something’s gone right for once

The Buzzcocks were great. They played a set full of old-school goodness (12 of the 20-ish tracks were from Singles Going Steady and the entirety of the set was of material from their first incarnation) and put on a fine, fine show.

I stood at the front, right in front of Pete, which had a couple of downsides in that I nearly passed out due to being tired and hungry and having to withstand the pressure of people pushing and piling onto me; and the fact that I couldn’t really hear the vocals. Of course, it didn’t really matter that I couldn’t hear the vocals because, y’know, I know most of their songs by heart anyway.

I will fully admit to tearing up a bit during their set, particularly when they played Ever Fallen in Love? and You Say You Don’t Love Me. I know, that’s not particularly punk rock (or even manly, I guess) but fuck that shit. I first heard Singles Going Steady at least six years ago, and from the first listen I knew that I wanted to see them live. It seemed to be nothing more than a dream back then, being able to see Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle on stage, but it came true on Sunday.

My life is really so much more complete now, and the fact that they played the aforementioned You Say You Don’t Love Me really made my night. Fuck it, it made my year. Being able to sing along to it, live… goddamn!

I don’t have the cash to see La Quiete this coming weekend, which is a bit of a bummer, but fuck, it’s a tradeoff I’m more than happy with.

and it seems so real i can taste it

I. CANNOT. WAIT. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! *schoolgirl-esque scream of glee*

tuesday night noise

Allunan Symfonny studio in Sunway Mentari was the scene of my first live performance as Jerk Kerouac and damn, was it something. I wasn’t expecting a lot of people to be into the whole noise thing but, as it turned out, a lot of people (some of whom didn’t look like they’d be the type to enjoy noise) enjoyed my set, haphazard and unrehearsed as it was.

I managed to lose my shaker box once (threw it violently on the floor and I don’t know where the fuck it bounced), cut myself a broken cymbal piece, accidentally unplug my contact mic a few times, nearly ruined my set by killing the power to my Bass Synth Wah and, yeah, probably made the sound guy/s more than a bit worried with my crunch and feedback.

Quite happy with my set though, although I did feel a bit unsure and reserved early on. Got into the groove quickly though, and once that happened, well . . . all hell broke loose. The crowd really seemed to like the bit where I stuffed my contact mic into my mouth.

My shaker box has quite a significant dent in it now due to me stomping on it. Shall have to cobble together another one.

My only kind-of regret is the fact that I decided to play through a guitar amp instead of the PA. Probably would’ve sounded a bit better through the PA. Either that or my volume was a bit too low. I was worried about what the sound guys would think, so I didn’t really crank the amp.

A bit bummed that Justice didn’t catch my set but I don’t blame him. Jetlag is a killer, man.

If I get any pics I’ll deffo put ‘em up here.

penang report

Penang fucking rocked, man. Ok, maybe not Penang itself (not that it was bad, we just didn’t have enough time to be all touristy) but the kids there were fucking awesome. I didn’t get much sleep on the train Friday night, and only got some fitful sleep at Batu Ferringhi beach/on the bus back from Batu Feringghi and I wasn’t exactly feeling at the top of my game. But the crowd made us feel at home once we stepped onto the stage, and by the time we finished with our traditional opening song (“Hak Kita,” what else) the crowd’s energy and awesomeness had given me something of a second wind.

Even our less-popular songs went down a treat with the Penang crowd, and they even sang along! Helped, of course, by the fact that we’re prone to simple-as-fuck, singalong bridge sections. And don’t get me started on how our covers went down. ‘Twas awesome.

Only two real bum notes about the gig though: 1) We didn’t get to play our new song, due to the organiser asking us to cut things a bit shorter, and 2) The crowd started chanting for a Warzone cover at the end of our set, and we’d totally forgotten the song we covered at the Warzone tribute gig, and thus to please them we played Straight Answer’s “Hantam Prasangka Buruk” again.

If I knew that that was going to happen, I’d have told the guys to “close” our set with the new song and rip through Vitamin X’s “Raincoat” as an encore, but well, I’m not psychic. It was an incredibly nice surprise to have kids asking for an encore, though. Wish we could’ve given them what they wanted, but well, maybe next time? Haha.

In all seriousness though, I would love to go to (and perform in) Penang again.

We’ll most probably be playing in Johor on the 7th of November (Embrace Hall, Tampoi) with a few other killer bands, so yeah, see you there!

weekly sonic report

Bruised knees? Check. Sore thighs? Check. Back pain? Check. A slight loss of hearing? Most probably.

I was at Tuesday’s Weekly Sonic with my arsenal of pedals, contact mic, shaker box and a drum stick and man, was it ever glorious. It was a much more freeform improv-oriented setup early on, with two pedal setups (one noise setup and one delay/reverb-laden setup) along with a keyboard, a drumkit and a xylophone being played somewhere. I started out on my setup, of course, with my friend Aniz (haha, famous dah ko lepas ni!) on a borrowed pedal setup, Goh Lee Kwang on the keyboard, Tey Beng Tze on drums and someone plinking and plonking on that xylophone somewhere to my right.

The racket we put out was quite, quite deafening. Very, very noisy early on, total noise assault, with shades of maybe Hair Police and Hetero Skeleton here and there. Just a bit. I eventually moved over to my friend’s setup and got all Pocahaunted on everyone’s asses, and things slowly reduced in intensity from there, but not without, of course, a few more bursts of noise (either from me during my returns to my setup or from the others who tried my setup out).

Keat (of, well, Silent Keat) arrived a bit later with his bass and then everything got a bit more structured as everyone fell in along with the bass. Kind of like last week, I guess, except with less vocal histrionics. Might have just been me, but we even hit a bit of that krautrock-esque vibe. Again, just a bit, though.

I know, this is a crummy event report so far, and I don’t think it’s going to improve. I was a part of it and wasn’t in a particularly objective mood that night… and neither am I in such a mood now.

I very much enjoyed performing that night, which isn’t really surprising, is it? But it was made all the more enjoyable by the fact that it was my first time performing noise in public. I’d like to think I put on quite a show, to be honest: I tried to get a bit of a Masonna vibe in my performance, albeit a relatively very restrained Masonna (no jumping up and down and bleeding, sadly). Tuesday night was when I really de-stressed after a heavy short semester, and it felt glorious on that level. Hopefully, for the others in attendance, it was a glorious performance as well. Hopefully. The only real negative was that since we were all plugged into a mixer (save for the drums), the whole mix didn’t sound as good as if we’d been going through our own separate PAs/speakers/amps. My walls of noise are quite frequency-intensive and they often dominated my friend’s somewhat more subdued cosmic delayed vocal-isms. My friend and I managed to jam here in Kelana Jaya beforehand, where we played through separate amps, and I have to say that our combination sounded better in the studio.

We may just start a band/project, y’know, my friend and I. I know I’d be down/up for it.

I wanted to talk abit more about my Head-Direct RE2s—which I have, for the record, quite nearly totally fallen for—but then I realised I’d rather write about Tuesday night first. Maybe later. Not that anyone cares, really.

me aping yamatanka eye or something

From Tuesday’s show at Findars. It was supposed to be a performance by Tham Kar Mun, but he was “sick” or something, so Goh Lee Kwang (and, presumably, the gang) decided to turn it into a free improv jam session. He handed me a microphone and, well… there you have it.

I don’t really contribute much in the first couple of minutes, as I honestly didn’t know how to go about it. Once they kicked things up a notch and got much more noisy, however…

The sound isn’t great, but you can hear my contributions to the mix. Oh, and I was on drums for the last minute or so in the vid. It’s a nice summing-up of the jam, but yeah, we jammed for about an hour or so (maybe more?) and the vid’s only 10 minutes so there’s a lot missing, particularly some nice interplay between the three of us during that noisy middle section.

It’s happening again this Tuesday at the usual time of 8.30. I’ll be there with my pedals and my contact mic and god knows what else. I will admit, I’m not sure how well my walls of noise will go down with the others but, hey, that’s part of the fun of improvisation!

perlonex live in kuala lumpur

I wish I had photos to show, but I was lazy and didn’t bring my DSLR. I know, I know, “what kind of photographer are you!?!?” but yeah. I was lazy, and I didn’t feel like it, so fuck off.

(I’m not really going to be reviewing anyway, just gushing about them, more like it.)

So, a few days ago, I decided that I’d get off my ass tonight and head to Findars (at, where else, the Annexe) to see Perlonex’s one and only KL performance, and I have to say that it was a pretty good decision on my part. Perhaps one of the better ones I’ve made recently.

Their performance was very, very good. Nothing terribly unique, I’ll admit  the turntable setup was intriguing though, but that may just be because I haven’t seen enough live noise/experimental/EAI/whatever shows), but very well done nonetheless. They did the drone thing pretty, with an e-bowed zither (I think it was a zither, at least), cymbals being played with bows and a delay-and-reverb-and-god-knows-what-else drenched guitar, among other things, but what I really liked was, of course, the noisy bits. Yeah, the noisy bits. Warped cymbals and metal and paper cups and whatnot scraping against a rotating turntable, huge crash cymbal abuse (with the odd drum hits here and there) and even more droney guitarwork makes for awesome noise.

There was a part where the drummer actually played an actual rhythm on the kickdrum and the rest of the band (ok, more so the electronics guy than the guitar guy… their names escape me right now, and I’m too lazy to look ‘em up, so sorry) fell into the groove, resulting in a bit of more rhythmic noise (complete with the requisite filter/volume/gain/whatever swells) in between two really loud sections of noise.

The only negative thing I can really say is that the guitar was a bit anonymous for most of the show. That might have had something to do with where I was sitting as well, though.

They droned, they noised it up, and they even, for a brief moment, had a bit of a free jazz thing going on (and by brief, I do mean brief). And, at the end of it all, they left me hearing that one drone I am intimately familiar with: a ringing in my ears. I would say that my ears are still ringing even now as a result of their noise (which was honestly loud), but that wouldn’t be anything special, really. I mean, I suffer from near-constant tinnitus, after all.

And, yes, I know, I’ll never be a reviewer for The Wire. So what?

whee~

I’m tired. Pretty fucking tired. Getting two hours of sleep and being up since 2am (it’s 9pm) now does that to you, I guess. Caught the Manure vs. Arse game, and then, since I had an exam at 9, I (along with the three other buggers I was with, all of whom were sitting for the same exam) somewhat decided to, y’know, not sleep. Or, at least, not much. Yeah. The only way I’ve managed to survive until now is being around friends, making shitloads of noise (TALKTALKTALKTALK) and lots and lots of gaming. Spent three hours at one of the cybercafes here in Kelana Jaya after the exam, most of which were spent playing CoD4, as is the norm these days, although not without a few diversions here and there.

I was just about ready to pass out while watching some episodes of Top Gear just now.

For some odd reason I’ve started gaming much, much more recently. Maybe it was that fateful spur-of-the-moment decision to play some CoD4 with a handful of my friends after our exam on Monday. Maybe, maybe. I was never much of a hardcore FPS guy, much preferring solitary pursuits such as RPGs, but man, I don’t know, I really like CoD4. I’ve started playing Left 4 Dead, too. Which is also great, and, y’know, might just become my next obsession. Shitloads of zombies! Weapons! Blood! Guts! Ace replayability! What more could you want?

One more exam on Sunday and I’m done for this semester. Can’t wait. Will be pretty occupied between now and then, though. I’m playing at a jam session here in KJ tomorrow evening, and then I’ll be hitting the Gudang Noisy stage with xLumbrahx on Saturday. I’ll probably be playing two sets tomorrow, too; one with a (most probably) one-off band playing Misfits, Ramones and Weezer covers and one with xLumbrahx, as a sort of warmup for the aforementioned Saturday gig. At least, that’s the plan. I’m looking forward to my first somewhat-public performance behind the drumkit, too, and have been trying to get more people to attend. Let’s just hope I don’t fuck things up too much. Might want to lay off the slightly overambitious double pedal bits. Yeah, yeah. That might be better.

Oh, and no surprises for guessing what I’m going to be doing after that last paper. Dude who used to have long hair and who likes to use the word “dude,” you better bring it!

(Why lie, I actually suck at CoD4, it’s just that my friends suck more.)

trying to be nice

Fuck yes.

Enjoyed myself immensely. Jumped about, headbanged, screamed my heart out and made a couple of new friends. All in all, a good day.

drone

Goh Lee Kwang’s performance earlier tonight was awesome. Really, really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed hanging out with the Findars guys afterwards and engaging in a bit of acoustic guitar-and-percussion jamming, although I really need to work on my free jam skills. I started out wanting to do a bit of the whole raga thing, but with acoustic guitar or maybe a bit of the whole free improv thing but I soon realised that I’m total crap at that shit and thus decided to rein things in and focus on laying down grooves with occasional flavourings of lame attempts at dissonance and jazz stuff. Or something like that.