UUUU Corsica Studios, London 24 January 2018
For their debut London show, UUUU take up a diamond formation. Graham Lewis, the Anglo-Swedish bassist, takes the striker’s position. He is flanked by Matt Simms on guitar and singing bowls and Thighpaulsandra on keyboards and percussion. Drummer Valentina Ma from Italy brings up the rear and the show kicks off before an excited crowd.
The standard rock playbook is thrown out early, but the international team of musicians demonstrate impressive teamwork. They make an advance that shows tight collaboration and impressive set pieces, while improvising with elan.
Lewis carries tracks forward from the band’s self-titled album with a pulsing bass. He’s in good form, and only occasionally breaks a sweat under the spotlights. The rhythms from Ma, behind him, propel the performance in ways that recall Krautrock’s free spirit and German precision.
The psychedelic aspects of the show really break things open. Simms pushes bowls around his prone guitar with drumsticks, which look like chopsticks. The resulting drone is a Zen dream. Ma chuckles at his attempts to keep the bowls on the strings while sweeping and tapping drums with sensuous tension.
Thighpaulsandra’s keyboards run up the right side of the stage, the bass passing between him and Lewis. He fills the gaps with confident movements that show off his international experience.
At full time, there is nothing left to play. The band have thrown everything into the show, leaving the audience gasping. In the changing room, their manager could only have been happy at their performance, which at times was reminiscent of an infantry assault.
By the summer of 1983, when You and Me Both came out, Mute was on the cutting edge of electronic and experimental music. Founded at the end of 1978, Mute was originally just a name for Daniel Miller to release his single, “TVOD/Warm Leatherette.” The DIY punk ethic had seen many bands put out their own 7″ singles, and as The Normal he wanted to make punk with a Korg 700s synthesizer.
Lau Nau lives on a Finnish island that is shared with only a handful of people. The sea and the sky dominate the environment, and between them the inhabitants share their rock with trees and the wind. The summer days are long, but winter’s veil lifts only to reveal a grayness that soon fades.
The first time the Revolting Cocks played in London, it was a debauched, riotous affair. Led by “Uncle” Al Jourgensen, the electro-industrial supergroup hoovered up enormous quantities of pharmaceuticals ahead of the show. They appeared with drugged-up strippers, who danced precariously and mimed sex acts with band members. The audience was whipped into a frenzy by the band’s taught, funky grooves and the chaos unfurling before them. The front of the stage was the wrong place to be for anyone who wore glasses.
Album performances are rarely good ideas, because most albums are short on quality material. That isn’t the case with RevCo. Written by talents from the industrial and electronic music scenes, who were locked up with samplers and 1970s movies, every track on Big Sexy Land is solid entertainment. Rhythms were carefully worked out, rather than being slapped down as 4/4 bass kicks. Bass lines were introduced that corrupted funk’s stylings. Vocals were subverted with sampled quotes. Live, the material works as well as it did in the studio.
For the final episode, proceedings opened with a group of pop artists. The first day of the festival is a warm-up for the weekend’s proceedings, so it is a relaxed affair. Music fans reconnect, compare notes on the coming events and enjoy shows with a poptronica flair.
Rico Conning’s musical career began with The Lines, a legendary post-punk combo. He went on to become a studio wizard, recording Wire, remixing Depeche Mode, and producing Martin Gore and Frank Tovey for Mute Records. As the engineer for Guerilla Studios, Conning worked closely with William Orbit and Laurie Mayer, whom he joined as Torch Song in 1995.