Sunday, 24 July 2011

Repetitive Acts



Definitely not to be filed under "shows" or "entertainment". Sean H and I hit the arches under the Elephant and Castle mainline station last week for Craig Clouse (of Shit'n'Shine) to tweak, prod and interfere with a table full of tone generators and FX boxes to very similar effect achieved by S'n'S. Ugly wrenched bricks of rhythm, tortured every few bars into a new(ish) posture, and a continuous reel of 70s/80s hardcore penetration porno flickering on a white sheet where I guessed the bands usually play. It wasn't any old random porno either; each sequence had a glassy inevitability to it that only the most industrially mass-produced stuff would have, and Clouse had selected only close-up penetration of the most mind-bombed Workmanlike facial expressions. There were a very small handful of woman in the audience, and strangely the atmosphere was slightly less nasty as a result.

Die Munch Maschine (I'm not certain whether that 's' is really supposed to be there. I'm likely superimposing it to make my memories of the music appear more attuned to the group's sense of itself) did well to even find cultural space for themselves after Clouse, but a bracing sequence of nicely-fluctuating distorted Hammond motorik attacks, propelled by some outrageously far-flung drumming did the trick.