Noise rock, as with punk, is as much about attitude as it is musical ability. The support bands at this small club venue (an ex-slaughterhouse!) each make a racket that looks more fun to create than it is to listen to. Belzebu Katmandu are three young have-a-go Italians while Tropa Macaca are a male-female duo from Portugal. They lend publicity to the DIY cause but with both you get the impression that they are novices for whom finding a transporting groove is still more a matter more of luck than judgement.
Headliners, Blues Control from Queens NYC, are in another league entirely. Anyone fooled by the name into imagining a White Stripes type duo would have had to adjust their expectations rapidly.
Lea Cho is a classically trained pianist whose tutors would doubtless be horrified to see her playing for long stretches with a bottle of beer in one hand. Her partner, Russ Waterhouse, is no slouch on the guitar and combines these skills with some razor sharp tape effects.
The two met and served their apprenticeship with little known instrumentalists ‘Watersports’. This is where they stumbled upon the happy accident of their contaminated New Age sound. They use psychedelic films as a backdrop like Prog-rockers but rude blasts of grungey fuzz guitar and pumping piano rhythms wake you from any delusions that this just another dreamy head trip.
Their sonic interpretations of these abstract images of light and colour are neither conventional nor contrived; there’s a movie out there somewhere just waiting to have their music on the soundtrack.
They play approximations of tracks from their records with Cho laying the foundations for Waterhouse to build upon and the contrast and volume this gives makes for a more dynamic sound than you hear on disc.
“Un po pesante”(a bit heavy) commented one guy as I left; he meant it as a criticism but I took it as a compliment.
