Blunt Razors: October 2010

Its a freezing Tuesday night in October so it's no wonder that only twenty or so people turn up to sit, stand or even sleep their way through the Brummie, Quebec and Genoan sonic melodies on showcase. The almost exclusively male and check shirted crowd are pretty quiet, some are lounging around on the settees as if they were at home watching TV, some are propping up the bar deep in contemplation. I'm guessing it must have been a hard day at the office, there's no pogoing here tonight.

I catch the end of Arc Vel set, it's all 2001 A Space Oddysey style visuals, pretty sounding looped guitar licks and melodica created drones, it's nice stuff. Warm, appealing and a great introduction for the acts following.

After a short break and a bit of head scratching and fiddling of wires and messing about with DVDs Millimetrik introduces himself and thanks everyone for coming before launching into his set which incorporates Autechre/Aphex style skewed beats, skweee noises, wobbly dubstep basslines and even the occasional vocal. Millimetrik is quite hyperactive and managed to break his visuals by jumping round and thumping the table so much that DVD player gave up the ghost.

Sometimes going to electronic gigs can make feel like you are watching somebody working out sales projections on a excel spreadsheet while the stereo is turned on rather loud. Not so with Port-Royal, I think I can quite safely say that they turned up with some of the best visuals I have ever seen, cinematic, it felt like a watching a film rather than watching a gig.

Port-Royal have some great song titles, my favourite being "The Balding Generation (Losing Our Hope As We Lose Our Hair)" not that it is all great visuals and titles and no substance, their music is spot on too, that track for instance starts off as a slowly shifting soundscape before the arpeggiators slowly build up and then drums kick loose and it turns into a full on banger.

There's also some crowd interaction through the use of typed on screen messages, not sure what these were all about, slightly bonkers broken english. "We used to say we were scared to dance, no we say we will die quietly" or something like that (maybe I should make notes, ha). There was a bit of a false ending, not really an encore, some visuals of St Petersburg, some grey looking countryside and an abrupt finish.

Great music from all three acts, shame there wasn't more people attending, hopefully Millimetrik and Port-Royal wont be put off by it being quiet on a Tuesday night and will come back and play here again.

Oh and I got free CD which is always good. And a good free CD it is too.

http://www.port-royal.it
http://www.millimetrik.net/
http://www.myspace.com/arcvel

Colour Presents Arc Vel, Millimetrik and Port-Royal - A Review

Here's Some Amniotic Music.