(With apologies for the delay. Website fell over)
Normally I’d be all pious and prick-like about the Buffalo crowd’s reticence to get close to the bands, but in Caricatures‘ case it works to everyone’s advantage. The space opens up – thanks to the venue’s dim lighting and red paint job, it feels like being deep in some beast’s guts – and the waves of punishing noise keep you pressed to the walls. Caricatures first song is brilliant: great coffin lids of guitar, spaced apart like giant’s footsteps, leading to screamed vocals and echoing effects pedal abuse. The rest of the set settles into familiar doom anguish, the physical presence of volume covering all else. I gradually move away from the speakers. (Vivers)
Original support Fallen Painting would have been the perfect noise foil here, their icedrop wailing more disturbing than any amplifier cranked into the red. As it is, Black Cesar step in and clean up with their reanimation of 60s gonzo garage. Having one member playing only a lap guitar is pretty inspired, and gives their frantic, shifting instrumentals a dreamy fluidity, and leads to some hot inter-band duelling. It’s the spirit of the Monks, whipped into shape, stuffed into half an hour of tight posing, and pretty good as it happens. (Vivers)
Nadja have a similar electronic-shit-on-the-table set up that Fuck Buttons did last year, but instead of samplers and that they’ve got guitars and pedals. The set starts slowly and for a minute or two wverryywverry quiet. There’s no big opening and most of Buffalo is oblivious to the slow build up. It’s a shame they couldn’t have just said something because from all accounts the beginning of the set is as delicate and worthy of praise as the rest of it. Eventually the moshers shut up as the volume climbs and the tempo… well no, the tempo remains the same slow, slogging march through mountains of static. The kind of march that snaps you over the back of your head and orders your attention. I’m pretty much catatonic for the whole of the set which whispers past me like a wonderfully fulfilling brief encounter, dragging me through lows and real, static, drum machine pits in a wistful and dreamy motion…. I honestly don’t know what went on, but I know it was good. Mmmm. (Saesneg)
