Urlaubshits

This month’s Blogdrone column is a live special, taking in performances seen at Lanzarote and BleeD over the last few weeks (who are both fast becoming London’s best promoters for all kinds of leftfield synth music). I begin with Lanzarote on Saturday 14th May at Electrowerkz, whose bizarre abandoned Quasar type vibes and copious UV lighting were actually quite an apt fit for the acts playing: Scottish drone wizard Konx-om-Pax, Nu-New Age synth artist Laurel Halo and horror revivalists Gatekeeper. Starting the night was Konx-om-Pax (aka Tom Scholefield); with a heavy use of samples as well as synths, it straddled many genres: drone rock, kosmische, disco, ambient, and countless others; he obviously revels in taking numerous disparate elements and weaving them into an occult whole, creating an amorphous musical mass which doesn’t really fit anywhere in today’s synth landscape. His performance began with a noisy, thick drone that was reminiscent of Oneohtrix Point Never (indeed, Scholefield designed the cover for Oneohtrix Point Never’s Rifts), but it also found itself drifting into a kind of pitched down disco that was more reminiscent of Hype Williams, before morphing into something that sounded like early 90s style Aphex Twin. There was a distinct library music vibe to a lot of it, recalling the material of Ghost Box at times, but with more genuine unease being created. The closest comparison would probably by The Skaters and the solo work of James Ferraro, but while their music is more focused on 80s schtick, Konx-om-Pax is a lot more confident to use his influences to explore and map out his own musical territory than to create some nightmarish pastiche. The amorphous quality of his music, and the fact that there was very little indication of beginning and end to anything that was being played, makes sense when you start to look into his work as a video artist, which accompanied his music on the night.

Twin Portal from Konx-om-Pax on Vimeo.

Like his music, his video work creates strange digital worlds, full of neon colour, which recall a highly stylised version of early 90s computer animation; the basic digital quality of his animations combine with the rich colours to create an impressionistic version of psychedelia which feels like a digitised simulacrum of an acid trip. His name may not be as recognisable as his contemporaries, but Konx-om-Pax’s ability to create music and visuals which go beyond the simple approach of being a cultural magpie makes him arguably as interesting and as worth investigating as the rest.

The second act of the night was Laurel Halo. She is a rare female voice in what is a very male dominated corner of music; while women have successfully colonised their own corners in the realms of guitar music, in the world of dark, 80s inspired synthesised music it’s rare that you’d see more than 20% women in the crowd, let alone any on stage. Maybe it’s because the fetishisation of the synthesiser has about as much stigma attached to it as collecting comic books or playing video games; but the fact is that synthesisers are objects that, for whatever reason or another, are a primarily male domain. This obviously doesn’t phase Laurel Halo; appearing on stage alone, with her Roland synth, and myriad pieces of kit, she played an impressively tight set. It’s not easy to juggle beats with other elements without the use of a laptop, but she did it with as much skill as any of her male counterparts, and with a confident yet understated stage presence that is often difficult to manage in this kind of context. What was particularly evident is that Laurel Halo is someone for whom 80s pop music is obviously a big influence. Despite her association with Hippos in Tanks, and her place on a recent Tri-Angle mixtape, both labels whose artists seem to revel in darkness and shroud themselves in mystery, Laurel Halo is content to let her own voice come through her gothic synth tones without excessive manipulation. It’s something that really sets her apart from the majority of her peers, and positions her closer to kindred female artists like Nite Jewel.

Last on were Gatekeeper. Their style of music is nothing new – the emulation of the music of John Carpenter and 80s horror soundtracks has been a staple of electronic music for a while now, but I’ve rarely been so viscerally moved by something of this type. While Padded Cell filter their influences through classic disco, and Zombie Zombie put theirs through Italo, Gatekeeper seem to more interested in creating a weird composite of EBM and trance, which far from being a pastiche, actually sounds fairly authentic. Although they have been loosely lumped in with the nascent “witch-house” movement, they have more in common  with James Ferraro’s brand (again, sorry) of hypnagogic VHS culture, grabbing samples from video nasties and fusing them with wobbly synths to create something that’s arguably as nightmarish as their inspiration. Live, they seemed to take this concept to it’s most logical conclusion; using a smoke machine to create a ridiculous amount of fog, and a lighting rig to flash at the audience, the duo were completely hidden from view, wisely taking the attention away from any human element, and letting the audience fill in the visual blanks in their heads. Of course it did leave me to wonder whether there was actually any kind of live manipulation going on, or whether it was just an elaborate man behind the curtain scenario, but the music was so heavy and filled with atmosphere that it didn’t actually matter much to me at the time.

A week later, I had the pleasure of seeing Emeralds at the latest BleeD night at Village Underground (as part of this year’s Stag and Dagger festival). I’d been looking forward to seeing Emeralds play live for about 18 months now, since they were first brought to my attention along with Oneohtrix Point Never at the tail end of 2009. To my ears they always seemed like a much more delicate proposition than OPN, with their music being a lot more overtly “beautiful” than the thickly stacked layers of their contemporary’s rougher sound. Seeing Emeralds in a live context however totally flipped my perception of their music upside down. With three members, including John Elliot (who co-runs the Spectrum Spools imprint on Editions Mego) and Steve Hauschildt on synths and electronics, and of course their guitarist Mark McGuire, and no laptops to speak of, Emeralds are very much a “band”, and compared to the majority of live performances of this type of music, put a lot of energy into their performance. On record Emeralds come across as fairly tranquil; although there are moments in their music where the tempos are high or the synths are harsh and unfiltered, these moments rarely come across as anything other than textural or stylistic decisions that inform their compositions as a whole. Live however, they come across as more of a noise band, even encroaching on the territory of metal at times. John Elliott particularly, works his analog synthesisers like he’s playing bass for a metal band, thrashing his head and body to every imagined beat of the music; Mark McGuire also, who puts more emotion and feeling into playing his guitar than anyone I’ve seen for a long time. But it was the sheer wall of sound that particularly overwhelmed me. Playing through a large speakerstack, their sound took on a new dimension, as McGuire’s usually delicate guitar work took on an aggression previously unheard on record, particularly during “Double Helix”. Similarly, when the massive analog bass hit during the excellent “Candy Shoppe”, it was as fist pumping a moment as I ever could have expected. Of course it wasn’t all like this; I was particularly surprised to hear them play “Side A” from their little known Overlook tape which although a pleasure for a fan such as myself, probably didn’t have the required energy to sustain the majority of the audience during an hour long live performance. But it was their encore, “Does It Look Like I’m Here” that really revealed their pedigree as a noise band, with a searing climax that reminded me at times of 90s shoegaze. But unlike say, My Bloody Valentine, who would simply use that as an oppotunity to create noise for the sake of it, Emeralds manage to work together to combine nuanced textures with sheer sonic power. I know not everyone felt this way about their performance (read my friend Helium Raven’s take on the same performance for an alternative viewpoint), but I think it was my surprise at how much these guys loved playing their music really loud that won me over.

Below is a brilliant video interview with Emeralds which gives a fantastic insight into their gear and processes, as well as some great live footage, which is well worth 15 minutes of your time.

If you want to catch Laurel Halo soon, then she’ll be playing at a forthcoming BleeD night at the Shacklewell Arms on Tuesday June 14th, with Ford & Lopatin appearing there on 2nd June.