We’re in a small wooden church and people outside are pressing their faces to the windows like some polite, sunny version of Night Of The Living Dead. They’re curious about the whipsmart drums and guitar noise emanating from this spotless building, and more specifically the playful back and forth math rock of Right Hand Left Hand. When this Cardiff duo are at the top of their game there’s not many others that came near: songs like ‘Stanislav Petrov’ are casually constructed but brain bashingly good, bass and rhythm guitar parts quickly looped as foundations to be toyed with and riffed over. There’s a mid set tempo drop that’s a little more meditative than necessary but skip to the end, wit ha screwdriver jammed against strings and screams into pickups echoing around the ceiling beams, and see a gleamingly awkward party band, dynamically spot on and circling musical areolas like skilled lovers. Great stuff.
Rangda up the guitar : drums ratio to 2 : 1, but even outnumbered, this is Chris Corsano’s night. Your serial avant collaborator and whippet-like sticksman fucking owns centre stage, jittering brushes over loose cymbals and gongs or pasting the lot like a restless octopus. Not that the men flanking him are exactly slouches. Sir Richard Bishop, of Sun City Girls renown, may look like an uncle who’s just smoked pot for the first time but his guitar playing is heroically gnarly; Comets On Fire’s Ben Chasny may play a holding role more often than Bishop, but can quite clearly widdle too when needed. This is the Rangda experience, and it’s an incendiary lesson in taking expert musicianship down thrilling alleyways. Tonight’s set broadly follows recent LP ‘False Flag’ so it’s a maniacal fretboard run from Bishop and straight into ‘Waldorf Hysteria’, two minutes of fizz and fire, free noise smashed from all directions. ‘Bull Lore’ uncoils the extended soloing, possibly the evening’s only wanked out moment, but even here Corsano brings regular drum crashes out, towards an eventual cinematic, Morricone-esque ending. Course, it’s a violently male evening, but Rangda always pull back before becoming a virtuosic jam band, instead pushing further and higher up the out there tree. So the amazing ‘Fist Family’, where both guitarists hold and bend a single, howling note while Corsano ruptures several organs at the kit, is like being touched by an electric wire, while mammoth closer ‘Plain Of Jars’ splurges on crescendos before coming back down on an endless, lovely descending guitar line. Grins all round. Thankfully these superheroes harness their powers for good.
