So first, the spiel: GZ Dublin is an independent collective puttin' on tha gigs for tha kids. This was their first one, and they'll be running them fortnightly in the Music Room. Go to all of them, or lo, the gods will descend upon thee with terrible vengeance and all that jazz. Tonight was also the launch night for Giveamanakick's album.
And now, the evening's musical entertainment. Or is that word justified? On previous showings, Boxes have, in fact, been pretty unentertaining. Your erstwhile scribe was fearing another so-so mess-along interspersed with in-jokes and general arsing around. But no! Not this time. Maybe because they decided not to talk to any friends in the crowd, or maybe because of some other cosmic interference, Boxes were tight and focused and clattered through a rake of songs that might have caused the average observer to think to themselves, "hmm, owing a debt, as they do, to Shellac and Gang of Four, these Boxes fellows have actually started to work towards a definable sound". They finished with "Walking Song", which always gets inside your head and has you humming it to yourself for days afterwards, mainly because, well, it only has one lyric. Not exactly easy to review, but easy to sing, I suppose.
Snail Racing, however, are perhaps prone to being too easily reviewed. The set-up is 3 bass players and a drummer doing layered noodling, and so the names of certain bands could very easily get bandied about. Well, it's not quite as simple as that. Let's get the terms out of the way first of all. They are "post-rock", although the term has become so debased as to be meaningless. (Allow me a digression: the problem with this easy pigeonholing is that once people start getting bored with what they think "post-rock" is, the bands who have been labelled and branded as such, but who are actually doing new and interesting things, get discarded. After all, why should anyone listen to Snail Racing when minds have already been made up - simply from hearing what instruments are played - that they're, y'know, a bit "post-rock".) Comparisons are dangerous in this sort of music, simply because the standard ones are so easily given; you know who. However, in order to give some idea of what was going on, I would invite the esteemed reader's attention to the works of both Ganger and (to a lesser degree) June of 44. Some of the music was purely instrumental, but the nail was hit on the proverbial head when the band were trading vocal lines over the shifting bass patterns, when the whole package became so much more than the sum of its parts.
Giveamanakick are about as different as you can get, musically, from Snail Racing. However, we essentially have exactly the same problem when it comes to describing them, in that there is an obvious but misleading comparison.
Giveamanakick are a two-piece with drums and guitar doing noisy songs. Ring any bells? (Specifically red-and-white-coloured brother-and-sister bells?) Yes, well, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. What we get is a reinvention of punk and hardcore from about 1970 to the present taken to its minimalist end. Despite the best efforts of Mr. I'm-drunk-and-I-want-a-go-on-the-mic (there's always one), nothing distracts the band from charging through songs that lurch from MC5 to Fugazi to Black Sabbath to Megadeth in seconds. The band are a logical conclusion, like The Kabinboy, or Pole, or free improvisation, or total nuclear war. And it is demented genius, so go and buy the album.
And now, the evening's musical entertainment. Or is that word justified? On previous showings, Boxes have, in fact, been pretty unentertaining. Your erstwhile scribe was fearing another so-so mess-along interspersed with in-jokes and general arsing around. But no! Not this time. Maybe because they decided not to talk to any friends in the crowd, or maybe because of some other cosmic interference, Boxes were tight and focused and clattered through a rake of songs that might have caused the average observer to think to themselves, "hmm, owing a debt, as they do, to Shellac and Gang of Four, these Boxes fellows have actually started to work towards a definable sound". They finished with "Walking Song", which always gets inside your head and has you humming it to yourself for days afterwards, mainly because, well, it only has one lyric. Not exactly easy to review, but easy to sing, I suppose.
Snail Racing, however, are perhaps prone to being too easily reviewed. The set-up is 3 bass players and a drummer doing layered noodling, and so the names of certain bands could very easily get bandied about. Well, it's not quite as simple as that. Let's get the terms out of the way first of all. They are "post-rock", although the term has become so debased as to be meaningless. (Allow me a digression: the problem with this easy pigeonholing is that once people start getting bored with what they think "post-rock" is, the bands who have been labelled and branded as such, but who are actually doing new and interesting things, get discarded. After all, why should anyone listen to Snail Racing when minds have already been made up - simply from hearing what instruments are played - that they're, y'know, a bit "post-rock".) Comparisons are dangerous in this sort of music, simply because the standard ones are so easily given; you know who. However, in order to give some idea of what was going on, I would invite the esteemed reader's attention to the works of both Ganger and (to a lesser degree) June of 44. Some of the music was purely instrumental, but the nail was hit on the proverbial head when the band were trading vocal lines over the shifting bass patterns, when the whole package became so much more than the sum of its parts.
Giveamanakick are about as different as you can get, musically, from Snail Racing. However, we essentially have exactly the same problem when it comes to describing them, in that there is an obvious but misleading comparison.
Giveamanakick are a two-piece with drums and guitar doing noisy songs. Ring any bells? (Specifically red-and-white-coloured brother-and-sister bells?) Yes, well, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. What we get is a reinvention of punk and hardcore from about 1970 to the present taken to its minimalist end. Despite the best efforts of Mr. I'm-drunk-and-I-want-a-go-on-the-mic (there's always one), nothing distracts the band from charging through songs that lurch from MC5 to Fugazi to Black Sabbath to Megadeth in seconds. The band are a logical conclusion, like The Kabinboy, or Pole, or free improvisation, or total nuclear war. And it is demented genius, so go and buy the album.
