Sean and I went to Birmingham in search of noise recently. We found it initially in the caustic hum of City Centre area kebab-joint fridges, and the very loud night-club attire of the Black Country's teens in search of joy at the various Vudus, Rages, Wasteds that litter the mainstream club map of the Digbeth- Bullring borders.
The Supersonic festival is set in a cluster of partially-reclaimed old warehouse and manufacturing buildings, under a vast redbrick railway arch. The vibe was almost embarrassingly relaxed and cheery, given the preponderance of devilry and gothdom on the t-shirts of our fellow noiseniks.
Essentially the discovery that the Capsule ladies have made is that Doom Metal is a folk music form and should be approached with the same taste for simplicity, repetition and and the re-telling of barely-acceptable stories below the mainstream media radar.
So we were treated to Wolves in the Throne Room purveying icy monolithic dirges, Orthodox taking the Latin liturgy and subjecting it to a statuesque and purposeful pummelling, and Electric Wizard essaying some old skool flourishes and some headbanging stylings straight out of the NWOBHM.
Pekko Kappi played a primitive Finnish 2-stringed wooden block, wailing to wonderful effect and introducing every second song as "another prison song"; the Secret Chiefs 3 staged a blinding hour and a half of hectic Balkan rocked-up prog-folk; Cloaks managed to siphon all the naff Funkyisms out of dubstep and slow the results right down; Mike Watt's gurning, restless and chafing 'opera' was compelling, and the gorgeously retro Warp electronica of Modulate showed just how great it can be to watch a bunch of 40somethings stare at their laptops and tone generators.
ATP's gonna have to step up to beat this.
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