the wirewool: ...and cut

Back in St Giles-in-the-field last night, which you'll be surprised to learn is not in a field, don't know if I mentioned that before. It is a church and last night it was filled with the lovely noise of Natural Snow Buildings, Grouper and Fennesz.

Natural Snow Buildings are a guitar drone band. But a guitar drone band that have vampire comics included with their albums (This is a recession, musicians! I'm not buying any more cds unless they ALL come with supernatural-themed comics). Their short set saw them playing with feedback and little loops, culminating in a hushed sung song with the hum of noise in the background. Quite lovely.

You'd describe Grouper as 'quite lovely' if you weren't so unsure there was a very dark undercurrent to her music - whilst a lot of drone music gets described with peaceful aquatic metaphors, her music sounds like drowning. The only clarity is her own voice, moaning and looped and echoed til it becomes as difficult to parse as the music; varying layers of tape hiss and obscured melodies, and the monolithic hum of her guitar. It's as beguiling as melancholy gets.

I've been rather enjoying Fennesz's recent tendency towards aggression when playing live, and his performance was full of computer noise. The opening strums of his guitar emitted a terrifying noise, like notes being hacked apart and played through a transistor. Elsewhere there was moments where he threatened to break out an actual drumbeat, but true to form I wasn't able to tell if it was some intentionally dissonant clicking or not. At one particular good noise peak, the power cut and that was the end of the performance. Through a series of complicated facial gestures, we learned it wasn't his fault but he was sorry anyway. As always, I look forward to seeing him again.