Litmus and Darxtar - The Bull and Gate 17.06.2010

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2010, Litmus wrote:

> 	As a warm up to this year's Sonic Rock Solstice, and as an
> alternative to something that is going on in South Africa, we would
> like to present a night of the finest British and Swedish spacerock
> featuring Litmus and Darxtar playing a double headline gig.
>
> 	This event will take place at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town,
> London on June 17th; doors open at 20:00.

 	I wasn't going to miss that, now, was I? Well, actually I nearly 
did, when the train I was heading into London on decided that its brakes 
would be best left on and left us stranded about five minutes away from 
journey's end. After forty-five minutes were inched far enough to deposit 
us at an intermediate station, and despite my best efforts, when I arrived 
Litmus were already playing. So I got beer while they started their way 
into `Kings of Infinite Space' and observed the new line-up. The new 
line-up is kind of an old line-up: synth and laptop wizard Anton and 
recently-recruited keyboardist Ollie have both gone (which is a great 
shame especially after all the time it took to find Ollie) but erstwhile 
swoosh-merchant Matt returns in their place. His contributions are not as 
schemingly complicated as Anton's, but may be a bit more musical, so the 
success of it would vary according to your taste but I thought it was 
working well, not least because the ladies of the lights were also doing 
their stuff with attention to crescendo and focal points and so on, so 
that often the electronic noise and the lights would all come together at 
particular moments of musical tension and I *really wish more people could 
do this*, it was good to see (and hear).

 	The setlist as I wrote it, what I saw, was:
Kings of Infinite Space
Earthbound
Slaughterbahn [though I want to spell it Sloterbahn, for which I blame Mike Burro]
Under the Sign
Static
Nova Drive->Evil->Nova Drive

 	Of these, all the ones you know were excellent and the insertion 
of `Evil' into `Nova Drive' incredibly brave and brilliantly carried off; 
it was easy enough to follow them on the way in but very difficult to 
imagine how they would get back *out* again to the main song, and it was 
done in a flash. Up till then I'd assumed this was improvised but, well, 
if they could pull themselves out of that on the fly like that then I am 
even more amazed by the band than I usually am.

 	The two new ones both seemed slightly different from the usual 
fare, not worse but perhaps more Krautrocky, though this may be a 
suggestion put into my head by the first title. They both made me eager to 
hear the new album, which hasn't actually been recorded yet so there is a 
problem there I'll have to deal with. Martin's vocal parts on these seemed 
to challenge his reach, though, and I wonder if some rewriting there 
wouldn't be a good idea as he was in excellent voice on the old songs, so 
I think they just aren't easy to sing. Simon's guitar seemed to have 
developed a few new tricks too, which is no bad thing as the jams can 
become a little stale if he doesn't keep adding new variations.

 	In the interim I managed briefly to chat with Søren Bengtsson of 
DarXtar, which mainly served to confirm that he is still determined never 
to re-release _Darker_ (dammit!) but also that in other respects he's a 
lovely chap, equable and polite even to slightly frothing fans he's never 
met before such as myself. The actual performance was marvellous. I have 
lived with most of these songs for more than a decade, am fond of them all 
and never expected to see them live, so I was in a transport of joy for 
much of it, as they were flawlessly done without being mere repetitions of 
the records. They are of course a much gentler, more emotional 
and slower band than Litmus, so they seemed to have a little initial 
trouble regaining the crowd's attention, but once Søren was singing that 
quickly dispersed; he puts a lot of feeling into his words and the band 
and him together slowly drew the audience into their world. Considering 
how rarely they play they were in perfect practice. (I do have to 
say, however, that the second guitarist was basically inaudible; 
his primary function may have been to swell the audience by bringing 
along several friends...) Setlist was:

(intro jam)
Voices
We Came Too Late
Blue Frozen Flame
7(½)
Tired Nature

 	The last was apparently unreleased, and I had to check its title 
from their setlist, it was perhaps more pedestrian than the rest of the 
set but then after the huge glorious mourning of `Sju' I'm not sure what 
wouldn't have seemed underwhelming. I just wish they'd had more fans 
there! The entire audience not counting band members was 13 people. Of 
those I was perhaps the only person there who knew the words and often 
the only one dancing. It was rather like they were just playing for me, 
and that may explain why they didn't do the encore that the set list 
appeared to promise. Nonetheless, I got to go away very happy with the 
performance, and I hope they got longer at Sonic Rock and more people 
because they surely deserved it. Yours all,
 					    Jon

-- 
       Jonathan Jarrett, Cambridge    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
    =======================================================================
  "With Capitalism, man exploits man.  With Socialism, it is exactly opposite"
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