Tuesday, February 27, 2007  4:10 pm 

Robin’s Week Of Wonders, Part 2

Fuck guitars. Everybody knows, its all about the drums. So primitive, yet so instant and, oh, so satisfying. Its drums that have the power to make you dance as if a demon is trapped inside your body, and looking to make a messy blood and guts style exit, not guitars. Pppsssh! A lot of theorists have deduced music only ever came to exist anyway because some bored caveman thought to bang on something, than thought to do it again, and again, and again, and again, and, oh shit, people are moving to this stuff. Success!

Coughs were a band who knew how to create a delightful percussive racket. They had not just one drummer, but two, and they used not just ordinary drums, but huge steel barrels! I say this in the past tense, because Coughs are no more. Yep, it was a sad thing indeed when Chicago’s premier noise merchants abruptly decided to call it a day late last year. The sadness of the situation was made all the more intense by the fact that their break-up happened to coincide with the release of their amazing second album ‘Secret Passages’ (truly, a favourite at 20JFG HQ), a piece of work that presented a band who were quite clearly coming into themselves. If you happened to miss any of their shows from last years UK tour, you missed out on something positively special and I’m very sorry for you. If you did happen to catch any of their shows, than you’re probably, like me, pining in vein to witness their strange magic all over again, and so, I’m sorry for you too.

Oakeater - Whitetail Woods

Well dry your eyes, because some kind of consolation has recently emerged in the form of Oakeater, a new project, and hopefully not the last, to branch out from the Coughs family. Featuring Seth Sher, one of Coughs’ drummers, the music Oakeater makes sounds like a dark lingering afterthought to the feral animal disco Coughs conjured up in their time together. Detached ghostly voices whisper unintelligibly, whilst the sound of something huge and terrifying approaching in the distance thuds away, like a non kitsch Godzilla suffering from a serious case of bloodlust. To sum up what to expect here, if you were to compare Coughs with Oakeater than think of comparing Liars first album with their second. One wanted you to sweat and grind with it, the other wanted to take you to a dark room and make you rock back and forth. Yeah, well Oakeater is the one about the German witches. Get me?

Soft Circle, aka Hisham Bharoocha, is another guy who obviously appreciates what a drum can do. The former drummer for Black Dice has gone all new age on us, but wait, don’t run away, because this is some intense stuff. Think of a less spazzed out, and more meditative Gang Gang Dance, or a more shamanistic Liars (yeah, them again) if they had taken a moment to breathe whilst on top of Mt Heart Attack. Some of the stuff to be found on his new, and quite amazing album ‘Full Bloom’ has had me seriously body popping like Linda Blair, but this cosmic treat in particular is all about the trance. Two minutes of wordless, stoner moans and reversed pedal effects that sound like the soundtrack to every amazing acid flashback ever, lull you into a false state of serenity, before the drums kick in, and take things up a notch with a blizzard of patterns. There’s really no point in resisting this one, so just allow your eyes to roll into the back of your head, and move.

Soft Circle - Whirl

If rave is supposed to induce people into a trance, than this is what neu rave should sound like.

labels >> drums