HENGE | LIVE REVIEW
Nos Da, Cardiff, Sat 3 Nov
A hostel is a great place to host these sorts of things. Despite being on international match day in Cardiff, and right opposite the Principality Stadium, the smoking area was a bustle of Polish accents and drinking jokes and sex stories from Australia, a world away from the afternoon’s events and the party happening in the city.
Henge wouldn’t have done in most venues that night because they’re not of this world: alien masks and wizard robes, proggy rave keys, surf-rock guitar, dancefloor beats, their goofy sense of humour and niche appealing to me and the hundred or so others who made it just for them on a bitter night, resplendent in face paint, tinfoil and glitter. I saw them before at Balter Festival and knew which special things to expect – a guaranteed smile, and purely based on the law of averages, a consistent crowd-churner. What truly made the evening something else for me though, came just before.
Abusing my press entry by hanging out in the empty venue during soundcheck, I got talking to the opening act, I-Amethyst, and decided he was a lovely bloke and that this made him worth a look when he went on. Returning half an hour later, the room was still empty but for the promoter, two-odd drink-nursers sitting in the shadows, a girl wrapped in rainbow scarves whipping and swaying gracefully on the table tops, and I-Amethyst himself drawing a swirling electronica set from scratch. As I watched, he entered a broken tech beat, allowed it to settle, retrieved a gleaming black electric violin from his side and erupted into a melancholy folk line, looping upon itself as he played over it in flawless harmony. The scarf-laden girl dropped to her knees and spasmed with the beat and the melody, eyes closed and mouth slack in bliss.
By the time he finished at 10, a whole crowd of revellers for Henge had grown to cheer him off. He hugged the scarf-girl and disappeared, leaving the soaring feeling that it was this sort of thing in the little corners of the world that kept life interesting.
words JASON MACHLAB