Frenetic Noise Splatter

Argh. Lack of updates recently due to constant onslaught of freneticism.

Caught Spencer Clark in his Vodka Soap guise at Sneaky Pete's last week with support from Heather Leigh Murray and the mighty Muscletusk.

Muscletusk were superb, a howling squealing morass of nasty and other such overburdened verb chunder. They rock. Anyway. If they play anywhere near you, you should crawl over dead bodies to go and see them. In fact, I think they'd probably love to see the street in front of the venue strewn with corpses so if they're playing in your town try to kill a few people and leave the bodies in front of the venue as an offering. Like a cat. In fact, if you are a cat you should probably go too. But if you're a cat, a fully grown human is probably going to be a bit too much for you to knock off so either get a load of your cat mates and gang up on a person (the elderly and infirm are usually an easy target, and remember, allergies can often do the work of 10 cats so try to keep it indoors), or alternatively bring a mouse, or just get your devoted owner to do the killing for you, they're great like that.

Right. Onwards.

I didn't really feel the Heather Leigh Murray piece all that much. There were some really interesting sounds, particularly when she was playing those really high notes on her pedal steel and using the harmonica but any time it seemed to be going somewhere interesting things seemed to get bogged down and not really progress all that much. This was a bit disappointing because I saw her with Tarpis Tula at ATP a few years ago and loved it but there you go. Saying this probably consigns me to some sort of gulag for a while but it kicks the fuck out of lying about it eh?

Spencer Clark is half of the Skaters and was completely and utterly fantastic and wonderful. I wasn't too familiar with the Vodka Soap stuff beforehand but it was a lovely piece with Clark playing behind a small shrine with a load of burning incense sticks sticking out of the top of it.
The piece was ritualistic, tribal, ecstatic and nicely bananas all the words that usually get trotted out by folk at these things and a lot more accessible than you might think.

Some people feel alienated by the indescribable, tiny noise/improv/out shindigs that are happening all over the shop but I generally find there's always something to enjoy, although I don't go as often as I'd like and by all accounts have missed some absolutely brilliant performances. Still, I've had some nice dinners and nights in by the fire and I wouldn't exchange them for the world.

We left just as DJ Bennetti was kicking off ItaloBlack, an Italo night that's been going every Thursday in Sneaky Petes for a few months now. The visuals, done by DJ Cassavetes were really, really good. I've been to it a few times now and really enjoy myself and indulge in bad/good dancing. More people should go.

Finally, check out the Shazzblog for a great little interview with hyperliterate zonk-monster and Pjorn-King, Fordell Research Unit.