Noise Nite

NADJA NOISE NITE

Realizing that my weekend was certainly going to consist of trudging through college work (besides cursing Kilbane’s own goal) this blogger took the opportunity to kick out the jams last Thursday night and headed along to Canadian drone-duo Nadja. A heavy and beguiling affair on record, they’ve failed to make much of an impression last year at Negura Bunget’s Dublin date, but forgive and forget, right?

Considering decent small sized venues are at a premium in Dublin at the moment, I was curious about what the Twisted Pepper would be like. The promoters (Sugar Water), had done an admirable job of providing not one, but four projection screens around the venue for visuals to be displayed on. The room itself was a pretty basic one, but with a high ceiling and some comfy couches along the side. Opening up was one Eamonn Bailey, who sat at his Macbook in a green t-shirt and pumped out swelling ambient noise with some touches of glitch for about twenty five minutes.

DIRTY MOVIES

The movie displaying on the screens for his set was bizarre to say the least; and the subject of much pointing from the bar. It was a cam-corder movie featuring everything from a bunch of mates hillwalking through a scenic valley to close ups of broccolli being mixed in with pasta.

The coolest part of it was probably a bunch of young people at a house party obviously drunk and waffling to the person behind the camera, but sans sound. This was good stuff, especially with a cold pint of Smithwicks in hand, but general observations were made by gig goers that it could have been better if someone had stuck the hat from the Cat in the Hat on his head. Visuals are important when you’re actually doing nothing on stage.

Up next was Aidan Baker’s solo set, the man being one half of Nadja, and the place was pretty full now. Baker used a completely different visuals movie, which to be honest, just plain sucked for the most part.

As pointed out by the bould BoobC on the night, if you’re going to loop a pixilated image over and over (and over) again, please make it of something more interesting than someone jumping up and falling over at a party. Some interesting guitar loops were the highlight of the set, but overall, even for a noise set, this was some samey stuff.

RESPECTFUL SILENCE AT DUBLIN GIG SHOCK

How about the headliners then? It’s satisfying when you get a proper wall of guitar sound after two sets of flickering noise, and ‘Stay Demons’ quickly worked its slow magic. The crowd were as quiet as can be (just like at the last Earth gig), and you could hear a pin drop in the quieter gaps between full-blown tracks.

Baker’s vocals need to hide behind that wall of sound though, as they came across as seriously flat when they got too audible. However, they did the job on a droned out cover of A-Ha’s ‘The Sun Always Shines on TV’, which worked brilliantly while head nodding abounded.

The set turns out not to be as crushing as hoped for in the end, nor a disappointment. But considering everyone onstage this night was pretty much completely static, it begs the question: are there any decent noise/drone acts out there who actually rock the fuck out while pumping out seismic heaviness? Anyway, here they are in Toronto.