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Kiss The Frog
Leisur Hive
Forcis
Dublin Castle, London
Saturday October 19
~review and photos by Uncle
Nemesis
These days, goth often seems ring-fenced
from the rest of the world. Goth bands play goth gigs to goth audiences;
everything is kept cosily within the scene. That's fine for bands whose
ambitions don't extend much beyond achieving big fish status in the small
pond of goth, but there's an obvious limitation there for any band which
wants to pull in a wider audience. The solution, obviously enough, is to
play non-goth gigs - jump out of the small goth-pond altogether and splash
down in the big wide ocean of the 'general' live music circuit.
Now, that might be a scary prospect for
some bands. Playing goth scene gigs at least guarantees a ready-made audience,
and a certain level of interest - in short, an informal support network
which is there to be tapped into. Beyond the goth scene, none of this exists.
You're on your own. It's sink or swim time.
Leisur Hive are brave enough to take the
plunge. Rather than opt for a standard 'scene' gig, they've pitched up
at one of London's prime indie venues, the Dublin Castle, in the middle
of a general alternative bill, topped and tailed by a bunch of post-Britpop
indie kids and a psychedelic combo from LA. They don't look quite as incongruous
in this company as you might expect, because Leisur Hive are not your standard
crimps-and-flounces goffband. They're rooted in the post-punk art-school
end of goth: they're angular and new-wavey and they don't give a stuff
about being 'goth enough'. They'd be equally at home supporting the Sex
Gang Children or the Pixies, UK Decay or God Speed You Black Emperor. In
some ways, they're actually more at home here than at a straightforward
goth gig.
Before Leisur Hive take the stage, however,
it's time for Forcis - the post-Britpop indie kids - to show us a thing
or two. Their sound is abrasive, in that son-of-Sonic Youth manner which
Blur suddenly latched on to round about the release of 'Song 2'. I'd guess
that's the area Forcis are coming from: late-model American art-punk, filtered
through a British indie sensibility. It's actually quite good - especially
the squalls of bluesy guitar which erupt in some of their songs - and the
bassist, writhing around like she's got a whole colony of rock 'n' roll
ants in her pants, means that the visual side of things never gets dull.
There's a bunch of teenage fans down the front (always a good sign, that)
and a feeling in the air that this band is hungry to get somewhere. Whether
they will or not is, of course, another matter. I suspect most record labels
would regard Forcis as somewhat dated - their style is perhaps a little
too mid-nineties Blur-meets-Dinosaur Jr to make the band qualify as the
latest indie-scene sensation - but personally I won't hold this against
them. After all, I like goth stuff, which most people would probably regard
as dated and dead!
Leisur Hive arrange themselves on stage
in a flurry of effects pedals. In a further subversion of the goth-norm,
they're an entirely live band: guitar, bass, drums, vocals, another guitar
and sometimes a violin. No backing tracks, no drum machines, no keyboards.
They construct a clanking, buzzing, juggernaut of sound, all strange shapes
and odd angles. Their song titles, scribbled on the set list down the front,
read like an English class in non-sequiturs: 'On Sectional Pad', 'Applicant
Seed', 'Neck Decision', and - my personal favourite - 'Shelves'. How can
you fail to like a band which has a song called 'Shelves'? Lead singer/guitarist
Dan works himself up into a frenzy of angst and passion (those pesky shelves
certainly seem to have given him some stress) while the bass and drums
lock tight and rumble along like a tank. Occasionally, Maria, the band's
other guitarist, puts down her axe and takes up a
violin. It's covered in hazard warning tape, and it makes a hazardous noise.
If all this makes Leisur Hive sound like they're very much out on their
own peculiar limb - well, yes, they are. But it's not just weirdness for
the sake of weirdness. It *works*. It's all a bit heavy going for the teenage
indie kids, but, encouragingly, a few brave souls in the audience start
getting into it, and by the time the set shudders to a close, with Dan
on the floor playing the effects pedals, Leisur Hive seem to have picked
up a few new - and non-goth - fans. Which is a result. The fan-base broadens,
the band moves on. There is method in Leisur Hive's madness.
Kiss The Frog, tonight's headliners (if
a gig at which all the bands are more or less level-pegging in terms of
profile can be said to have a headliner) are apparently winding up an extensive
European tour. They're a wiggy art-rock psychedelic
experience from California, and you can almost tell where they come from
simply by looking at their clothes. The bass player's wearing beige slacks
and burgundy loafers. He looks like he's just stepped off his yacht. Very
laid-back. The music is mostly instrumental - long, looping workouts that
unfurl and curl back on themselves. The bass is nimble, dancing all over
the drums, which themselves jump around all over the place but still somehow
keep the beat rock-solid and pushing forward. Over all this, great shuddering
slabs of distort-o-guitar arrive like gatecrashers at a party. The band
use about a squillion effects pedals, and sometimes they just seem to play
the effects: the sounds are in the effects loops, going round and round,
then out to the Theremin, and back again. Ah, yes, the Theremin. This is
Kiss The Frog's secret weapon: played as a lead instrument, via all those
effects pedals, it whoops and buzzes and shrieks like a whole army of fuzzed-out
guitarists. The band seem to have attracted some fans from somewhere -
they all look like Zonker in the Doonesbury cartoon strip - but mostly
they're playing to a mix of goths and indie kids, all of whom, I'd guess,
are utterly unfamiliar with the music. And yet, the room is captivated,
and when the final song fades out in a fuzzstorm of effects, the applause
is tremendous. I'm left feeling that maybe I should've got into the Grateful
Dead after all. Dammit, this stuff is good.
Yep, that was a good gig, a good variety
of music and people that all somehow all held together. Crossover successfully
accomplished. Other bands please copy!
see all the photos from the show here
Kiss The Frog: http://spacefuzz.com/ktf/home.php
Leisur Hive:
http://www.geocities.com/leisurehive
Forcis: [No website]
Bugbear Promotions, promoters of the gig:
http://www.geekrock.com/bugbear
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
10/15/02 |