LUMONICS + ZETA LEAGUE + IT'S WARSAWLIVE @ THE CROWN & ANCHOR / Thursday February 7th 2008
Aaaah! isn't the air just ripe with insanity tonight? You probably can't smell it from there, safely locked away in your habitat cubes but dare to open your window just a crack, kick away the sudden swarm of chain smokers breathing for freedom, flare those nostrils deep and wide and you'll damn near taste it! Those bubbles in the ether, those idiot avantes, those festival fringes, those blue flames from the ever vergent chaos tearing at hinges? Breathe in deeply kiddies! flow it through your swiss cheese lungs, curl it out've your sinuses, savour it and reflect upon it, then send those smoke signals out to warn the others. We're prelude to a freak shift in the weather here. This eve to an eye, this eye to the storm. Butterflies in Tokyo and Manhattan are already sowing the seeds to our doom. This night, tonight we'll be witness to the dawn of it all..
and here sits the Crown & Anchor, all but oblivious: Union to Grenfell, Thursday to Friday, deer to headlights doe eyed and blinking. If only it knew that it would be the first casualty to the tidal wave to come. And soon they will come. Oh yes! In their hundreds and thousands they'll swarm! Fairy dust to fairy bread licking the gingerbread walls, alarms are set to silent but the gates are already flung wide open: introverts and astronauts, architects and dilitants, on and on and on and on and come two weeks and there'll be no OFF, the lunatic fringe will own this town! :)
IT'S WARSAW (***1/2)
myspace ::
Although I left my weird-shit-o-metre at home, this first band gave me more than enough warning: 10 minutes of screaming, morse code guitars, stabbing start stop aggression, sinews snapping and punching fists, two songs, one broken kickdrum and it's all but over? Fuck! what a show! Although they eventually DID replace that kickdrum and kicked on for another 30, the first 10 said it all. It's Warsaw: they're the sound of one homeless guy being beaten to death and thrown down a flight of stairs whilst a CD player skips along to jagged shards. They're the sound of the Test Icicles, Die! Die! Die!, The Birthday Party, Nirvana's "Bleach", Young & Restless and one live hand grenade thrown through the door. They're the broken, abrupt, short, shouty, dangerous to life and limb fortune cookie jams performed by one drummer pounding apocalypse echoes whilst three other idiots scream and headbutt the walls. Just as quick as the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 and twice as brutal, It's Warsaw; come scrape our skulls off the walls!
Still, like flies to a shitkicking the set ended all too abruptly a second time running; when some nameless grinning assassin runs at their lead singer, Christian, and attempts to break HIM into the replacement kickdrum, head first. Save for a satisfying neck crunch, this was a befitting end to brutal hissy fit. Sure, I don't know whether any of this was actual music, but as long as my teeth keeps on ringing like a phone needed answering, it's all that matters!
ZETA LEAGUE (***1/2)
myspace ::
With all these soothing melodies and verse chorus hooks bursting to the forefront, surely the second act here will bring much needed order to this prison riot, but this band is an insanity of an entirely different disorder. Zeta League: the last to be picked for the volleyball team, the first pick for teenagers to suicide to in a Christian Slater movie and the real reason the Smashing Pumpkins got into all that heroin. Textured layers wraught in fuzzing janglecholy, hangovers made bittersweet, rain spattered windows, candles burnt to wick on black walls and that one girl loading one bullet after another into a gun to settle the score. Watch as Sascha on lead flares his sinuses sharp to howling malcontent whilst Tom on drums quietly fumes away in the back, safe in the knowledge he's mere seconds away from perfecting that home made nuclear device that'll kill us all. Sure, they may be one Counterstrike clan membership away from being a Columbine cliche, but they still pack a punch. Highlights for tonight include the infectious sing song cyclic hooks of "Pen & The Swords" and a piss taking ode called "Debra" (where every single lyric consisted merely of the word "Debra" wailed louder and louder). They damn near make me wanna shave my head, wear my zero shirt, slash my wrists and sing along! WOOO!
and if anyone out there has ever wondered where Sascha gets all that pain from or why he always looks like he's perpetually trying to shit out a house brick the size of Elvis Presley..
then perhaps it may have something to do with him trying to use his guitar as a cheese grater?
Hi, and welcome back to Spoz's Rant! Those of you still screaming in foetal position after that last shot, here's a brief recap of the first two acts: "BANG BANG!! (broken drum) ARRRRGGH!! OH THE PAIN! THE AGONY!! (pause to blow nose) I'M BLEEEEEEEEDING!!" and to think that they pull that stunt almost every damn show? YEEEOUCH! Here's hoping tea, biscuits and a grief counselling will be provided after all this, cause this sure as fuck is getting messy!
LUMONICS (****)
myspace ::
And now for the final appetite cleanser to this mass destruction, with this sweet lullaby to the credit's roll that tells you everything you've just seen above is a work of fiction and nothing but the work of professional actors, blanks, squibs, stunt doubles and a slew of post production. Lumonics: they're The Stone Roses, Unkle's "Nursery Rhyme" and a million singing elephant stampeding as one. They're beats crunching so fucking large they give Chemical Brother's "Dig Your Own Hole", "Block Rocking Beats" and "Electrobank" a run for their money. They're impossibly lush guitars built up layer upon layer so damn intricately that only a hundred monkeys hammering away on a hundred guitar pedals could ever hope to emulate it. If ever there was to be more suitable a soundtrack to the end of the world (and Muse were otherwise bound and gagged and locked in a basement somewhere), Lumonics would bring it. To think this was only their 5-6th gig and they STILL managed to pull off a note for note rendition of New Order's "Crystal" without sounding like a high school battle of the bands? OOOOOH FUCK!!
12:38AM - Yup, if ever there was a serious need for a stiff drink, a total mismatch of upto 12 different sleeping pills and a Hollywood dirt nap; it'd be these three bands I've just seen tonight. Thankfully, this being the east-end ghetto, even on a lazy Thursday night out, there is no short supply in qualified psychiatric staff and liquid prescriptions to speed me to my oblivion..
Sheeeeesh, and to think I was originally planning on having a "quiet night" out tonight?
1:27AM - Yup, say what you will about the Cranka (and believe me, I've got a million and one insults to spare) but this place sure as fuck knows how to speed my carcass to the organ donar scrap heap in the style befitting a Viking burial. If only River Phoenix was alive today, here'd be right here tonight, lying limp and lifeless at the bar whilst Johnny Depp runs from the cops..
2:35AM - and speaking of matters related to manslaughter, being the Cranka, potential serial killers (even on a Thursday night) were also in no short supply. As I came face to face with this boggle-eyed axe wielder fresh from the land of the maple leaf who spent the entire night asking everyone for a "leaf" of an entirely different kind. Was he a tourist, thinker in residence, standup comic, puppeteer, taxi driver, or an undercover cop? who the fuck knows?
(in a distinctly Canadian kermit) "psssst.. you like got any buds or a $25 baggie I can buy?"
3:02AM - Not looking to take any chances (and I don't care if he had his own show for the upcoming Fringe Festival, he should've known better!), we dosed him up with one of Sara's drinks, beat him unconscious with Sascha's guitar, stuffed him bound and gagged into Matt (The Jolly Green Giant)'s boot and drove him here to a non descript bakery in North Adelaide..
and in no relation to anything I've just written above.. these two meat pies? mmmm delicious!
3:56AM - After being driven at high speed for almost an hour in entirely the wrong direction (for no suspicious reasons whatsoever *cough*) I finally find myself at this familiar phone booth, dazed and confused, mere metres from my house wondering what the FUCK happened tonight. If only this silence could speak out loud, it would speak of the multitude of horrors to come..
Grab your 3D goggles and brace ourselves for impact kiddies, with both the Fringe and the Festival Of The Arts mere moments away, this shit's only gonna get weirder from here!
Previously on Spoz's Rant:
The Adelaide Big Day Out 2008 
