Yeah so I got into Hair Police, the Kentucky-based noise outfit with metal undertones, recently through their relation to Wolf Eyes (guitarist Mike Connelly is a member of both bands).
Picked up Constantly Terrified which is a fucking awesome record and decided I had to see them.
So there I was at Tonic where they were heading on Wed. the 31st. Mulled around before the show drinking a rum and coke…John Olson, Mike Connelly, and other noise terrorists were outside with us chatting with the crowd. Love how casual the noise scene is.
Anyway the first act was Graveyards, a side project of John Olson from Wolf Eyes. They performed two songs that consisted of low horn tones using saxophones, some jazz type drumming and some subtle noise loops being played on a laptop. The overall effect was very subdued and sort of surreal. Extremely quiet by noise standards…almost ambient. Created a creepy vibe that was a nice way to start the night off, but wasn’t such a strong statement in and of itself.
Next was Carlos Giffoni and Prurient doing some tag team harsh noise action and let me tell you it fucking kicked ass! Churning waves of sound, deep bass rumbles, high end squeals…sheer delight. Really great textural noise that just sucked the audience in, hypnotizing them. Prurient’s screams were muffled, struggling to break through the vortex of sound. Really cool shit. I hope this collaborating leads two a split between the two artists. After they were done I spoke with Prurient for a bit and he is very down to Earth and cool. Great guy. He was working the merchandise stand so I bought Whitehouse’s ‘Asceticists 2006’, a new Merzbow called ‘Senmaida’ and Emil Beaulieau ‘Damaged and Destroyed’.
Ok so next up was Heathen Shame who were uhhh…interesting…
Heathen Shame started without warning; a female guitarist in the band walked into the crowd and literally began moaning without a microphone just moaning in front of everyone and then she started shrieking sort of but it was almost like the sound of a horse’s neigh…really fucking wierd. Then the band started “playing” which consisted of the chick and some other dude hopelessly banging and twanging guitar strings to produce atonal feedback and some dude with a distorted saxophone blaring away. This the kind of noise I hate: where the performers rely on their energy alone to drive the performance and create boring blasts of noise that lack texture or any kind of ebb and flow. The guys didn’t know what they were doing, just blaring away on their instruments without any kind of skill or planning. The sound was almost entirely in the middle of the sonic spectrum, no cool high end and no deep bass tones, just a constant wall of boring white noise punctuated by screeches from the saxophone. To make up for their shitty noise, the band members pranced about franticly and left the stage to roick out the floor in front of the crowd. The performance was entertaining and energetic, but Heathen Shame lack talent as noise artists. This is the kind of shit that gives noise a bad name: people using normal instruments to create normal noise with no texture or variation or thought behind it. Why do so many noise bands try to use guitars? It always comes out sounding like shit!!! The only cool thing was the sound of the trumpet crackling as it struggled to break through the wall of sound created by the two guitarists. Overall a good performance but they didn’t know what they were doing noise-wise. This was noise at its most atonal and pointless.
Thankfully they only played for 10 minutes and up next were the stars of the night Hair Police!!! We smoked a bowl outside before they played so we were ripped and ready to be destroyed, and destroyed we were!!!
Hair Police is a must-see live act. Truly impressive, transcendental performance that swept the audience away. The band consisted of a drummer (whose kit was augmented with some metal objects), guitarist/vocalist, and some dude doing the noise/bass tones using some little device strapped to his chest. All three of the members were awesome, the drummer especially. They created incredible noise dirges, often in extremely bizarre time signatures, that sent everyone into a frenzy. They played for about 20 minutes and just destroyed the audience. People loved it. I cannot stress enough how vital these dudes are live. Total freak out, but with a method to the madness and some really challenging time signatures (the band seems to have drawn from free jazz). John Olson joined them on the last song to perform saxophone for the title track of the recent Constantly Terrified EP and boy was it a fucking jam!!! Ended the night off with a huge bang!!! Total darkness and depravity!!!
Anyway I had a great time and made some really cool contacts. Definitely looking forward to checking out Hair Police again in the future!!!
PS If anyone else was there I was the redheaded asshole with the Skinny Puppy t-shirt