The Japanese Psychadelic band Acid Mothers Temple are, apparently, a very mixed bag when it comes to playing live. Due to their prodigious record-releasing ethic (69 records in 13 years, give or take a few) and ever-changing line-up, you can’t always bank on a thrilling gig with AMT.

Ex Vibracathedral Orchestra man Neil Campbell plunges the night into action with his latest noise band, Astral Social Club. Vast clouds of sound morph seamlessly into the next. Or do they? The one problem with is it all develops at such a slow pace as not to keep the attention ticking. Obviously, it depends how you listen to it, and drone lovers don’t exactly listen or play to a stopwatch. His defence is: “I’ve stopped trying to present things as finished and stopped worrying if the whole thing doesn’t run together as a completely smooth whole.” Even so you can’t help feeling his general spread of disparate noise goes nowhere.

Tired, overused rock beats and ambient guitar lines are pretty much all that Stearica deal in. The Italian trio have little ear for distinctive melody, and like a good few similar bands they get stuck at the arse-end of the post-rock trail. On the surface the quality of music can’t be denied, but a murky, tuneless limbo is where they’re really trapped.

Acid Mothers Temple begin their set with bassist Tsuyama Atsushi indulging in Mongolian and Tibetan throat singing. Vowels are chopped and changed by gyrating jaw shapes, then the lips seeks out eerie harmonics by gradually closing the mouth. Truly incredible singing.

The AMT modus operandi consists of float around on one lumbering idea for a leisurely fifteen minutes, speed the pace up, add an outrageous guitar solo and then they’re done. It’s a mystery how AMT keep things interesting with such little material. Songs progress at such a snail pace that it’s a wonder they’re not an incredibly dull live act. What makes them so special is that they’re the polar opposite. We’ve caught them on a good night.

Astral Social Club

Stearica

Acid Mothers Temple

Pascal Ansell

Two Minute Noodles display all the reasons why watching a duo can be great fun. Keys and drums face each other, interplaying and generally having a ball. This is well-formed and intense tunes, taking some influence from the thumping drive of Philadelphia’s Need New Body. Drummer ‘Moz’ (also in Chops and Quack Quack) swings his head round, tongue out, with a hard-hitting drive, obstinately forcing and thrusting the song onwards. He sounds a tad like John Stanier of Battles; mechanical and relentless at times, like a live drumming machine. The keyboard riffs could be a little more imaginative but the mind rarely wonders – a sure indication of an exciting live act.

An unexpected follow-up to minimal instrumental rock is Paper Tiger. The mean-looking seven-piece specialise in spaced out dub/hip hop with situational lyrics by an unnamed MC. Each musician is as interesting as they possibly could be, with a monolithic sub-bass, choppy guitar, chilled drums and scratch DJ delivering endless variety. Most notable is the saxophonist. He randomly taps his pedals, expertly squashing and looping his riffs – the inventiveness is impressive. One of the best things about Paper Tiger is that each instrument never rides over the other; you could listen to any of them and be entertained. Each tune seamlessly segues into the other at an unrushed pace, content where it’s staying but hinting at new horizons – brilliant viewing.

Time to get geeky. The monome is a wee box with a grid of flashing buttons. Each button yields a sample which the artist can chop and change at his/her own will, thereby banishing all boring laptop performances forever! Yeah!

Daedelus A.K.A. Alfred Darlington hails from LA with a good handful of electronic and hip hop samples and beats flying under his Victorian cape-thing. Seemingly because of the supposed ultra-pretention of the scene, Darlington was “totally disillusioned by the whole world of jazz” and so sought to produce his own composite brand of glitchy beats, folk & RnB (in the old sense) samples and live improvisation. With what I hear you ask? Well, if we observe the equation we have a pretty good evening in store: Daedelus + monomer = massive tunes.

The monomer makes the night. His passion is poured into this odd box for a very good reason as he points out that “most electronic music is a hidden process” or in other words, “cheating”. This is a perfect compromise between sophisticated electronic and live instrumentation. The songs’ foundations lie somewhere in his laptop but there’s a good deal of improvisation going on with the monomer; his modus operandi consisting of “sitting with the audience trying to figure out what they need or want… it doesn’t have to be an automatic throw-up of previous material… keep messing with it, messing with it, messing with it…” He then has a subsidiary monomer to the side, which squeezes the signal, rumbles it around then throws it back into the speakers. Samples from Nirvana, T2 and Aphex Twin make it a wonderfully diverse cut-and-paste affair, never palling. Incredibly good scouting from Room 237.

Two Minute Noodles

Paper Tiger

Daedalus

Pascal Ansell