13th 2016 @ Fuel Cafe, Withington.
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May 13th 2016 @ Fuel Cafe, Withington.
