This was my first visit to the M.O.T.H. club at the General Browning Old Trades hall in Hackney, so in case you don't know M.O.T.H. stands for the Memorable Order Of Tin Hats who were ex-servicemen who had fought in South Africa under General Browning and the venue has all sorts of Militaria on the walls and even has a royal box that was sadly devoid of Wills or Harry et al last night for the Tape Hiss Jail extravaganza brought to us by Fire Records.
I arrived shortly after Happyness had started there set of tattyfilarious shoegaze that had some cool reverby bits on the first song I heard that was followed by a slow song about having spent all your money that could have been about going out with the diddy men on the prowl if they really did name themselves after a Ken Dodd song but I doubt they did.
Haven't you Heard was the main repeating motif on a slow building epic with all sorts of psychedelic flourishes as the song built and went off on one here and there. They closed with the long and at times tortured It's Alright no it wasn't a cover but a long freak out to get all our juices flowing.
Next on were Dutch sensations Rats On Rafts who while at times drowning in reverb and echo had enough repeating riffs and chords to sound like a cross between The Feelies and Echo & The Bunnymen the opener Go Slow was indeed a slow builder that just dissolved straight into the next song that was possibly called So You Think that seemed to remind me of Villiers Terrace or Killing Moon era Echo & The Bunnymen.
As they never paused long enough for any applause they crashed straight into Go that had some quite bile laden lyrics and loads more spaced out guitars and a solid bass undertow helping to fry all our brains before they pulled out all the stops on a stupendous version of Some Velvet Morning covered in howling layers of reverb and noise like they were trying to outdo Lydia Lunch and Rowland S Howards version of it and to make sure there's was the most brutal version played in Hackney on the night as Lydia may well have also sung it at cafe Oto with Retrovirus which was the other gig I wanted to go to last night.
They then played a long song that may have been called 1 2 3 that had a great spaced out instrumental passage that was very trippy indeed before the vocals finally came back in as they brought there set to a close in a hail of feedback.
Next on were Prescott who feature members of Pere Ubu, Two Pale Boys, Scritti Politti, Stump and others apparently and they play instrumental improvised noise that Is obviously in tribute to both John Prescott and Prescott Bush The first piece seemed to be about Two Jags pulling away one for John and one for Pauline with a funky time signature as they roar a good 800 yards down the road.
The second piece seemed to be much more the sound of John's abject crawling as he mangled his words as much as notes got mangled and John tried to explain what happened with his secretary just as that funky keyboard motif started to fade away.
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They then upped the funk as it seemed like they heard that Prescott Bush had kept his Vest on while helping to fund the wrong side in WW2 it had a bit of a dance feel to it and the bass was just wonky enough. Then it was back to John for a piece that seemed to be trying to garble styles as much as John always garbles his syntax and yet it sounded good and current and cool piece of out there improve noise.
They closed with one more dancey funk noise piece that was like John trying to tell Mandy he didn't want to do as he was told and getting stitched up for daring to step out of line either way they were cool and worth hearing.
Then finally it was time for Tape Hiss Jail that featured no Tape Hiss but it did feature David Thomas on vocals and most of the nights musicians on improvisations so that they had 3 drummers, 2 bass players 3 guitarists and a keyboards player and I may have missed one or two other things as David Thomas helmed this beast of a band and told a dark twisted tale over the cacophony they were whipping up with all sorts of distortions. The second piece was a tale about Muddy Waters that had no Muddy riffs in it but plenty of taut bass and splenetic guitars splattering all over our ears.
20 Years upped the noise and distortion level a bit more and David was nominating a different musician to lead thing off on each new journey into the maelstrom of sound that was far more listenable than some of the Pere Ubu shows I've seen over the years. I Need Someone dealt in David's more tender side even if the music was getting harsher and harder as it started to fry my mind a bit.
The piece David introduced as Feeling Abstract was well pretty abstract like they were trying to play several Kandinsky paintings as songs and had a welter of distorting guitars at one point that sounded great. They closed the night with a most odd Beatles tribute seeing as David first announced he hated them and they started it as Baby baby Yeah Yeah Yeah before it mutated into an approximation of Ticket to Ride but unlike anyone has ever heard it before it was great a real sonic mangling that really worked in this sort of setting and was a good close to a really interesting nights music.
It was also a good kick off to Pere Ubu's upcoming tour with Rats On Rafts that may well have some more recognizable material on it.
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