Oh, Wolsteholme Creative Space. You beautifully grotty little wonder. It’s perhaps one of the few spaces in Liverpool which manages to be colder indoors than outdoors in Winter, and blisteringly, brutally hot in the questionable British Summertime.
A lasciviously open and blank canvas of a space, it holds the kinds of performances which leave you staggering out of the place at God knows what time in the fucking morning trying desperately to cram receipts of brain matter back into your skull which have been badgered and blown out by a treatise of bands hours previous.
Tonight is one of those sublime brain-matter-scatter-nights. A total treat. And despite a sardine-crammed line up of excellence (including Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Spirit Animals, Pariah Qarey...), we somehow only manage to properly catch two of the fervent applause anticipant bands on offer.
Fuck. Blame it on alcohol urgencies, rum brain deliriums and the fact that the place is packed out with every favourite person you owe a high five and a sequence of cackle wielding banter to.
Shit happens when you wander off for a quick piss only to discover a half hour queue and an upstairs room full of people too caught in the cross fires of conversation to make it back downstairs to the actual gig.
Still, Stig Noise MMX and Barberos are divine treats enough.
Stig, as ever, are their usual onslaught of brass, gut pounding drums, distortion, and pseudo-psycho-composures of riffs. Guttural grind ramblings of vocals and whimsical, diametric melodies wound up into tight, bold statements of shredding, bombastic scores are as ever, irresistible, and a mainstay of their prowess.
The crowd’s an odd mixture, mind. Seems we’re not the only ones with a rum swamp for a think tank, but at least the majority of us can handle our ale. For those that can’t, staggering, knee hitching dance moves, attempts to sweep whoever, wherever, off their feet where they stand and general flailing about at horizontal angles seems to be the only way some of the crowd feel able to interpret Stig Noise’s own personal riot.
There’s men in suits reeling off archaic chat up lines to many a poor broad mid set, who look as though they got a bit lost on their way to The Pleasure Rooms.
But fuck it, by the time Hearts Of Gold/ Gobs Of Shite plays out to tie a tidy, lovesome bow to the end of Stig’s gutter-waltz set you couldn’t give a shit that some gobshite in a John Lewis ‘original’ is butting into your side like a rhino trying to escape a fucking zoo.
A good hour and a half bridges the gap between these fine fellows and Barberos, in which the seemingly multiplying crowd crams into a back room to catch a glimpse of Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. Theres people gawping through windows, stood on chairs, tables and people, leering through gaps wherever they can find them.
But booze, piss and smoke missions hinder what was obviously, at least in some part, a must see performance. I’m a dickhead for not paying enough attention. Let’s just leave it at that and move on...
Barberos then. Four fine young men with a fetish for full body silver spandex (who doesn’t share that fetish? Come on), cacophony and beating drums hard enough for BDSM enthusiasts to lip bitingly be urged to scream out their ‘safe’ word, take to the stage before a hungry, tanked up, piled in crowd.
Fuck. Me. It’s. Good. A dystopian noise scramble of brain digging which ventures between malevolent sound scores of the satisfyingly viscous and toe curling sublime, all framed by back screen visuals of discordance and facial squirm play.
They’re the noise of nights bled hedonistically into early mornings, of searing sunrise in wrung out pupils, of a brain squirming inside the skull perilously drying itself foul of chemicals, rapid and inane thought processes and spirit soaked alarm bells.
A barrage of manipulated doom siren synth, and dual drummers in place of vocal and word heavy vocalists, the narrative of the set is hell bent on staggering, insufferable rhythm, the lost laconic, the fevered, the unrelenting.
The crowd is understandably sick for it. A bleating united urge of beat grabbing mass who holler throughout, pounding palm to palm excitably, and refuse to surrender at the will of each songs end.
Fucking hell, the drums are ridiculous. Ferociously charged, they’re succinct to the beatings of unimaginable pace. Are feral and incessant - the heaviest, most beautifully aggressive poundings which go off on unreal tangents which seem to have a dialect and vocabulary of a language you only wish your lover’s tongue could learn.
So good it’s almost exhausting. But who wants to sleep after that? Fuck. That.
We cheekily procured a copy of the Stig Noise MMX vs Barberos split EP on vinyl, and strongly urge you all to get yer grubby mitts on a copy.
You’ll wanna experience em both live, but as a 4AM backing soundtrack of discord to discord (if that’s what you’re into, like...), this is the best you’re gonna get without attempting to smuggle them into your living room after a few too many rounds of escapist snacks.
True Story. Get onto it.
Stig Noise MMX: http://www.myspace.com/stignoise
Barberos: http://www.myspace.com/barberosmusic
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