White Hills, Thought Forms & Din Martin
TweetWhen I inferred on Twitter yesterday that I was fully expecting to wake this morning with mad tinnitus following White Hills gig last night, I was right. Psychdelic squalls of looping frenzied guitar work, combined with some crazy powerful drumming are just about the best way to fuck your ears up. I find. (It was no coincidence that White Hills all had very colourful earplugs in I reckon). They were really good anyway, bit wild & obviously enjoying themselves to the hilt.
Din Martin opened the evening, post rocky shoegazey stuff. Despite what I overheard someone say about them afterwards they weren’t pretentious. I thought they were pretty good. Main complaint was that they didn’t invoke us all to edge a bit closer to the stage. (Another pet peeve, everyone at a gig hanging around at the back of the room so no one can get it, then when you try to force your way to the empty space at the front you get scowled at).(Of course I could just be getting scowled at coz I’m invariably muttering “you fucking bunch of fucking imbeciles, why don’t you move the fuck away from the fucking door you fucking dumb ass fuckers” as i force forward. Who knows?).
Localish band (they’re from Bath) Thought Forms were probably the highlight of the night, (as they quite often are when I see them supporting another band). They’ve grown up quite a lot since that last time I saw them a year or so ago & now go in with a far heavier, more serious sound. Proficient guitar abuse is a big part of their ‘thing’ (deej dhariwal being especially adept in this department), but guitar abuse in a controlled, we know what the fuck we’re doing sort of way. They do that loud, loud, quiet, quiet, loud thing that Slint & MBV (& other such similar bands) did do. Experimental instrumental post rock, with the occasional vocals coming pretty much as an afterthought. A great, if short, set anyway reinforcing that they’re one of the cities (they record for Invada so i can class them as Bristolian) best bands.
Thought Forms released a 3 track CD at the end of last year called Sky Peg & of which I’m lucky enough to have a copy. Their blog says it’s sold out & they don’t have any download link for the tracks so if you haven’t got a copy it’s tough luck. Maybe some time they’ll up it for free download somewhere. (Or you can just ask me to send you the mp3’s - it’s not as though they’ll be losing any £’s as it’s not available for sale anywhere). Here’s a couple of Soundclouded streams to keep you going anyway:
