The Mekano Set

 

Four years after what should have been their farewell gig, The Mekano Set return to the scene of the crime... 

Four years ago The Mekano Set announced that they were splitting up. As I have the misfortune of knowing them in person, I understandably felt a sense of near joyous relief. I remember laying on my back in the long summer grass of a dual carriage-way, laughing out loud. I was so happy I stopped taking my medication. 

The Meks (or The Mess as I preferred to call them) had been writing, recording and gigging as much as humanly possible for about twelve months. Prior to that, they were essentially a gang of people who liked noisy music and a lot of booze). Lacking the funds to socialize, they would meet once a week at (early Mek DJ) Andy’s flat to get drunk and improvise. Songs were assembled from location sounds, sound effects CD’s, Milk’s beats and foghorn-like voice. 

They refused to do the same song twice, they did not want to record any material, and had nothing resembling a conventional song. 

Despite all this, they made their live debut when they were invited to play at a squat party in South London. They played for eight hours. Eventually, people started to dance. Present at this party were future Mekanoids Lee Christien and Justine Kay. After that, The Meks decided to take themselves seriously. Far too seriously. 

Revolving around a nucleus of distorted beats, bass-riffs, guitar noise, shouting and the excellent Post-Punk voice of Beth Rettig (a former model, bouncer, semi-pro boxer and founder of London electro-rockers Blindness), the group touted a grimy, bass-heavy groove that rock audiences hated with a vengeance. 

Over the last couple of years we’ve seen underground sounds like Grime and Dubstep enter into the public domain - and get watered down to fuck by the likes of Disney Dubstepper Skrylex. But we have yet to see a rock band take on the “rhythm and noise as melody” approach. Magazines, promoters and performers of live music still cling hopelessly to the notion that four middle class white boys with guitars = The Only Rock and Roll, conventional (1950’s) song structures... and a general reluctance to embrace anything new.

 The Meks were ever an obtuse bunch, self-indulgently chipping away at a sound that has become a mix of “fucked up guitar noise”, grimy bass riffage and overly-dense drum beats.

 So it’s now almost three years since the band’s debut album and they are back at the venue that was meant to be the site of their farewell gig. And it’s a very different band. While the songs and overall sound are clearly far more focused, much of the early confidence and humour has been lost. 

The confrontational swagger, the ever-present smirking and sarcastic asides, the barely contained energy (I always had the impression that they never found the right tempo to match whatever drugs they were on) are no longer present. Maybe that’s all for the better.

Tonight, the bass end is like a wild animal in a fight to the death with a fuzz box. It is entertaining but I’m not sure if it’s intentional or a technical glitch. Apparently, moments before the band take to the stage, the sound man disappears. He doesn’t return. 

Unannounced, Beth takes to the stage and they start into an early song [Reel to Real] - that “Industrial DubStep with guitars” track they used to do at pretty much every gig, and the whole thing comes together. The mess is tamed. It’s a far gentler rendition as a result, everything is just a little too quiet. And then it’s over. 

This band have been doing confusingly short sets for two years now and it’s no longer amusing. Twice I’ve seen them do just one single song and then leave the stage - and they generally go on far too early, or far too late. Given the fact that they have an album and several EP’s under their belt at this point, it’s not unreasonable to expect a 30 minute set. I accept that your average band has a tendency to play too long, but going the other way is really just as bad. 

And given that people travel from all parts of the country for Mekano gigs, why not give them their monies worth? 

https://twitter.com/rollokim

KARMADY

"Have you ever thought about doing standup comedy?"
"No. No I haven't."
"That's good."

Rollo Kim

Rock & Fail

I'm tumblin! http://fucknorocknroll.tumblr.com/

A ROMANCE

"Will you stop shooting at me Goddammit!"
"Keep still. I need the practice."

Mutate

Mutate is the current incarnation of Black Country underground musician, DJ and noise-merchant Ade Bordicott.

As a member of the fiercely independent trip-hop / improv outfit Stray Dog City, and more recently a collaborator with like-minded realists And Fait Was Foolish and Mekano Set, Bordicott has consistently been one step ahead of the consistently retro plagiarisms of his local (Birmingham) indie scenes.

In the late 90's, while his peers contented themselves with shameless Slint / Pixies / Pavement / Aphex impersonations, Bordicott and Stray Dog City combined a love of down-tempo, ultra-minimalst grooves with Post Punk and Dub bass-lines, found sounds and lively guitar drones.

DRNE strips those explorations of beat and riff to exposes the inner workings: drones that are far from static, clearly not built from samples and presets but out of real-time, physical performances.

This is Northern Drone. Black Country Soundscapes. Real-time, late-night, Isolationism. Robert Fripp meets Zoviet France.

An after-hours affair. A soundtrack to street lights, streets void of traffic, architectural dead-zones, car parks, public toilets, kitchens, abandoned bedsits. Post-industrial desolation.

DRNE then is something of a return to form for Bordicott. With ultra-slurred down dronescapes and covert location recordings, he's clearly reclaiming his territory. Organic guitar textures stripped of attack and therefore all trace of even post-rock machismo. No ego. Just performance, balanced between sound and noise.

A little post-production / compression wouldn't have gone amiss but after a few listens, the fluctuations in volume and timbre lend the pieces an all-natural, analog vibe that's perhaps fitting of the style. I look forward to hearing where he takes this.

http://www.archive.org/details/DrneEpem118

"Sexual radicalism was defined in classically male terms: number of partners, frequency of sex, varieties of sex (for instance, group sex), eagerness to engage in sex. It was all supposed to be essentially the same for boys and girls: two, three, or however many long-haired persons communing. It was especially the lessening of gender polarity that kept the girls entranced, even after the fuck had revealed the boys to be men after all. Forced sex occurred--it occurred often; but the dream lived on.

Lesbianism was never accepted as lovemaking on its own terms but rather as a kinky occasion for male voyeurism and the eventual fucking of two wet women; still, the dream lived on.

Male homosexuality was toyed with, vaguely tolerated, but largely despised and feared because heterosexual men however bedecked with flowers could not bear to be fucked "like women"; but the dream lived on.

And the dream for the girls at base was a dream of a sexual and social empathy that negated the strictures of gender, a dream of sexual equality based on what men and women had in common, what the adults tried to kill in you as they made you grow up. It was a desire for a sexual community more like childhood--before girls were crushed under and segregated.

It was a dream of sexual transcendence: transcending the absolutely dichotomized male-female world of the adults who made war not love. It was--for the girls--a dream of being less female in a world less male; an eroticization of sibling equality, not the traditional male dominance." Andrea Dworkin.

THE INGREDIENTS OF SLEEP

She was a toilet baby. She survived. She grew up and filled herself with hate. She wore a spitemask and her eyes were the colour of a sun, giving up.