Litmus and Darxtar - The Bull and Gate 17.06.2010

[Colin Allen]

As ever, I have to chip in with one or two corrections:).
 
The Litmus setlist was:
 
Dreams of Space
Spark
Red Skies
Kings of Infinite Space
Earthbound
Slaughterbahn
Under the Sign
Static
Infinity Drive/Evil/Infinity Drive
 
However, my major correction has to do with the use of the term "ladies of the lights"; Lauren may be a lady but I am definitely not:).
 
Thanks for the review Jon and I hope that all went well with your other important event.
 
Colin
 
 
--- On Mon, 21/6/10, Jonathan Jarrett <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:


From: Jonathan Jarrett <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK>
Subject: Re: Litmus and Darxtar - The Bull and Gate 17.06.2010
To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET
Date: Monday, 21 June, 2010, 14:43


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
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