Rise

I've been meaning to make a post about how a couple songs have deeply influenced how I look at love and whether this is good, but I'll put that off 'til later and instead talk about the show I went to Saturday night at the 119 Gallery.

I originally decided to go because Crank Sturgeon was playing, and I hadn't seen him in a good long while. The kid who had set up the show had also gotten a shit-load of other outfits that were performing and I figured that I'd see at least a couple other ones that I enjoyed. The last noise-show I'd been to (I think) was Grunt in November. Although Grunt didn't impress me that much that night, the night was still really fun. Me, Russell and Davenport went. Brian brought a 30-Rack for me and him.

The first act (sorry, but I don't remember most of the groups names, if I even knew them in the first place) was this guy who rolled around in the corner with a couple of pedals and a contact mic on a section of one of those pipes that drain water down from the gutters. I don't really remember anything that specifically stood out from his set, except that Andy (the kid who set the show together) and Walter (the guy who runs the 119) kept fiddling with the sound levels.

Next, was Andy and some other guy. Just messing around with pedals and vocals. Again, I wasn't overly impressed. They weren't bad, and any live noise is fun in my book, but it was nothing that really stood out.

I can't be sure, but I think that Halflings performed next. I wasn't expecting them to be there, 'cause I had seen the bill and I thought I would remember their name being on it. They, in my opinion at least, were the best act that night. Very, very powerful PE-ish stuff. They also performed for a pretty long time (at least, I thought), which was nice. What struck me the most about their performance was that they seemed to be in total control of their gear. A lot of noise outfits will just fiddle with knobs and scream into mics, and it sometimes seems like what they are doing is not effecting the actual sound AT ALL. When one of the Halflings would twist a knobs or tap a button, you could hear the change in the sound. A+ set.

Of the other people that performed, the only other one that really struck me was the people that played immediately after Halflings. It was almost black-metal-y, and the singer (who did his best deep guttural, Satan influenced vocals) was very drunk; but I still found their set pretty interesting.

Damn, I almost forgot, the other outfit that impressed me was Ted (from Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck) and Nate (something or other; I've seen him perform with Jessica Rylan before). Nice PE-ish stuff again, with really strong vocals from Ted. Afterwards I got to talking with them (and sharing beers from the 30), and I need to somehow get that video of the Sluts last St. Patrick's Day to Ted.

Crank's set was okay, but I was kind of distracted because Davenport had gotten pretty drunk and then disappeared, saying he wasn't feeling that good. His sets are fun, but they border too closely on performance art to really enjoy sonic-ly.

All in all, though, it was a really fun night in Lowell. The largest crowd I'd seen at the 119 since two Halloweens ago when I saw Capital Hemorrhage. The angry PE stuff really made me feel good, and made me realize how much pent-up anger and sadness I have inside me right now.

Barzel

I shouldn't have shaved. I look like a chick/10 year old.

Barzel is a Israeli/ostensibly Zionist PE outfit. Its concept kind of annoys me, not because I disagree with Zionism (although I'm not sure I agree with it), but because it seems like a project that is purely the opposite of all of the anti-Semitic PE outfits that exist. If you are going to make power electronics, do it with true feeling. Maybe they do have a real passion for making this, but it just seems too much like something that is purely in opposition to those other acts (Genocide Lolita, Green Army Fraction). But I still have their album on my computer. Is it from some guilt about listening to bands that are so stringently racist? I think that all of those type of bands are fucking idiots, but they still sometimes make decent music. Then again, I don't think Israelis and Zionists are that good either. I'm listening to the Barzel album now, and it really isn't the greatest thing ever, but neither is it the worst. Since a lot of PE is not strictly serious about its content, maybe this album is somehow supposed to be negative towards Zionism. It has the same forceful speeches in different languages that I don't understand but can feel the power behind. This song right here is pretty fucking good ("By Blood And Fire"). I don't understand why there is so much hate in the world, and it does really depress me, but I still think that PE is one of the best listening materials out there.