The sheer amount of top drawer gigs Loose are involved with at the moment can blind you to how much they do for this shitty town. Tonight is the third consecutive night of shows at the Buffalo; a hefty 13 bands within 72 hours. Booking Au would be enough for a Tuesday night; stuffing three supports on the bill as well really highlights other promoters who charge the same for half the amount. That’s bad highlighting, like piss yellow. So oi Avash Avash, the least you can do is sort your soundcheck out earlier, and stop sodding around during your first song too. Warming up with a noodly flute number is a bit weak; much better are the next couple: lavish, kraut-y jams, flute swapped for sax, guitar, keys and drums each getting individual workouts.
If sax beats flute, does saw beat sax? Second ever gig for Ratatosk, though being sickeningly talented yer man Rhodri Viney is hardly a stranger, having played with Silver Spurs, Vito, Broken Leaf, Martin Carr and a phone directory of others. Viney’s other members in Ratatosk are a chair and a bank of loop pedals, and it doesn’t get much better than his first song: a little gothic guitar, a little musical saw, swooping and echoing each other, building, building. Further sketches follow, perfect soundtracks to bleakly beautiful road movies. It’s all rather good.
The evening horrendously overruning, a hip hop night flexing its muscles outside, you might expect Fredrick Stanley Star to be a little more, uh, concise. But Fredrick Stanley Star exist only in their own world of fields, caves, sea shanties and, maybe, pixies. There is much acapella hollering, banjos, guitars and double basses banged like they might bring forth cider, campfire songs to bring out drunk spirits. They are shambolic but weirdly focussed souls, rock solid together and impossible to dislike.
The only thing that can assuage the clock watching dudes politely asking Liz Loose how long this bloody indie will last now is two skinny chaps in primary coloured T-shirts. Impeccable manners, octopus drumming, and keyboards that rise to wailing crescendos and back again. In their jagged balladry that continually hammers out arcs of noise, Au occupy some weird midpoint between Antony and the Johnsons and Animal Collective: poised confidently, melodramatically, the lovely ponces. There must and shall be club nights though, and thankfully both crowds’ openmindedness is such that several marriages are forged this evening.
