Filed under: Balloons, Class a audio, a.P.A.t.T. Syndication, apatt, demons, icy demons, post music, post music night | Tags: apatt, aPehAt recordings, Balloons, black and white mass, icy demons, KAZIMIER, Liverpool, merseyside, metro, miami ice, obey your brain, post music
POST MUSIC Night
Icy Demons / a.P.A.t.T. / Balloons @ The Kazimier, Liverpool
14/05/09
Lazy comparisons. Shit, aren’t they? And Balloons had best get used to them, because frontman Tom’s tremulous yelp means that they’re going to become quite familiar with superficial Sparks references. Look a little closer, however, and there’s much more to be heard in their perkily peculiar pop: the synthetic funk of prime Devo, the devil-may-care weirdness of the Swell Maps… even the grandly surreal lurchings of proto-Blur oddballs Seymour. The pulsing energy of their tremendous set coalesces into post-punk jerks and highly danceable quirks, and the stupid grins plastered onto the faces of all present prove that Balloons put on a darn good show. It’s gonna be so fucking exciting to see what their potential could develop into.
Absurdist faves a.P.A.t.T., meanwhile, are well into their second decade of existence. Let’s not even consider the number of line-up changes that have been weathered in that time. Or, for that matter, just how many musical genres have been absorbed and systematically annihilated by their decidedly non-linear approach. Tonight they’re dealing mainly in prog-funk with a smattering of avant-folk, but frankly their scope is so broad that it’s difficult to pin them down to mere taggery. To watch a.P.A.t.T. is to realise that you know nothing about music. And goddammit, they’re fun too.
And then there’s tonight’s headliners, Icy Demons. Cut from a similarly adventurous cloth to their support, the Chicago quartet’s sound is underpinned by funk grooves not a million miles away from the Beastie Boys’ instrumental jams. Coupled with their relatively-outré melodic sensibilities and a drummer who casually blows The Fly’s feeble mind, they’re a seriously demented but unbelievably exciting live act. There’n definitely a hip-hop root here, but it’s been cut up, chewed and spat out into barely-recognisable shapes – ‘prog-hop’, as your humble reviewer overhears someone else calling it. Experimental music is often derided for being either self-consciously wacky or chin-strokingly over-serious. Refreshingly, Icy Demons are neither. Live music should always bring this much joy.
Words by Will Fitzpatrick
Pictures by David Smyth
Video by GM
Filed under: Capital of Culture, Chinchillatone Records, Class a audio, Liverpool, Pickled egg, Upset the Rhythm, Yahdigg.com, a.P.A.t.T. Syndication, apatt, ballons, icy demons, music, post music, post music night, stan ambrose | Tags: apatt, Balloons, gig, icy demons, KAZIMIER, Liverpool, May 14th
Icy Demons/a.P.A.t.T./Balloons – Performance of a lifetime! @ – THE KAZIMIER
Icy Demons/a.P.A.t.T./Balloons – Performance of a lifetime!
@ – THE KAZIMIER- May 14th
Icy Demons
Started by Bablicon’s Griffin Rodriguez (aka Blue Hawaii) and Man Man’s Christopher Powell (aka Pow Pow), Icy Demons are a genre-spanning hypno-rhythmic indie project borrowing heavily from electro, Krautrock, and prog rock, specifically its Canterbury subgenre. Rodriguez takes bass and vocal duties while Powell drums, and the two act as the primary ringleade
rs of the band, roping in a rotating circus of musicians from their home cities of Philadelphia and Chicago. Upon initiation into the group, members adopt aliases like Graveyard P, Young Master Schneider, Ta-Freek-Ya, and the Diminisher. Cloud Recordings, a label with close ties to Elephant 6, another collective-friendly band of brothers, took a liking to Icy Demons’ first record an
d released Fight Back! in 2004. Between touring with their respective groups and recording albums for other musicians at Rodriguez’s Shape Shoppe studio, Rodriguez and Powell found time to piece together their second Icy Demons album, Tears of a Clone, in 2006, which was released by Eastern Developments. To add to their musical endeavors and house their creative output, the two started a record label called Obey Your Brain, and released Miami Ice in April of 2007. Plans followed to play live shows as a touring band with guitarist Russell Higbee of Man Man, guitarist Jeff Parker of Tortoise, upright bassist Josh Abrams of Prefuse 73 and Sam Prekop, and atmospheric improviser and cellist Tomeka Reid, in support of Slint and Arcade Fire, and as a main stage act at the 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival. Miami Ice was reissued that summer.
www.myspace.com/icydemons
www.icydemons.com
a.P.A.t.T.
a.P.A.t.T. sound like the best bits of eveything you’ve ever heard. File next to ABBA / Zappa. Completely original bewildering 2-7 piece band using all the genres possible to create a daft yet beautiful mess. Running all over stage whilst swapping instruments. Eclectic dosn’t cover it.
“To hear a.P.A.t.T.or more specifically their ‘Back and white mass’ full length album is to experience a musical odyssey like no other, avoiding the usual pragmatics of pop, they are a law unto themselves” -M Barton.
2009 = Prepare for the village idiots of pop
www.apatt.com
www.myspace.com/apatt
Balloons
There are five of them and they call themselves Balloons, beyond that we know nothing except that on the evidence of these showcased cuts they sound like they’ve been overly tucking in to the kaleidoscopic sherbet over the festive season concocting and cobbling deliriously skewed sounds that sound for all the world like wired road kill resulting from a head on collision between early career Sparks, Cardiacs, Devo and ‘SF Sorrow’ era Pretty Things
www.myspace.com/wereballoons
PLUS POST MUSIC DJ’s
£5 entry
8:30pm doors
9pm first act prompt
CHEAP ENTRY FOR GROUPS
OF FIVE PEOPLE FOR £20.
(5-4-20)
THE KAZIMIER
4-5 Wolstenholme Square
Liverpool
L1 4JJ
United Kingdom
ANYONE WISHING TO HELP WITH MEDIA COVERAGE OR OR HELPING OUT IN ANY WAY PLEASE GET IN TOUCH
