Fittingly for what has been billed as the Almost Christmas Alldayer, promoters Cosmic Carnage are in suitably generous festive spirit, gift-wrapping a glut of noisy delights for less than a tenner at Cardiff’s The Moon.
If the 3pm kick-off feels a bit too early for Spünday’s off-the-wall, sampler-fuelled noise-punk (though their impressively tight rhythm section demands a mention), the timing is perfect for Cinza. The duo – affiliated with Salford’s sonic titans Gnod – negotiate their way (at times literally) through a set that starts with birdsong before sleepwalking into shoegazey thrum and understated beats. It’s like a leisurely stroll from spring sunshine in the sticks, through the suburbs and into the heart of the city at night.
Modular synth merchants Maes Y Circles scoop up the gauntlet and run away with it, their arpeggiated beat-free electronica warming the cockles as dejected rugby fans trudge past outside in the pouring rain. That they manage to induce such euphoria while steadfastly refusing to throw in a drop until almost the end is very much to their credit.
It wouldn’t be an Almost Christmas Alldayer without a bit of last-minute lineup drama, and it’s The Reflecting Skin from Leeds whose van gives up the ghost en route. Never fear, though, as Deadpop are on hand to drag us into the gutter with basslines that ooze grungy goodness. If only the songs lasted longer but I guess that’s the pop element.
Modern Technology – ironically named, given their bludgeoning primitivism – are a markedly more uncompromising bass-and-drums two-piece seemingly bidding to be the second heaviest thing on four legs, after our cat (before the vet-mandated diet). Chris Clarke grinds his headstock into both the stage and the ceiling like a man trying to tunnel his way out, and Self-Detached is presumably so-called because it describes the relationship between your ears and your head by the time it’s finished.
Asked last year about the Nailbreaker live experience, George Hammond described it as “very physical” and “confrontational”: “I just lose myself in the music and let my primal instincts take over.” He’s not wrong. Hammond never actually takes to the stage, instead rampaging around the crowd, no respecter of personal space, smacking his mic on the floor for added percussion and screaming along to aggressive digital hardcore, like Napalm Death shredded and fed through a fucked circuit board. The set is mercifully short for all concerned, but that’s by no means a criticism – in fact, quite the opposite. The guy’s got a song called Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank – I mean, C’MON.
The Reflecting Skin may not have made it, but headliners Thank are here to represent the Yorkshire capital – and, it seems, promote the virtues of the humble moustache in all its many forms. There can’t be many bands who have a Theo Gowans contributing sounds made with what looks like a fork rattling around in a metal coil, or a tattoo model drummer whose evident enthusiasm soon has a stray collar-up James May rugby dad improbably transfixed. “There’s never been a good band from London”, ventures frontman Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe on earworm-in-waiting Dread – a bold claim when Modern Technology are still in the room – but Thank’s obstreperous postpunk is more than enough to give the lie to the suggestion that “There’s never been a good band from Leeds”.
Rory Coughlan-Allen, also of Obey Cobra, provides an electronic soundtrack to the comedown, and we’re left to reflect on the fact that when Cosmic Carnage are in charge of sorting Christmas stocking fillers, there are no moldy old satsumas in sight.
Cosmic Carnage Almost Christmas Alldayer, The Moon, Cardiff, Sat 26 Nov
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos NOEL GARDNER / BEN WOOLHEAD
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