Diskrepant, Thomas Watkiss, ?Alos & Amber Asylum - Live at Fylkingen 29/10-10

I didn't acutally think about going to this show until the afternoon yesterday. When I saw the promotion for it a month ago or so, I thought to myself that I should go to that one since Stefania Pedretti of OvO was performing with her soloproject.
But I hadn't slept for two nights because my daughter's been ill, so I wasn't that eager to leave home.
I checked the event invite I got on facebook and saw that it was between 19-22 so, I thought to myself, ?Alos (Stefanias project) would probably be pretty early on the evening, and since it's only 3 hours maybe I'll be home by nine or so again.
I visited ?Alos myspace and listened to two tracks, I was impressed but not really convinced that I should go. It wasn't until I saw this video that it was clear that I needed to attend this evening:



When I got there and paid the entrance, I asked at which times the acts were playing, and I was informed that ?Alos wasn't going on stage until ten, the earliest.

I walked over to the merch stand, gazed over the ?Alos CD's and other Stefania-related releases, I asked her if the song that she performed in the video above was on any CD and she told me that it wasn't yet, it will be on her coming CD, but she was going to perform that song live this evening.

Diskrepant
Diskrepant kicks off this evening with a very impressive performance containing contact mics and an ensemble of objects: a small fan, two bottles, necklaces and what looked like a toy car that you could wind up so it started going forward.
Might be because of the need for precision that he remained seated the entire performance, but I really dislike seated noise artists, well all artists unless they are playing piano or acoustic guitar.
I never expect to really feel the noise before I attend noise shows, but when I'm there it's so soothing just to feel that wall of sound, the vibrations from the bass in it, to try and find the notes, the pulse or the "groove" in that sheer, distorted noise. In the end it got a bit static, but all together a nice experience.
Diskrepant's myspace

Thomas Watkiss
It doesn't start well for Thomas Watkiss. First of he has a laptop on stage which, in my book, is a huge mistake. It doesn't look like he's doing anything besides turning the switches on his little mixer beside the laptop, and where's the sound he distorts and manipulates coming from? For all I know, the sound if just prerecorded, so the turning of switches could easily do nothing at all.
Another thing that strikes me is that he looks like either a neo nazi or a former boy band member, who kept his look despite the fact that it was 20 years ago that he was the cute one in that group.
After the first song, he talks a bit to the audience, makes them laugh, all in all he seems like a very likeable guy, too bad his music isn't that interesting.
Continued digital noise, which is a huge difference from analogue noise, the digital stuff lacks the depth and just feels cold a lifeless, in a bad way.
Enter the bass.
He grabs his six stringed bass and walks to the front of the "stage" area, takes a metal pose and starts playing a cheesy melody on top of the preprogrammed static noise.
But I got to give him credit for taking that metal pose in front of a seated audience, and playing with his eyes shut, really living it.
Nothing I couldn't live without, wouldn't have missed anything if I hadn't seen this.
T. Watkiss' Myspace

?Alos
Stefania enters the room, clad in a glittery dress, fishnet stockings, and a black veil. In her hands she carrys a bowl filled with some sort of liquid, and she's singing/chanting something in italian. She walks up to each member of the audience, starts with me, and holds the bowl up to our faces. None of us are sure what to do with it, so I dip my finger in it and then stroke the finger across my forehead, the rest of the people were either doing the same as me or drinking directly from the bowl.
After this little introduction, she walks to the center of the room, "stage", grabs that guitar she uses in OvO as well, which looks gigantic on her little figure, and fills the room with a crushing doom riff. I don't know if it's the reason for me liking OvO, but the simplicity in her guitarplay is so brilliant, she makes very banal and clichéd riffing sound really thought through and not cliché at all.
The first song is a very OvO-sounding piece of doom based around two riffs, with a guitar loop backing her up on some parts of the song.
I am amazed by how fucking possessed she sounds, it's really fucking evil, she crushes the majority of singers trying to sound evil, and without breaking a sweat it seems.
The second song is also a very OvO-like song, like the tracks on Croce Via, a massive doomy riff that breaks into a hysterical noisey guitar with demonic screams, or a very subtle and simple lite guitar loop over which she sings something that sounds like "sweet, so sweet".
The last song for the evening is the song from the video above, the song I asked about and she said she would perform.
She let's the feedback go with the guitar loop as she hangs off her guitar, puts on an ankle bracelet with bells, picks up more bells and she moves to the center of the room where she sheems to be in spasms, bells chiming, she chants, sings, screams, she dances, stumbles, waves her long dreads (i which she's tied in bells and tiny, tiny cymbals). She moves across the room, and moves backwards and bumps into where I'm sitting. She sits down on my lap and keeps chanting and dancing, it felt very fitting since this was the only reason for me going out tonight, what I asked her about and what I was looking forward to.
Afterwards I was shaking for about ten minutes, that final song was such a great performance, I can't even explain it.
I wanted to record a video for myself on my phone, but I had to stop in midst of it and just watch.
This was one of the most moving performances I have ever seen. I have no idea what the lyrics are, I assume they are in italian. But just how she uses her voice, the strength in it and everything was just amazing.
?Alos myspace

Amber Asylum
Hadn't heard anything before they started playing. I was texting with my drummer earlier in the evening, me trying to convince him to come. He said that he had listened to Amber Asylum on myspace and thought it was too polished.
I knew exactly what he meant when they started.
The info for this evening said that they were something between chamber music and postrock, melancholic and romantic, I was just bored.
They looked like a mother with her two daughters on tour, the mother and one of the daughters on violins (they were talented without a doubt, but you can have talent and still make boring music) and the other daughter played keyboard, guitar or piano depending on which songs.
The vocals were, as expected, in a really high voice with a lot of wailing, very pretentious and epic, but very boring.
The keyboard, guitar and piano melodies were really cliché and without real content, just not interesting. I am not in a position to talk about the violins since I never tried to play one or feel that I can judge their skills. But al together they performed pretty boring music that I'm sure a lot of people find calming and soothing to listen to, but wasn't doing anything for me.
Amber Asylum's Myspace