Cyril Snear

with Trojan Horse, Douga and Black Market Serotonin

Night & Day, Manchester, 6/11/2011

Rating: 4/5

Right, so first up were Black Market Serotonin. I'm not going to dwell on their set long (mainly as they're on SSD), but from their live show it's evident that Andy in particular has grown greatly in confidence as a frontman over the last year. On the other hand, various things remain more raw about their nascent prog-industrial music; the tunes themselves may be polished, and an album may be on the way, but a refusal to dumb down the music live is both a strength and a weakness. 

Slaved in the past to DAVE (or Digitally Automated Vibe Engine, a laptop), they now find themselves in the hands of a marginally less harsh Juno synth; nevertheless this band of exceptional musicians are still occasionally wrong-footed by the samples, and it does beg the question as to whether a fluid live show or fidelity to the record should be a band's number one priority. For my part, I don't know what the answer to that conundrum is.

Second were Douga; on the record there's a hint of the folktronica-come-alternative pop of the Beta Band, but live that's very much the dominant impression that's carried away by the pleasantly off-kilter indie rock on display (and I mean 'indie' in the sense of '90s US bands, not four-piece bands of dickheads from Shoreditch). With two strong sets of songs under their belt (a single and EP) already, as well as some decent shows, Douga's fortune looks set to improve even further from here on in. 

Third were Trojan Horse. Look, I'm not even going to bother. Here, their album is free. GO LISTEN. The only thing really worthy of mention is that they trashed the stage rather more comprehensively than usual, and I had to dodge a flying Yamaha keyboard. Nice. 

Finally Cyril Snear were ready to tear it up. This marked the first time I'd seen the 'Snear live since hearing the pre-masters for their new record, The Riot of Colour, and live tracks like 'Confabulation' surely rank far above all of their work thus far, both in terms of quality and sheer hard rock whallop. At the moment there's only one band on the scene that look poised to claim the Manchester prog mantle ere vacated by Oceansize; while the 'Horse may be the truer sons of Prog, there's only one home grown post-prog band that can challenge the likes of the Kscope stable in the modern progressive stakes... with their Amplifier support slot and Tool-esque hammerfalls, that band is surely Cyril Snear. 

Given that 2011's not even spent yet it may seem premature to be making bold claims for next year, but let me be the first to suggest that The Riot of Colour will make at least this lowly scribe's 'Best of 2012' list. Fuck yes. 




__________________________________________
And now for something completely different...

Trojan Horse

Live at the Good Ship, Kilburn

17/7/2011

Another day, another Trojan Horse gig. Except this one is different- it's their first foray into our capital for a while, and by a quirk of fate I'm freshly returned from post-prog-math fest 2000 Trees and able to attend. A crushing blow was being unable to attend the Kites/Snear/Horse billing in Manchester last night (though I would suggest being made up for in the form of Charlie Barnes, Three Trapped Tigers and Amplifier, but I digress...), so a chance to see the 'Horse and Kites is most welcome indeed. 

From the word go it's an assured performance of songs that by now will be familiar to anyone that's been following the progress of this band. 'Fire', 'Disciplining the Reserve Army', 'Laces and Racists' and 'Mr. Engels Says' all get played, with 'Laces and Racists' being very much the standout of the material tonight. Nick ends up entangled in his guitar on the floor (was that a wince of pain I saw of beard caught on hardware, I wonder?), and a suitable degree of hardcore chaos encroaches upon what was, until their set at least, quite a civilised event. 

More than usual what is apparent tonight is TH's rock pedigree. Of the bands on the 'Prog Nouveau' scene, they are without a doubt the most 'classic prog' in style, and I'm not the first commentator to come to that conclusion. However, lest we forget, their background lies broadly in the punk scene, and it's a testament to the sheer eclecticism of their album that by choosing different material from it they can remind even as frequent a visitor as I to camp Horse of that fact, topped by a strange pang of surprise. 

Unfortunately, times run behind and I'm unable to stay for Kites' set, instead running down Kilburn high street for a train, making that two Sundays in a row that I catch my train at Waterloo with a minute to spare. Oh commuter belt, you are a harsh mistress. 

Trojan Horse's opener, 'Fire'.

SFTOC Recommendations

I decided to run off some one-sentence recommendations for those attending SFTOC this weekend, though to be honest I suspect it'd be more in the spirit of things to ignore me and do whatever the fuck you want. Your call!

Charlie Barnes (St. Phillips, 6:00)

He got album of the year on here, plays electronic prog-pop and is fucking brilliant.

Plank! (United Reformed, 6:00)

Krautrock... prog-rock... united at last...

FTKOSQ (Salford Arms, 8:15)

The apocalypse, as soundtracked by Massive Attack getting mugged by Nine Inch Nails.

With That Knife (The Pint Pot, 7:00)

Catchy mathy indie rock that's a cut above the rest of the indie rock hacks. 

Patterns (The Pint Pot, 10:00)

Shoegazey indie that's kind of like Merriweather Post Pavilion-era Animal Collective. 

Trojan Horse (Fat Out Til You Pass Out, 6:45)

"Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum!" - find out what I mean; das ist prog. 

Day For Airstrikes (United Reformed, 5:00)

Post-rock with melodies and electronics and stuff make Alex a happy boy. 

There's this band called Trojan Horse, and they're putting out their debut album this Saturday. It's kind of a big deal.

Want to hear the bands involved? Listen to this!

Shit Trainers//Ssd Podcast #11 by Superstar Destroyer on Mixcloud

The Crimea- Valentine's Day Gig

Sadly I no longer reside in the environs of Olde London Towne, but to anybody that does FFS go to this on Valentine's Day. For England, James (etc.)!

Basically, The Crimea are playing a one-off show at The Enterprise in Camden Town. It's like £8, but come on, that is SO worth it.

Tickets can be got at here.

Pangaea...

went a little something like this:

Vessels

with Stuart Warwick and Plank!
Deaf Institute, Manchester

14th November 2010
Rating: 4/5

Apparently I missed the first band on. My bad, really. Worse than that, I actually got chatting to them by accident at some point, and have since forgotten their band name and failed to look them up. I suck.

Right, so apologies out of the way, let's talk Plank! As luck would have it, they are actually about as essential as the exclamation mark that concludes their bandname; from an unconvincing start, their songs became gradually more and more interesting, until with a righteous guitar solo in their penultimate number, they'd completely won me over. They are great, and if you're into that kind of looping, math-meets-prog thing, they are definitely the band you've been waiting for. They even did a kind of stadium rock flourish in their last song that was distinctly Who-like. Excellent!

Now, when you go to a lot of gigs, you're eventually exposed to a little of pretty much every genre out there, and you quickly become very hard to be surprised by anything. The most pleasant surprises of all are when sheer musicianship wins through and somebody merely doing what they do incredibly well becomes the greatest virtue, ahead of originality, stagecraft or whatever.

That's not to say that Stuart Warwick doesn't have an original sound- he has, but at the same time it's definitely from that same bizarro-world of popular music from which Imogen Heap and Charlie Barnes have descended. Simply, it's one man and a piano (or, for one song, two men and one guitar) playing post-rock-pop, with a lot of loops. Stuart's voice is definitely of the Buckley school, and it's very compelling, to say the least. The songs themselves are occasionally bitter, occasionally sweet, and rather more often, bittersweet.

The crowd is finally won over when Stuart abandons an out of sync loop and cashiers a track, saying “I guess this is God's way of telling me I shouldn't play that song”. I think I speak for everyone present when I say we were sad to see him leave. If you're reading this, open up another tab and go and find him on teh internets. It's not hard (I managed to) and you will be rewarded.

Finally it was Vessels' time in the spotlight. I've actually had the good luck to see this band a surprisingly large number of times, both at festivals and in support slots, sober or too-drunk-to-remember, and everything in between. The thing I can't help thinking tonight as I sit in the strange theatre seat section of Deaf is how much better this band get every time I see them. My first impression, way back when, was of a band rather too mathy for my tastes, but today they are on fine form, sprawling and dramatic.

I'm not going to go into the nature metaphors; it's post-rock done well, and you should know what that sounds like (hint: Hammock or 65daysofstatic). Most encouragingly of all, the tracks I don't recognise (the newer ones) are much stronger than the ones I do, suggesting that their impending album is going to be a corker. Stuart obligingly hops back up to the stage to sing recent single, 'Meatman, Piano Tuner, Prostitute', and again reminds me of that little itch I felt when first hearing it and wishing that this collaboration would become more permanent. Oh well.

That dispensed with and the audience satisfied, Vessels cracked out a hammer-of-the-gods finish and then made their exit, but not before thanking the crowd for actually being arsed to come down. Nice. 

Sad Day for Puppets on Tour in 2011

Yo!

Sad Day for Puppets are awesome, right?

Correct!

In that case, you'll be wanting to see them live, and you can in February 2011. The best bit is that the Manchester date doesn't clash with any of the planned SSD nights either! Praise be!

The dates in full are as follows:

Friday, February 4 - Nottingham, Bodega - http://www.alt-tickets.co.uk

Saturday, February 5 - Leeds, Nation of Shopkeepers - http://www.lunatickets.co.uk

Sunday, February 6 - Glasgow, Captain's Rest - http://www.pclpresents.com

Monday, February 7 - Manchester, Moho Live - http://www.ticketline.co.uk

Tuesday, February 8 - London, (Sonic Cathedral) The Social - http://www.wegottickets.com/soniccathedral

Wednesday, February 9 - London, Proud Galleries

Thursday, February 10 - Portsmouth, Cellars - http://www.stiffpromotions.co.uk

Friday, February 11 - Birmingham, Flapper - http://www.seetickets.com

Saturday, February 12 - Brighton, Jam - http://www.seetickets.com/brassneck

Rock on!