OFF: Litmus/Obiat/The Inbreds/The Atomic Bitchwax @ Camden Underworld, 19th May 2005

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  review I wrote for elsewhere as usual, but I thought
people might be interested.

        "Litmus were supposedly on stage at seven. This as ever was
a lie, but by the time they did take the stage at seven forty there
weren't many people at all in, and this sadly was to be the theme of the
night even with The Bitchwax playing, who did at least have some small
celebrity connection even if as it seems he (Monster Magnet's lead
guitarist) has now left the band.

        "Anyway. Litmus were not great. A great deal of this down to the
kit and the mix; Marek hits the drums pretty hard but had real trouble
getting the borrowed kit he was on to sound anything other than
plastic; the whole low-end was rather down in the mix so Simon's guitar
sounded weirdly sharp and Martin's bass sadly distant; and Andy's organ
couldn't be heard at all except apparently by him. That left only the
sequencers and synths up at full whack, although Simon's guitar shredded
through that. Mid-range thus very full, bottom end indistinct. That said,
I'm sure Simon was out of tune, Andy didn't seem to be listening properly
either and kept discording, and Martin and Simon seemed to be in different
vehicles somehow, attempting to guide the songs by satellite link-up even
though they were often staring fixedly at each others' strings. Last
couple of times I've seen them they've not had the solid groove they used
to throw out at immense pace; this set fairly crackled pace and punk noise
with synth backdrop, but rather failed to be actually musical a lot of
the time. Also, only four songs, and one of them (only one, but
still) under three minutes. Everyone on short sets except the headliners,
but I hope I never see Litmus play a shorter or a worse one than that.

        "Second on were Obiat, who were a very different kettle of
fish. As they started I thought they were going to be just a stoner band,
albeit one with a very strong sense of rhythm. That rhythm was almost
always a slow 4/4, except for one bit where they briefly turned it into an
*extremely* slow 4/4. Also, the singer was mostly impressive for the
effects on his voice and his facial hair, and I'm sure they had extra
stuff on tape somewhere, because I detected tablas and after staring at
the drummer for some time I decided he simply wasn't doing enough unless
he also had a footboard somewhere I couldn't see it.

        "However, sod that, they were great. The first song proved
misleadingly normal, and even that was pretty unshakeably solid. The
second one added extra percussion, the singer delivered several choruses
through a megaphone and had some maracas at another point, there was a
great deal of effects on everyone's playing (perhaps even on the
drums) and it was increasingly trippy. BUT, never lost the almost-doom
menace of the rhythm, the riff always maintained somehow even when no-one
was actually on it, which is a skill I've always admired, and when the
singer started really keening into this echo-drenched mike (an odd sort,
presumably designed to pick up from far away) and generally turning his
voice into an instrument rather than a words-vehicle,  I was left going,
"Yes. Yes, I'd do that in your place except I'd never have thought of
it." The third and fourth songs (again only four in the set) were as above
but more so, more menacing, but still very very dreamy. Dreamy perhaps in
the way that a cold Scandinavian lake in a horror film might be before
something rises off the bottom of it and eats the hapless swimmers the
cameras are following across. I bought the CD from a severely-dressed
blond woman with a crew-cut who looked like she should have been Herr
Flick's opposite number in Allo' Allo' and all in all this seemed like
part of the experience. Apparently half of them are from Poland, one from
Germany and one from England--so they moved here. How they formed I'll
never know. Anyway. I very much liked them.

        "The Inbreds appeared to be the `media darlings' of the evening to
judge from the reviews they'd got in rock zines and then left on flyers
all over the place. I thought they lived up to their name personally,
there wasn't a new thing in there. A challenge to the new wave of American
heavy metal apparently. Pah. Scissorfight would kick their arses. They had
three guitars and sometimes needed two. The singer was a gurning idiot,
although reasonable at his job; it was just fronting he shouldn't have
been allowed to do. There wasn't anything wrong with it, there were some
good bits, they could all play more or less, but they're not worth seeing
for themselves IMO. One guy I was talking to said they had no `class',
which was odd but true. Thankfully short set here too.

        "The Atomic Bitchwax played for about an hour twenty, and I do
mean played that time, they hardly ever stopped between songs. They were
fabulous. New guitarist, looks a lot like the old one but shorter, not as
distinctive a voice with the instrument, but this means the rhythm
section, which needed no encouragement, stands out further. Everyone plays
lead in this band and they're all brilliant, but they still manage to make
it look like they're just having a laugh and it's not all that serious,
they're just having fun. Bass-player Chris Kosnik introduced two songs as
being extra `fun' ones and was quite right. They could play anything, so
it's good that they've gone for such agile rapid rock and roll. Set was
almost entirely off the first and new albums; if they did anything off the
second one I didn't notice it, and I don't have the third one but half of
that was off the previous two anyway. They did however do Deep Purple's
`Maybe I'm A Leo', which, it suddenly became clear, had really been their
song all along, it fits perfectly into the rest of their stuff. Kosnik
gets more weird noise out of a Fender than anyone except a couple of quite
unusual guitarists, only his is a bass. I gave up trying to dance and just
jumped round like an idiot, grinning ear-to-ear. Place was half-full if
that for one of the best performances I've ever seen down there. The
world's messed up, but I went home pretty happy.

        "In summary: Litmus--punker-than-ever loud noise spacerock--must
get better again. Obiat: Eastern European dreamy doomy stoner, top stuff,
do it more. The Inbreds: contemporary metal, please stop and let your
betters show you why. The Atomic Bitchwax: temporarily the best damn rock
and roll band on the planet, why wasn't everyone else there too eh?"

        Yours,
                Jon

ObCD: Deep Purple- _Machine Head_
--
    Jonathan Jarrett    "There is scarce any tradition or popular error
    Birkbeck College     but stands also delivered by some good author."
        London         (Sir Thomas Browne, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica", 1646)