Ni Musique Muzik Fest No!!
Day 1: Krokodillenland, Parktdolg, Electric Sonatas, Margriet Kicks-Ass, Magic Is Kuntmaster, Viki and Panicsville. Krokodillenland opened the festival with a set that gradually built up, which actually is a difference with the other sets that I’ve seen from this teenage noise band - their set was well done, with a noted use of tape recorders and mobile phones, next to guitar, bass and sloppy drumming - the latter was a bit misplaced in my opinion - a more repetitive, slower style of drumming would have had more impact combined with the dense wall of noise, especially because towards the end of the set the sound grew doomier, and by times came pretty close to that typical Sunn-o))) kind of guitardrones. Much of course depends on the soundsystem, and in Grimde the soundsystem was rather minimal - the next day I saw Krokodillenland in KC België (see the review over here) with pretty much the same style of drumming and over there the sound of the drums (amplified) blended in quite nicely with the rest of the band. Parktdolg played next - Parktdolg stands for heavy don’t care drop it all shit junknoise, bended circuitry, contactmiked birdcages and african snare-instruments, it shreeks, it hums, it crashes and I like this guy’s records (there are some out on imvated, so check’m out). Electric Sonatas, being Koen Lauwers - one of the organisors of the 2-day festival - with, for this occasion Thomas Olbrechts - also known for his collaborations with stefaan quix - on sax. Besides the latter instrument gear used by Koen included a set of samplers, delaypedals, a loopstation, guitar and ebow - all stuff designed to loop stuff, good recipe for a resonating and vibrating dronesound layered by the forementioned saxophone - personally I’m no big fan of spaced-out lasertunes, these sporadically emerged throughout the set (one slight turn of the attack or tempo too much to the right?), but not to the extent that they became too annoying. Margriet Kicks-Ass did a performance which inlcuded pneumatic tubes and such - the DVD that I saw of an earlier performance of her was more industrial oriented, but the set she did in Grimde was more harshnoise oriented. She had by far the best soundvolume of the entire evening. Pounding! Magic Is Kuntmaster had quite some difficulties with her material and she had to replace one of her effectbanks with one that she lended from Panicsville - I wasn’t particularly impressed by her set: heavy reverbed vocals over an underlaying wishwoesh-kinda layer of sound. Viki on the other hand: top! Basic, catchy, no-nonsense electronoisebeatings - and funny detail: this girls’ facial expressions when playing come very close to those of Andy Bollus of Evil Mositure: a wasted mix of “What is this?” with “Oh, whatever, it sounds fine”. Panicsville was fun as well - I think his set was quite short though: synth, drones, some harsher straight forward parts and cool moves to top it off. All this followed by an impromptu surprise collab between Viki and Jos Steen who happened to be dwelling in the premises.
Day 2: Chapter 11, No John, Emergency System, Man Manly, Sloopstreet Allstars, Cyphoids, Coarsebangor, Praying for Oblivion No Blue Steen Jos Steen, Zen for Birds, Buffle, Ignatz, Fckn Bstrds and Margriet Kicks-Ass. Chapter 11 and No John I missed, the fest kicked off between 12:30 and 13:00 which proved to be an impossible hour for me to arrive on time - too bad, would have liked to see those two acts. I think Man Manly was the first act I saw that day - Man Manly had an even more minimalistic set-up than last time that I saw him: just 2 pedals, one being a delay/loop-pedal, the other one a distortion/overdrive pedal. And a mike. He put his voice in a loop, layering it, adding and taking away distortion. Interesting, but maybe (and probably) there’s more that can be done with such a set-up - remember Kylie Minoise that was in De Living a few weeks ago and that basically also only used a mike and some effects. It took Emergency System quite long to set up their stuff, one hour and a half and even then it appeared that they didn’t branch all of the stuff that they brought with them and normally made part of their set-up. It’s a 4-headed noise-combo from Berlin - they actually drove 13 hours to get to Tienen for this one gig with a truckload of material, and a baby. Lots of custom-made instruments on stage, especially worth mentioning are the 4- and 3-armed turntables, and then there was this transparant thing (a filterbank?) which looked like something from the TV-series Blakes’7. Among all that homebrewn circuitry: samplers, some rhythm/grooveboxes, a loopstation, pedals - a truckload full, as already said. Musicwise: an heavy ambient/semi-harsh underground, some straight forward beats and at one particulary moment some acid-kinda tunes. Coarsebangor: first band that played in the basement that day, a rather damp, not so big room that got quite crowdy, so I missed the larger part of their set - went in a brief moment though - light were all out and in the dark you could see the lights of their equipment, pedals, adaptors glow as the isolated lights underneath when you fly in a plane over a city by night. Gosh, that’s pretty poetic, but the music - ambient-drone-like - matches that atmosphere: mind-expanding! Cyphoids: another band of which I missed the larger part because I went to pick up Andrew “Praying For Oblivion” at the railroad-station. I’ve seen the last 2 minutes of their 14 minute-set. Disco-dance-sing breaks’n bass go low’n high, fun to watch, but musicwise Jungle, Drum’n Bass induced stuff and breaks in general aren’t my type of thing though. Buffle: this band from Brussels is like a Der Plan-interpretation of Der Tödliche Doris: their music is cheerful, playful and has the most impact during the repetitive parts when you can’t help moving forth and back. Sloopstreet Allstars: actually this band played later on the evening - the entire order in which I sum up the bands is wrong anyhow, I’ll probably see the exact order when I read the contactprints of the films that I shot at the fest - but it’s very tempting to write a few lines on Sloopstreet Allstars cause they’re quite the opposite of Buffle: Buffle is lightweight, hovering somewhere 2 meters above the ground, while Sloopstreet Allstars with 2 guitars and 4 basses manned by a bunch of people with crustymetaldoom-backgrounds can only weight a ton: doomy, deep, crushing. But actually 4 or 2 basses don’t make that much difference, neither will 8, 16 or 32. Margriet kicks-Ass also did a performance, but this was quite alike the one that she did yesterday, up to the wig, maybe a bit shorter (the set, not the wig). Films shown that day were two of the films that I had already shown at the Cinema Nova and that are out on DVD (limited to 7 copies, be quick), won’t spend too many words on those here. Other film being shown was Dark Moon by Myriam S. - a dark ride from Brussels to Tienen with a electrobreakblib-soundtrack. Left the festival earlier to see Prurient and Hairpolice in Hasselt, when I arrived back at the festplace I found the furniture placed in a slightly different way: the fckn bstrds show had proved to be quite a blast, with DJ Nibor slightly molesting an innocent table. Hurray!
