BROWN

BROWN

Gilgamesh/ Fur Chick Frozen Ocean/ I.nojaq

The Bakery
Saturday, July 30, 2012

The question most likely to run through one’s head whilst watching I.nojaq would probably go along the lines of “how is this noise happening,” and you’d be excused for wondering; sitting at the base of a wooden pyramid, a pair of hands appear to deftly and deliberately touch certain planks. Maybe I wasn’t standing close enough to see.

Sort of like a post-human equivalent of the comedians television studios send out to warm up live audiences before a taping of something, the set initially occurred as raw noise - scabrous, clanging data - but it was built into something room transforming, as separate strains converged and thrummed together.
    Frozen Ocean have played about 4000 gigs in the last few years, but their set in the middle of The Bakery floor might have been the best I’ve seen yet. The band began teasingly, with Macka at the kit doggedly refusing to let Pete rip, ratcheting up an engrossing tension for minutes on end. After all that foreplay, Drivin’ eventually smacked with the force of a glass motorboat, and it was a parade therein. Like watching an eagle swoop up a sheep and drop it off a cliff, it was a simultaneous study in control and savagery, and proof that they haven’t run out of ways to impress yet.  
    The first time I saw Fur Chick was at Scitech a few years ago, as she transformed the act of cutting paper into a swarm of mechanical insects. This time, her set included a real time haircut, trimming someone’s raven locks for the purposes of sound manipulation. Her set was a good example of the success of splitting the staging across the Bakery floor and the beer garden; having Fur Chick play the latter, where people could amble around drinking in a brightly lit space, meant she could function as a sound producer providing ambience, not as a performer, shedding all that rigid audience/performer nonsense.
    After that, Gilgamesh was resurrected on a smaller scale- just three drummers- to perform a relentless, powerful set of windswept gut punching. Though it’s a primarily physical experience, the seamlessness of the pieces they performed made yer brain nod in time with yer feet, which is probably the point.  
    There’s only so much to be said for expecting the unexpected when it’s a habit, but Brown always find a way of conjuring something new, which is what makes them important. Brown are about looking at the mundane with fresh eyes, whether building an orchestra out of household objects, or still making them sound fresh, new and exciting after playing with them a thousand times. They began slowly and permitted things to drift for a while, sliding around a drifting rattle before Adam let his tin cans take him for a walk (it’s a hard thing to explain so you should probably go see it), as they went on to clack into something more rigid. Eventually, though, it all faded back into space.

_ALEX GRIFFIN