:: Wednesday, September 12, 2007

MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS + DAMN ARMS + YOUNG AND RESTLESS
LIVE @ THE GOVERNOR HINDMARSH / Saturday September 8th 2007

Oooooo fuck.. heeere we go again! Didn't I just do this already? Wasn't I here before in this exact same spot 18 hours ago? That same shitstorm of arms and legs? That same washing machine woosh of footprints inches from my face? Dammit, the little rat bastards are following me aren't they!? I swear they're stalking me everywhere I go. I'll be walking down a blind alley 3 o'clock in the morning, or tripping through an open field, or looking out a window, or even innocently opening the fridge door and BAM! that same dickhead tidal wave will be coming after me, that same avalanche of human cannonballs ready to fuck me up sideways to sundown. Then weeks and months later, they'll finally track down my mobile phone signal and what's left of my skeletal remains buried deep under 30ft of compacted rubble and plastic beer cups and they're gonna know what happened to me. They'll have it in writing right here on this page, in this final will and testament, this night that has ME in a toe-tag written ALL over it!



Tonight this ever repeating glitch in the Matrix is brought to you by the Governor Hindmarsh and an album launch for the Midnight Juggernauts; or more accurately by the gastric reflux of Rocket Bar cleverly disguised AS the Governor Hindmarsh, fuck full of the same damn indie scensters and club DJ's from the night before. Seriously is it just me, or there's only ONE live venue operating in Adelaide now and they just switch locations, light fixtures and bar staff around to fuck with me? I'm perfectly sane and everyone else is crazy.. weeeeeeeeeee! :)



YOUNG AND RESTLESS

To send me further down that rabbit hole and rubber walls comes the soothing lullaby sounds of opening act Young And Restless; or at least the kind've soothing lullaby you'd expect to receive if you lived in south central Baghdad and lulled yourself to sleep to the sounds of Sunni and Shiite seperatists letting loose car bombs outside your bedroom window. Like fucking hell maaan, whoever thought THESE molotov cock-knockers and their full throttle indie shred were a good opening act for a pantywaist electro night has obviously been getting waaaay too many clever ideas from this blog; shame on you! (and your check's in the mail, will you marry me? :) ). Yup, this was way too fucking early in the night and I was still way too fucking sober but you gotta hand it to Young and Restless they sure as fuck know how warm up a crowd to the point that nothing remains but white shadows blasted to the four walls and a mile wide grin. Nothing but blood and teeth and primal screams set to blacken the sun? OOOOH THE FUCK YEAH! :)














Predictably enough (thanks in no small part to Young and Restless and a bucketload of pre-show cocktails) the crowd out there is already a fucking shitstorm: cats, dogs, toads, bowling balls, buses, brick shithouses and mid-sized planetesimals are all raining down around our ears..




and right there in the thick of it there's lead singer Karino Utomo floating peacefully by just like it's another day at the office, treating herself to a gentle Shiatsu massage from hundreds of roaming hands all looking for crowbars and iron bars to tear this place apart.. aaaaaaah! :)



DAMN ARMS

In effort to somewhat sedate the rioting crowd who are now busily undermining every load bearing point that's still holding the roof up, we are next treated to the mindfucking indie electro minimalism of second act the Damn Arms. Yeah I know what all YOU indie scene geeks are thinking: if these were the SAME new-rave thrash assassins we'd witnessed a year ago when they sounded like the Test Icicles and The Klaxons being beaten to death with cricket bats we'd all be up to our armpits in firewood by now. I mean shit, just take a look at THIS fucked up video: there's not nearly enough drugs in the world you could take to understand THIS song..



so here I am tonight all eager 'n shit expecting the aural equivalent of having my eyeballs pulled out've their sockets, tied to a ICBM missile and sent hurtling through the heart of the sun whilst 50,000 fire ants hollow out my insides to a cascade of whitenoise and instead I'm treated to such normalcy as THIS!? This freaking clubby electro groove you can actually dance to without requiring 6 months of follow up physical therapy and a cleanup crew to find what's left of your shattered skull cavity? What the hell happened Damn Arms!!? Somewhere out there I swear Aphex Twin is driving his tank over your homes and spitting on your graves! Still to be fair, this new recipe Damn Arms is still one mean-arse crowd pleasing groove that few can deny. Sure they may occassionally border on the sort've metronomically precise art-techno that upperclass Volvo driving twats love to masturbate to (ie: see late 80's to early 90's Underworld before Trainspotting made them all popular with the pisshead set) and they may potentially become the Maynard James Keenan of the local electro scene, but when they kick in with those knife edge basslines and let the pounding 4/4 beats fly, who could possibly resist?












Especially not serial scene-stealer Karina from Young And Restless here, who comes bursting in through the crowd to do the spastic rain dance on stage with guitarist Ben Browning. Sheeeiiit.. why is it that all the security in the world is off in Sydney for that pissy 'ol APEC summit this weekend when we've got deranged terrorists like THIS on our loose? yeeeeouch!



MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS

and so in absence of all other available crowd control that would otherwise be at our disposal: water cannons, tear gas, tasers, rubber bullets and rubber chickens it's upto our fearless headliners Midnight Juggernauts to beat us all to dribbling submission instead; and thankfully even for pencil necked dweebs such as these they're more than upto the task. For do not be fooled: a Midnight Juggernauts set is NOT for the light hearted (one handed Volvo drivers beware!); living through (nay surviving) one of their sets is very much akin to what it would be like to experience a San Andreas Richter 9 block flattening whilst a herd of elephants fornicate around your ears. They're Daft Punk's "Discovery" album as performed by oversized Japanese mecha armed with sledgehammers. They're the sound of the insanely obese so fat that they require a forklift to haul them out've the house breakdancing like there's no tomorrow. They're the earth and the moon headbutting over and over till nothing is left but dust and MacDonalds franchises fleeing like cockroaches into the eternal night. Yup, you really can't mistake that ever present pounding of the beat meat tenderising your brain to a dull mush, that unrelenting intestinal chug of the bass that'd even put the energiser bunny 6ft under. Sure it's dumb as all fuck and every damn song sounds the fucking same the minute that pounding groove kicks in, but oooooooh crap does it get the job done. "Midnight Juggernauts" indeed. I mean who the fuck in their illbient mind would be foolish enough to stand up to this green and blue lit brutality?












Yeah ok dumb fucking question on a weekend like this. Just look at those rat bastards flying about out there! Crowd surf to the freakin' Midnight Juggernauts? Fuck.. at this rate you could loop the sound of someone farting into a brown paper bag over and over and those exciteable dickheads will still be hard at it time and time again, missing my face by mere inches every fucking 5 minutes (and knocking out a few other gig photographers for good measure.. tee hee!). Take a good look AGAIN at those badass live shots I took above (wooo.. look at that fluffy hair fly!) and consider they were all taken 3-4 rows back under THESE conditions!? fuuuuck! :)





and so here we are, the last two remaining gig photographers left alive at the end of one fuck of an album launch. Me the intellectually diminishing combat photographer you know all too well and that OTHER halfling you may've seen frequenting the front rows of the Governor Hindmarsh as their official gig photographer (who shall remain nameless here simply because he chose to block his face out with his camera.. you fiend!). Happy as a pair of Beaconsfield miners who've just found sunlight again. Geeeee do ya think Foo Fighters will write a song about us?



and there we have it.. another abrupt ending to yet another insane weekend in the Adelaide music scene, or at least for the amusement of all YOU dribbling fools. Sure I could've gone on for another few pages illustrating in gory details all my beer fueled after-partying at Jive till 4AM, I could've even taken some fuglyarse shots for the ridicule of one and many but seriously, haven't I killed myself rotten ENOUGH for you slackjawed monkeys this week? sheeeeeeesh!

So till next we meet (and you all shout me a beer in gratitude), leave me a freakin' comment? :)

Previously on Spoz's Rant: Cut Off Your Hands + Teenagers In Tokyo

:: Spoz 6:54 PM |
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