OFF: Colour Haze & Los Natas; Euro dates incl. UK

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 07:50:13AM -0700, Keith Henderson typed out:

> Hey Folks...a couple excellent stoner/psych bands making the rounds
> soon, Colour Haze from Munich and Los Natas from Argentina.  Check 'em
> out if you're in the area.

        <snip>

> Colour Haze

        <snip>

> Fr. 30.9. - UK, Brighton, The Freebut with Josiah + Gorilla

        I missed this, sadly, though I was in town at the time, I arrived
too late to catch Gorilla and only had one contact lens and just didn't think
I'd get a d gig experience out of what was left. But...

        <snip>

> Los Natas

        <snip>

> Fr. 21.10. UK - London, Southern K + The Bendal Interlude + Jecano

        <snip>

        I did make it to that. It's OFF of course but I thought a short
review probably wouldn't annoy people too much. Except maybe Trev :-)

        Actually getting to the gig was a bit of a voyage. It's some way
from any of its nearest tube stations in London terms, and when I got to
the Southern K I found someone putting up posters saying the gig had been
moved. A double-booking, I was told, but anyway that meant another five
minutes hoofing it down the road to The Prince of Wales where a tiny
unsoundproofed function room lay bare and empty and I wondered whether I'd
come to the wrong place until I went outside and found Jecano's drummer,
whom I know slightly, unloading his kit from the van. Quite what had
happened here I never found out, but apparently the Southern K management
had turfed out the three bands, some time after they'd unloaded, with ten
minutes' notice, and thankfully the Prince of Wales had been willing to
pick up the gig. Why the Southern K were acting like that I don't
know; one of the band members told me it was because they'd seen someone
from one of the bands rolling a joint. Complete mess anyway, and the
promoters were, um, charmingly amateur, and didn't handle setting up at
the other end very well. So it was late starting, and we all had to be
careful not to spill beer on the carpets, and the bands not to make too
much noise, as no warning had been given to the neighbours...

        Maybe it was shared adversity then, but it was rather a good
little gig. First band on were The Bendal Interlude, whose very short set
took me by complete surprise. They did eight songs I think, but none over
three minutes. Authentic stoner riffs  so on, and even some jamming, but
much faster than anyone would have expected, so that the first point of
comparison I could think of was Lawnmower Deth. A friend of mine hearing
the demo later opined that they owe an awful lot to Iron Monkey, and I
have to admit the truth of this, though it pains me because I thought Iron
Monkey were very bad. Even here though much faster. Vocalist did his
thing, which was quite cookie-monster doom style, through a variety of
echo effects controlled by a portable mix desk. Their drummer was all over
the kit, moving from pattern to pattern with enviable speed, especially
that given his hair he probably couldn't see the kit at all. Guitarist was
*just right*; flanger and delay perfectly arranged, never too far over the
top, always just where you'd want him, and the bass player was lively and
accurate, so all in all they came over very well, lots of crunch and
bounce and I bought their EP. They're from Liverpool and deserve gigs.

        Support, and the main reason Sherman and I were there in some
ways, were Jecano, a Slough-based stoner outfit whom we've always
violently disagreed on. We agree that their drummer is brilliant, full of
snap and zing and such words and rivalling only, well, Richard Chadwick
I'd say, for managing to keep time perfectly while doing that much inside
it. We also agree that they lack actual songs these days and mostly have
unfinished jams instead. We disagree as to whether they ever *had* decent
songs--I say they didn't, she says they did--and I get very irritated
indeed by the guitarist and singer, whom she mostly ignores. He was
singing a lot better this time, I thought, in as much as his throaty
scream of a voice was actually mostly hitting the notes as it slid towards
and away from them, but his guitar was as irritating as ever. It's not
that he's a bad player, anything but, but he shoves so much distortion on
it that every note has a feedback rumble hanging off it that robs him of
any attack, and makes his impact too soft; it's like being hit with a
rubber brick when it could be a baseball bat. If you see what I mean. I
saw them once with him playing through someone else's amp and you could
hear what he was doing as well as see it, it was much better. Oh well.

        Anyway, they came on, they jammed for three numbers and they went
off, and that was still probably a thirty-five minute set. The jamming is
good, if very conventional blues style, and the heaviness is inarguable as
is the excellent drumming but it's an act that's going nowhere and in my
opinion at least never really went anywhere before. Something of a
let-down after The Bendal Interlude.

        I didn't really know what to expect from Los Natas, because all I
really knew was that a stoner-rock mailing list I'd used to be on had
thought they were great, which could mean that they were a new Kyuss, or
Pantera, or anything in between. In fact the former of those had more to
do with their sound. They were more basic and raw than Kyuss, but their
general vibe was very much that of the closing parts of _Welcome to Sky
Valley_. It wasn't that their songs were like `Space Cadet' or even
`Whitewater' but that same sense of desert space and mournfulness pervaded
it. Their actual *sound* was probably more like really early Sabbath but
the place they were taking it through was very different. I don't think
there were any standout numbers; I do remember that the first one seemed
to be a suite and they didn't like stopping between numbers anyway, but
the general effect was a very soulful trip especially in a tiny space like
that, and I was very glad to have seen them. The album Sherman bought
(which they also had on vinyl, and if I'd had any money left I'd have got
a copy of that just to have that artwork full-size) turns out to be much
heavier and low-end and less jammed-out, with the vocals more metallic,
and it's quite odd because I wouldn't necessarily have thought these were
the same band if you'd played me that and a live recording. I suppose
it'll be a while before they're back in the UK, but if they turn up where
you are I'd recommend turning out to see what it seems you can't really
get any other way. Yours,
                          Jon

ObCD: Gong - _Camembert Electrique_
--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)