]
You might not think so by the looks of me, but I'm still alive. I let myself get hopelessly behind with my updates to this site, and the spambots happily took over from me. After painstakingly removing all the random gibberish and the Viagra ads, I figured I'd unleash my inner nerd and do something about it. Hence, you are now looking at SoundsBrown version 3.0!
Following up on the smashing success of last year's "La Bamba" night, Ultra Eczema decided to host a Popcorn Night(mare) this year. The concept was as simple as it was lethal: nothing but cover versions of Gershon Kingsley's classic song "Popcorn", all night long, both on stage and in the DJ booth. The party lasted until the next morning, which for us meant non-stop "Popcorn" exposure for well over eight hours on end. A mind-altering experience if ever there was one! The party also coincided with the release of a double LP with cover versions by many of the artists who also performed at the event -- meaning that you can relive the magic any time you want in the privacy of your own home! I can't begin to describe all the live acts, but I'll go over a few of the brownest ones.
A first highlight was a dude (whose name I regrettably didn't catch) who played the tune by slapping on his own cheeks and opening and closing his mouth to control the pitch. Very skillful! Elko Blijweert also did a good version, appearing as one half of Autistic Youth. The other half was ill, so Elko had the guitar parts recorded into a loop station and complemented them with highly energetic live drumming on a floor tom and a cardboard box. Michiel from CWTAB and his homey Steven played a fun version as well, using guitar, synth and tambourine and dressed up in robes and turbans.
Another fascinating performance was the one by a large tent. "Popcorn"-inspired sounds emanated from its mystical interior, while actual popcorn spewed from an opening near the top. Equally surreal was a performance by a group of horse-headed people, who tapped the rhythm of the song on typewriters. Finally, Possessed Factory (Mauro, Jef and Jeroen on this occasion), played something really loud and fast which I couldn't quite recognize as being "Popcorn". I'm sure it must have been in there somewhere, but I was already too far gone at this point to find it. They rocked that shit pretty goddamn hard, though. So hard, in fact, that a certain very drunk person crawled up on the stage and tried to perform oral sex on Mauro, presumably as a token of gratitude for the rocking. It's always a good sign when that happens!
We admitted defeat after seeing Possessed Factory (around 5 AM if memory serves), and called it a night. We were wading up to our knees in popcorn at this point, and we also got to relive the magic the next day by picking bits of popcorn out of our various orifices. Hooray for popcorn!
Wow, I lay my head down for a quick nap and suddenly I find myself running over a month behind with my updates to this site! Please allow me to rectify the situation with the following:
Iceland's blues/folk/metal pride Mugison played an acoustic solo show at the Botanique, along with two other Icelandic acts. The first of these was some singer/songwriter kid whose name I had forgotten before he had even finished his first song. In between songs he talked a lot about his life and about his feelings, which was simply too much for a macho man like myself to handle. At one point, he told us that he was wearing a girl's shirt, which belonged to a girl that he had met at the airport and with whom he was now madly in love. He was saving up his money to buy a plane ticket to LA, so that he could go see her again. He added that he felt very relieved by this turn of events, because he had a very miserable year behind him. This made me wonder why he was miserable -- did his parents revoke his PlayStation privileges for a year because of his disappointing school results? His yapping on and on about his emotions made me want to hurl, but the audience gulped it down greedily like a pack of starved piglets at the sow's teats.
The difference between Mugison and the previous act became very obvious very quickly. Where the kid talked about his deepest feelings, Mugison talked about matters of considerable brownness. This included anecdotes about sailors masturbating to German porn as well as a story about how Mugison literally shit himself on stage once (also at the Botanique) after eating a poisonous kebab. I didn't actually know beforehand that Mugison was going to perform solo. When I did realize this, I was a bit worried that he would limit his setlist to his more intimate-sounding songs because of this. After the first song ("Go Blind"), however, he said "I'm going to play one melancholy song now, and then things can only get better after that". My fears were allayed immediately. Mugison did not shy away from his more, err, abundant work at all, thus proving that death metal grunts and acoustic guitars can go together quite nicely!
It seems that Mugison is a bit of a handyman as well. In addition to his guitar, he brought a contraption which I can only describe as, well, a contraption. It seemed to be some sort of self-made sampler or perhaps a MIDI controller (he had a laptop on the floor as well). He played one song on it, using it to trigger samples of an acoustic guitar. Interesting! It was a shame, though, that Mugison wasn't the headlining act (something I also didn't know beforehand), so he had to limit his set to about 45 minutes. On the other hand, it meant that I didn't have to sit through the third act's entire set, which saved me considerable grief!
Having thoroughly enjoyed their passage at CC De Mol, I went to check out the Crab Four a second time at De Singer. The setlist was identical to that of the week before, so there were few surprises. The venue has a more informal feel than De Mol, though, which translated itself into a more abundant audience. One of these abundant people hadn't entirely grasped the concept of the show, however: he walked up to the stage just as the guys were starting "Good Night" and asked them if they could play "When I'm Sixty-Four". Wrong album, dude!
Because of the smaller venue, I was also able to get a closer look at the laptops on the stage -- as I mentioned in my previous post, I was curious as to why they needed three of them. I know now that the two that have the screens facing the audience are one Mac and one Windows PC, but that both of them are running Propellerheads Reason. This means that Auto-Tune must be running on the one not facing the crowd, which I guess was actually to be expected. Make sure to tune in again next week, when we'll reveal the well-kept secret behind Stoffel's seemingly impeccable sense of rhythm and explain the real reason why Sjoerd uses Helder's guitar during "Julia"!
Last Saturday, CC De Mol in Lier hosted the world premiere of the Crab Four's new tour. For those not yet in the know, the Crab Four are a quintet (cheeky bastards!), consisting of Pascal 'John' Deweze, Helder 'Paul' Deploige, Sjoerd 'Sjors' Bruyl, Stoffel 'Ringo' Verlackt and newcomer Arne 'Yoko' Leurentop. Arne was a complete stranger to me before this gig, but no doubt he will soon be propelled into superstardom and gain the admiration of fans worldwide, just like the real Yoko! Stoffel replaces former drummer Gino 'Ringo' Geudens, who is missing and presumed exploded. If you've seen him, please contact your local police.
Where previous Crab Four shows focused more on the older Beatles repertoire, this tour sees the band performing the fabled "white album" integrally. Despite its name, the white album is a dark brown behemoth with no less than thirty songs, spanning a bewildering array of chocolatey flavors ranging from syrupy ballads to heavy rock 'n roll and everything in between. Covering this album is a bold undertaking -- one that could easily turn into sacrilege -- but the guys pulled it off beautifully. They had to drag in a truckload of gear to do it, but each song was lovingly reproduced with the appropriate guitar sounds, the right backing vocals, the works! The band also treated us to some things we don't often get to see, such as Sjoerd on mandolin, Pascal on piano and even accordion, or Stoffel on lead vocals. I'm curious about why they needed no less than three laptops on the stage, though. Maybe just one isn't powerful enough to run Auto-Tune for five people simultaneously?
One of the poopier moments of the gig was the carefully orchestrated rendition of "Revolution 9". This prompted a few of the more conservative members of the audience to walk out, unimpressed by how faithfully the band managed to reproduce this epic song and probably thinking to themselves that the real Beatles would never have made such a ghastly racket. These people missed the finale of the show, an excellent a capella rendition of "Good Night", and it serves them right. There's a very real chance that I'll never get to see the real Beatles perform these songs, but this was a worthy substitute.
The Strumpets have officially released their eagerly anticipated debut album on Jezus Factory, and to celebrate this historical event the band played a gig at Vertigo last week. You don't become the saviours of pop music by milking your own work until it's dry, though. Hence, their eyes set firmly on the future, the guys played a set that contained more new material than songs off the album. They also did not offer copies of the album on sale. As for the gig itself, the band sounded as brown as ever. Miguel even brought his Moog for that little extra dash of chocolate flavour on one of the songs. Finer pop music is not to be enjoyed anywhere in the Cartesian coordinate space!
Channel Zero are back, and how! They're proving to be a god damn money machine: metalheads go in on one side, and cash comes out on the other. You probably know that they managed to sell out the AB six times; if you weren't there you might not know that the AB also sold commemorative Channel Zero bar coins, and that the merch booth accepted credit cards. If this were most other bands, I would be appalled at their unashamed efforts to milk me for all I've got. The thing, however, is this: the show rocked harder than a boat sailed by a blind, three-legged elephant.
The band's line-up was 25% different from what it used to be: original guitarist Xavier Carion developed an ear trauma and had to be replaced by Mikey Doling (of Soulfly fame). The setlist focused mostly on the albums "Unsafe" and "Black Fuel", starting with "Black Fuel" itself and ending with "Man On The Edge". They also played a few songs off the older albums, including "No Light (At The End Of Their Tunnel)". For these songs, the band were joined by Marcel Coenen on lead guitar. Before this gig Marcel was a complete stranger to me, but hot damn. As of know he shall be known as The Marcel From Hell!
The show was almost flawless from start to finish, with the exception of a long awkward silence before "Help" and the inclusion of their new song, "Black Flowers", which is nowhere near as awesome as the old stuff. Mikey is going to have to crank out with some better riffs (or take lessons from the Marcel) if the band wants to continue on their current level of brownness. Let's hope they're up to the challenge!
We travelled into foreign lands last Friday to see Om perform at 013. Upon our arrival, we witnessed a strange creature sitting on the stage. It had brown skin, was covered in irregular patches of long, bristly hair, and its larynx cast forth noises reminiscent of a fakir flute. The creature later also joined Om on the stage, to play tambourine as well as the occasional guitar and keyboard.
Om's set took place in a very relaxed atmosphere -- so much so, in fact, that it could be mistaken for complete disinterest from both the band and the audience. The band called it quits after no more than 40 minutes or so, and were given only a very brief applause. Then followed a few minutes of silence, which I guess was the time it took for the Dutch potheads to realize that the show was over, and only then came a proper round of applause prompting the band to come back for an encore. Despite the peculiar atmosphere and the fact that the hairy beast was the only member of the band that had any stage presence at all, however, I found the show to be well-played and perfectly enjoyable. A good thing, hence, that the encore was almost as long as the main part of the show!