Live Review - Satori / Tunnels of Ah / Colossloth – 08/08/19 Centrala Space, Digbeth, Birmingham

Satori / Tunnels of Āh / Colossloth – 08/08/19 Centrala Space, Digbeth, Birmingham

https://www.facebook.com/colossloth/

https://tunnelsofh.bandcamp.com/

https://satori-industrial.bandcamp.com/

Going back to Birmingham, particularly Digbeth is an intense thing, Digbeth is like a mythical, other worldly No-man’s land within Birmingham. To see such huge, empty, abandoned buildings covered in spray artwork is something. The drive was long, but I was thrilled to finally be there. When I found Centrala Space, it was a small, gorgeous Arts Café that does events and exhibitions; I had some great coffees there and got talking to people. This was friendly, relaxed with people just there for the noise, it was the Birmingham I knew and loved.

Inside Centrala Space.

The first act on was Colossloth which is the project of Wooly Woolaston, who has been active as Colossloth since 2006. His set started off with deep drones with what I’d call an electronica feel as harmonies were woven into the texture of the sound. Things would build with massive rumbling drones, harmonic distortion and then erupt for periods of time. This would happen in different ways that utilised drones, sharp noise, waves of distortion and harmony, his set really contrasted beauty and rawness with a very impressive, forward thinking attitude. The atmosphere in the work was so well manipulated that there couldn’t have been a stronger opener, the bar was set high already.

I’ll confess, I didn’t know what to expect with Tunnels of Āh, I’ve reviewed and really got into Stephen Burroughs work as Frag and Comicide, but I was holding off on Tunnels until I bought the albums. So, I was going in blind, I like to do this as you get a good gauge straight away. There were a bunch of technical difficulties at first as the PA had blown or gone during Colossloth’s set; a new one had to be set up, so there was a new PA, loads of wires, new speakers and a big amp. The sound then kept cutting out until it was finally set up and working, the bits of noise made until it cut out were good, very different. I don’t know if this changed what it would normally be like, but once all this was fixed, it was like an older type noise gig with wires and amps everywhere and a massive Cacophony took off. Massive horn like, distorted drones took blasted at a massive volume. The sound functioned like Wall noise, but had an esoteric, shifting movement that morphed and changed constantly. There was an ancient/old feel to the sound, as if connected to times long past. Tunnel’s sound seemed to constantly grow and get louder as if in permanent cycle of growth until the set stopped. I can see how the sound grew from the early 80s roots of Comicide and I want those four albums for sure.

Satori I knew even less about, I believe there were line-up changes over the decades and the project stretches right back to the mid- 80s and was on the Broken Flag label. Satori’s show had a backing film, compromised of striking images of war, genocide, torture, surgery, decay and explosions that was a powerful backdrop. Satori used vocals, they could have been louder, but there was PA issues and it was a great to see some shouting which made for an intense physical performance. The use of noise was loud, as Power Electronics it shifted regularly between subtle to extreme. The sound was distorted and at times cold and clinical. I didn’t take notes during Satori’s set, I was really pulled into it and found myself immersed. I also bought a CD and found it had a similar effect. There is something ‘other’ about Satori, a depth or distance that gets very vast as you fall into it.

This was a great show, it was three very different artists combining to make a great night with strong performances.

Choppy Noodles 2019.

Comicide - Moral Improvement.

Comicide – Moral Improvement (Live 1984 CE) – Cassette/download – Self Released  - 2019.

Track list.

A - Star Club, Birmingham.

     1.    Bloodmeat.

     2.    Bruised Organon

     3.    Muscular Jesus

     4.    Hatehouse

B - Eve Hill, Afro Hill Caribbean Centre, Dudley.

     1.    Bloodmeat.

     2.    Bruised Organon.

     3.    Muscular Jesus.

     4.    Hatehouse.

Comicide was an early Stephen Ah Burroughs industrial/PE project, later projects were Head of David, FRAG and Tunnels of Ah. There were two members, the other being Erik Jurenovskis, who was also a member of Head of David. This set of two live recordings were both played supporting Con-Dom in different venues in the West Midlands in 1984. The instrumentation used was vocals, manipulated synth and guitar.

The Birmingham performance doesn’t have vocals, it’s all instrumental. The synths add a suspenseful, anxiety to the work, the riffing gives a uniqueness and seems to melt into the synth work due to its repetitiveness, becoming noise in the process. The intuition of the guitarwork seems to convey emotion and add a layer of complexity to the work. Part of me sees this recording as Lynch like, it wouldn’t be out of place in Eraserhead or any of his other early works. In other parts, I feel it could fit in the Bladeruner, due to the futuristic synths - there was something cinematic about Comicide’s work.. The synths do become punishing and massive at times, this is where the Power Electronics aspect of the recording is.

The Dudley gig is edgier, there is more of an Industrial urgency to the work and the addition of shouting vocals is an added layer of intensity to the works and adds a further Power Electronics dimension to things. This is evident as there seems to be more volume at work to the point where it distorts and warbles things more. There’s some choppy noise communication going on, ticks and twangs create hallucinatory atmospheres, the esoteric aspects of future works, particularly Tunnels of Ah is demonstrated in its infancy here. The vocals distort and become noise as if in another dimension. The guitar work is even stronger here, as if more intuitive to what’s going on with the resonating synths.

This is a good, interesting document of the times and what was happening on the Noise live circuit back then and it can be complimented by the Con-Dom tapes of live recordings from that time. This can be bought at: https://tunnelsofh.bandcamp.com/album/comicide-moral-improvement-live-1984ce

Choppy Noodles 2019.

Tunnels of Āh - Charnel Transmissions.

Album: Charnel Transmissions

Artist: Tunnels of Āh

Label: Cold Spring

Catalogue  no: CSR256CD

Tracklist:

  1        Homage to the Landfill Dogs

  2.      Stations of the Skin-Bag

  3.      Kosmiglot

  4.      Here is the Heap

  5.      Fissuring-Genesis-Great-Power

You know, I am utterly convinced that some musicians, Stephen Burroughs being one of them, must have access to some device that allows them to travel through the streams of time. Listening to this, the fourth album from this British project on Cold Spring Records, I got the feeling that it was a recording of our future from our future, or what’s left after our extinction. It’s desolate, wind-riven, cold, choked with dust and debris, and barren. These are the sounds that only a dead civilisation makes, where our only legacy are the eyeless chasms of what were once the windows and doors of high-rise skyscrapers, their rusting steel skeletons reaching up to a silent sky with rotting and rusted concrete skin still clinging on, and where the suffocating blanket of radiation we’ve laid over the world’s surface has bequeathed a semblance of distorted life to machines.

The world is dead and lifeless, but not silent. Here be the ghosts of a society that lost touch with what gave it life, and as a reward for sustaining us we gave it death. Hurricane winds barrelling through empty caverns, both artificial and natural, banshee howls (or lamentations, perhaps), the seismic rumblings of an enraged world, the grind of mechanical behemoths lording it over a decayed landscape, recordings of the spectral voices of the long dead talking from the past: disturbing enough elements in their own right when heard singly, but when combined paint a terrifying picture of what’s in store. There’s no optimism here, and any room for hope has shrunk to an infinitesimal singularity. There’s no light, no colour.

‘Stations of the Skin-Bag’ will serve as a prime example – a high-pitched howling, electronic yet somehow human, set against a grainy, glitchy, sawing backdrop, builds up steadily until it breaks into crackles and even more graininess. A male voice, distorted as if coming from underwater, emerges out of the darkness only to be replaced by that overarching howl and broken background noise. It’s a grief-stricken plea from a history that no one will ever know, and it can only sing its pain to the void.

A pessimistic, nihilist album: to be seen perhaps as a hymn to a future that hasn’t yet happened, but is almost inevitable. Maybe play this whilst wearing sackcloth and ashes, and indulging in a little bit of self-flagellation using your favourite studded cat-o-nine-tails.

Psymon Marshall 2019.

FRAG Disease Vector.

FRAG – Disease Vector – self Released – CDR & Download – 2019.

https://tunnelsofh.bandcamp.com/album/disease-vector

Frag is a project by Tunnels of Āh creator Stephen Burroughs, it was originally conceived in the early 90s and after a rocky start it was intended to be kept as a secret, unreleased project. Some old material was recently released, FRAG kicked back into action and Disease Vector is the first new FRAG material in 25 years.

I like this, it sounds fresh immediately, through its minimalism and failure or refusal to adhere to today’s common noise sounds and methods. By use of farty, vibrating sounds the work really gets focussed on its own repetition through swirling loops of the same sound for long periods of time. Sometimes elements are juxtaposed sometimes they aren’t just one will just play off itself: this focus on repetition continues as the overall sound gets more layered as the album progresses. Some of the blunt less treated tonal frequencies that underlie the work are strong. As Distortion comes in on Neural Progenitor Cell onwards, the mixing gets clever and seems keep it broken up and fractured enough so the work doesn’t lose its identity and become cliched. Despite the growth in the amount of sounds used, the minimal aspect of the work is maintained, it also has a cold playfulness to it. The work does have a lot of twinges of older Power Electronics stylings as it progresses, it has no concern for the bigger/fuller sound at all and this is refreshing. It also gets very detailed and focussed within itself.

I enjoyed Disease Vector, its stance is refreshing and makes it a standout project. I do like Cold-Minimal work and this is a solid example of that. I will investigate Stephen Burroughs other work further - Welcome back FRAG.

Choppy Noodles 2019.