Tremorous

Daniel Avery played New Century Hall on Friday night, Halloween, the same day as his new album Tremor was released. Tremor is a bit of a departure from the ambient/ acid/ techno he's known for and which has been present on some of my favourite albums from recent years- 2018's Song For Alpha, 2020's Love + Light and Illusion Of Time, 2021's Together In Static and 2022's Ultra Truth. That's quite the run of albums. Tremor brings a huge new sound, guitars and early 90s industrial rock and guests including Alison Mosshart from The Kills. His set on Friday night starts with the Tremor sound a d a full band, Daniel centre stage behind a rack of kit, guitarists and bassist to the left and a very loud drummer stage right. 

The first part of the set is songs from Tremor, Greasy Off The Starting Line (the Alison Mosshart song) among them, the vocals played from recordings. It's a huge sound, the band have mastered the tensions and dynamics, Daniel playing ominous synth sounds and then the three musicians suddenly crashing in as one, producing an enormous, pile driving sound, the intensity and power of Nine Inch Nails but without the frontman. It's a maximalist minimalism, just four people making a massive noise. It's impressive if a little alienating, the spotlights shining bright white beams of light into the blackness.

After a clutch of songs from Tremor the band disappear and Daniel switches things completely and it becomes more like a DJ gig, swerving into the areas he's best known for, peaky acid techno, 808s and synths, the backlit stage suddenly a club and the crowd moving. He cherry picks moments from his albums, short blasts of acid, occasional dropouts to ambient synth interludes and then crunching electronic drums hitting back in. 

The third part of the gig sees the band come back onstage and a warmer full band sound- there's a lovely ambient piece and then the 80s alt- pop of Rapture In Blue, the most accessible song on Tremor with Cecile Believe's vocals (again from tape) filling the room.

The stage lights are red now and it's fully gig territory and a short run of songs take us to the finale, Drone Logic from 2013's album of the same name, his debut and the one that for some of us was a re- entry point back into techno. Played live Drone Logic's acid squiggle bassline is a living, breathing thing, a monster (on Halloween appropriately enough) and the synths and 808 bounce around the wooden paneled modernist hall. 

Drone Logic

Make Something Of All The Noise

Back in the 00s there were a lot of two person bands,  some maybe inspired by the sudden ascent of The White Stripes who proved that less could be more (and put a lot of bass players out of work perhaps). One of them were The Kills, formed in 2001 by singer singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince. Between 2003 and 2011 they put out four albums- Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, Midnight Boom and Blood Pressures. In 2016 they released a fifth, Ash & Ice. I dipped in and out and can't remember what the first thing I heard by them was but I think it came from a music blog- they always strike me as an early days of music blogs band.

The Kills were dark and messy, four track/ eight track recordings, garage blues and Velvets sounds, Jamie's gnarly guitars and basic drum machine programming and Alison's chain smoking vocals. In 2011 I heard this song and it became one of the songs of the year for me...

Baby Says

Jamie's guitar playing is superb, the tone and ringing, fuzzy lead line endlessly brilliant. Alison comes in with one of those gutter punk love song lyrics, instantly conjuring the Chelsea Hotel, leather jackets and dirty jeans, a life shot in grimy black and white- 'Baby says/ A howl of romance I'll get/ From all your sleeping dogs/ You thugs of God/ I'll get one yet'. Eat your heart out Allen Ginsberg. 

They released The Last Goodbye as a single from Blood Pressures too which had a cover of Pale Blue Eyes on it- so many bands have covered The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes but The Kills bring manage to something of themselves to it, a scratchy, lo fi, rickety version.

Pale Blue Eyes

Last week Thurston Moore released his own Velvets cover to mark Sterling Morrison's birthday, a version of Temptation Inside Your Heart. Debbie Googe (ex- MBV) plays bass on it. Thurston's been playing the song live for ages and its probably about time he committed it to tape...

Thurston plays that riff like its all that matters and his NY drawl is perfect on this. The Velvets version didn't come out until 1985 when it was on the VU album and is one of my fvaourite VU songs- Lou is all the place vocally, funny asides, laughter and goofy lines thrown about. Lou starts off saying, 'somebody shut the door', and, 'somebody get her out of here'. Later on he chucks out, 'electricity comes from other planets', and there's more nonsense at the end- 'the pope in the silver castle'. The 'wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong' backing vocals are a joy too. Sterling and Lou's guitars are locked into each other in a way that makes the Velvet Underground in 1968/ 9, the perfect guitar band. 

Temptation Inside Your Heart

Alison Mosshart turned up last week too on the latest preview from Daniel Avery's forthcoming album Tremor. Greasy Off The Racing Line is dark electronic blues, a grimy, overloaded bassline, synth noise explosions and Mosshart back at the mic, ten chain smoked cigarettes in and falling down a deep hole. 

Moss

Last post in the join-the-dots sequence of this week and it's a hop,a skip and jump from DJ Shadow on Monday to Kate Moss today. Kate collided with pop culture in 1990, the Third Summer Of Love issue of The Face magazine (Spike Island, rave, De La Soul etc) and a football and music fashion shoot in April 1990 (E For England, World In Motion etc). I had the Brazil jersey from the range she's modelling above and wore it to Spike Island. Since then she's floated around the music world, dipping in and out. Yesterday's post included Jack White's Raconteurs. Jack has at least two connections to Croydon's supermodel- in his primary band, The White Stripes, Kate starred in the video for I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself, an ace, raw cover of the Dusty Springfield song. Your enjoyment of this video will depend on whether the prospect of Kate Moss pole-dancing in her underwear interests you at all.



Ahem. Moving on.
Another of Jack's projects, The Dead Weather, saw him playing drums behind Alison Mosshart, whose day job was singing in The Kills. I've posted Baby Says before but that's no reason not to do it again. Stunning song.



Alison's musical partner in The Kills is Jamie Hince, Kate Moss's husband. She sang vocals on Primal Scream's 2002 cover version of Some Velvet Morning (originally sung by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra). This song, and the Disco Heater Dub version which followed it, were produced by, and you knew this was coming surely, Andrew Weatherall. I'm not sure it's any of those involved's finest hour but there you go. I've more or less managed a Dry January- no, not alcohol, that would be stupid- a Dry January of no Weatherall and no Clash/BAD etc. Abstinence until today.