The noise that Yajé make swamps and gloops every surface like the tentacle monster from the end of Watchmen. The guitars make slicing, fuzzy waves of awkwardness, vocals beam in from some distant broom cupboard, moaning and shouting over the fractured effects pedal tidal waves. Yajé make songs located halfway between beer buzz and LSD freak out, weird and experimental yet scrappy and joyous, writhing around inside a giant, opaque jellyfish of sound. Champion dosers; monster thrills.
Course, rock music doesn’t have to made by nice people. Bitches look like they’d be more at home in Dalston, in vintage clothes, sneering. A good way to evaporate this slightly unfair air of suffocating cool though is to stomp on those effects pedals and make like a feral rock beast, and in this Bitches are at least partly successful. Blake, positioned in the audience, ignoring H & S with cavalier guitar neck swings, hacks out chunky, distorted bass riffs; Staz, on hard drums and off mic screaming, drives things with slightly unhinged energy. Their fuzzy rock is basic, harshly playful and has a seemingly random distribution of good/bad songs. On the whole, they beat the odds.
Jon Spencer, of Blues Explosion ‘fame’, once said playing live was like having all your pores opened, but he never set up four drumkits in the middle of a tiny basement and got the crowd in a circle around them. Of all the things to be said about Foot Village – their tightness, precision, megaphoned-in psycho ranting – the one thing that should be emphasised is how much fun the whole thing is. Games Workshop escapee men channel rolling thunder from their too close kits, call and response is batted between band and audience members keen to learn the benefit of shouting from the stomach, the drum workshop boils over and thumper Grace Lee lurches brilliantly around the outside of the circle, hooting and cooing head high over the rivers of rhythm. It’s like a demented workout DVD crossed with a superfun group therapy session. Once you’re plunged in the rolling, boiling racket you don’t want to leave, but you eventually get spat out with a dazed grin on your face.
