Live Reviews: Remote Viewing Workshop #9

The Boom Boom Room, Dublin28 January 2006The Remote Viewing Workshops are a series of monthly nights organised by Wire Horizon, a Dublin-based collective of musicians and promoters (www.wirehorizon.com). They take place in the Boom Boom Room, one of the better...

The Boom Boom Room, Dublin
28 January 2006

The Remote Viewing Workshops are a series of monthly nights organised by Wire Horizon, a Dublin-based collective of musicians and promoters (www.wirehorizon.com). They take place in the Boom Boom Room, one of the better small venues in town. Each session of the RVW consists of four or five acts, representing a wide range of styles and accessibility. This night’s meeting was no exception.

First on the bill was The Spook of the 13th Lock. They’re something of a spinoff band of The Holy Ghost Fathers, a long-running local alt. country group. However, whereas that band takes most of its cues from Americana, the Spooks get a lot of their sound from traditional Irish music – call them alt. gaelic, perhaps. Throw in a little bit of Wilco-type experimentalism (eerie vocal loops, banjo feedback and the like) and you get a promising new band worth checking out.

Next was indie-pop quartet Groom. Unfortunately, they were pretty bad. Despite occasional moments of Beatlesque catchiness, most of their songs were nearly tune-free, with lyrics that tried hard to be clever but were mostly just forced (‘Most of my best friends are atheists. Some of them are scientists, too.’). Although singer Michael Stevens got points for enthusiasm, his yelping vocals weren’t particularly endearing. File under ‘needs work’.

Laptop duo Lakker then came on. I’ve long been of the opinion that they’re one of the best electronic acts in Ireland, and this night, they didn’t disappoint, at least not musically. They began with lovely, drifting ambient and then shifted into their characteristic fractured time-signatures, squalls of noise, weird sampled strings and clattering beats (think of the London Symphony Orchestra being thrown down a stairwell and you’ll get the general picture). But even though the two were in top form, the audience were having none of it; apart from occasional polite applause, Lakker met with total indifference.

And when Hoovers & Sledgehammers came on, it became clear why; most of the audience had obviously come to see them. And they were excellent: piss-taking, name-dropping, sarcastic, utterly Irish and very, very funny. The bass-and-drum duo may have been pretty shambolic, but their who-gives-a-shit attitude and smart, absurdist lyrics (‘Wasps are the neo-Nazis of the insect world’) were of a piece with those of British indie-rock parodists Half Man Half Biscuit. It was obvious that most of the people there were fans – they certainly knew all the words to the songs.

They also left right afterwards, meaning that the final act, LMD64, played his high-cheese house music to a nearly-empty venue until he was shut off less than 10 minutes later. So a rather abrupt ending to a night that, even if it hadn’t been the best RVW I’ve been to, still had its fair share of high points. If you’re into musical diversity with a minimum of pretence, these nights are highly recommended.

Published on 1 March 2006

Paul Watts is a DJ, promoter and radio host. He lectures in theoretical physics at UCD.

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