Starting the day with a live podcast is undoubtedly a great experience and when it features Stuart Braithwaite from tonight’s headliners Mogwai, life doesn’t get much better. Talking about his new book Spaceships Over Glasgow while regaling us with some of the best stories modern music has to offer. Yet, it is also a treatise on the human condition and the healing, transformative nature of music and that makes me want to pick up a copy of Spaceships Over Glasgow right away, and I suggest you do to.
Getting my fourth day on the grounds of ArcTanGent off to a supremely heavy start are Bristol-via-London band Torpor. A walk through dark and desolate corridors, this trio create a feeling of something so vast it can barely be comprehended. It’s an ocean stretching as far as the eye can see, a nowhere ending sky, or the sensation of being dwarfed by monolithic, brutalist architecture. Yet, they are a combo who understand musical dynamics and introduce light for shade and quiet to temper the loud. Of course, this only serves to make the heavy sections…heavier, and while “earth quaking” might be an over used term when it comes to doomsters, in the case of TORPOR it’s perfectly apt. Heady (and heavy) stuff.
All attired in blood red robes and cutting the figure of modern day druids or cult figures (maybe from the Church Of Satan), Codex Serafini make for an intriguing proposition. Musically too, the band are arresting, with the vocalist in particular delivering a powerful performance with a voice that rings out strong and true and fills the entire tent. It’s an otherworldly type of show; imagine Hawkwind performing at a free festival (after imbibing mescaline) and you’d have the spaced-out sound that Codex Serafini peddle. It’s kind of unforgettable, but aren’t all the best bands?
For someone like myself who goes big on reading facial expressions, I find bands who hide behind masks both intriguing and daunting in equal measure. The golden masks which BRIQUEVILLE sport betray no emotion and that makes their set something of a riddle, but one I enjoy unpicking nonetheless. Their brand of instrumental post-rock is very expressive and their guitars speak in a way that vocals never could. However, the band make good use of samples and the Arabic call-to-prayers and death metal grunts fill the tent and attract the crowd like filings to a magnet. Enigmatic, that’s BRIQUEVILLE.
One of the best things about ArcTanGent is the way that the bands have been curated; this isn’t just a bunch of groups thrown together, rather they flow into each other exceptionally well. Not just on the individual stages, but throughout the whole site and over on the Yohkai Stage, Sunnata make the perfect foil for BRIQUEVILLE; space rock is what play, only it’s a nightmare in deep space, kind of like Ozric Tentacles on bad LSD, they deliver distinctly Eastern-flavoured beat, and they’re a quartet who really know their stuff and take their time in sculpting sound in new and exciting ways.
Love Sex Machine; sounds good, doesn’t it? In fact, I was initially tempted into watching this band purely on the strength of that moniker, yet this crew sound like nothing I expected (which is a good thing). They deal in a brutal brand of music, while some choice samples add to an already atmospheric sound. In opposition to their hedonistic name, a Love Sex Machine gig makes for a deep and meaningful experience, and one that leaves a lasting impression.
Apparently, this is only Vower’s fifth ever show, but you’d never guess. They deliver an assured performance that radiates confidence and perform like a bunch of seasoned professionals. Playing a hard-arsed emo sound, they commandeer the stage to deliver a set full of solid songs. The vocalist sings with a lot of emotion and looks genuinely humbled to be playing to a near-capacity crowd. Vower have bags of potential and they are overflowing with all sorts of promise, and that gives the impression that they’re ready to step up to the next level, and they’ll do it ease.
Spiky and angular, and with lines intersecting at strange angles, that’s the Anteros experience, and very nice it is to. While their music is challenging and channels different elements, their genius lies in bringing them together into a cohesive whole. The vocals drip with emotion; just like the music they are red raw and blistered. This is the sound of a chest ripped open and the heart exposed for all to see.
A band on a mission to warp our minds with their unorthodox rhythms, and that’s precisely what Scaler do. Danceable, but with a rock sensibility, they soon get the whole tent locked into their unique groove and get thousands of souls stomping in unison. The two keyboardists dual in the same way that guitarists often do, but it is the drummer who is the unsung hero, dictating the beat and without breaking into a sweat, he becomes the band’s backbone and ensures things never become staid. They remind me a lot of classic, inventive era of Orchestral Manoeuvrers In The Dark (albeit updated for the new millennium) and they have a similar type of futuristic vibe and could have the same kind of cultural impact (if they play their cards right).
Avant-garde, eccentric, left field; all of these tags have been thrown at Imperial Triumphant and they’re all valid, to a certain extent. Yet, this New York trio have no skin in the genre game; theirs has been a career that has deftly avoided all attempts at categorisation, and while black metal remains their beating heart they continue to shapeshift and avoid the public’s expectations. Tonight’s gig is no exception and part of the joy of an Imperial Triumphant show is never knowing where their sound will veer next and subsequently bombastic blackened sections nestle next to ambient pieces, and they co-exist quite naturally. Despite this being a black metal show, there is an air of celebration present (as evidenced by the bottle of champagne sprayed over the crowd. Who’d have though that a scene as insular as black metal would have spawned a band as inventive as Imperial Triumphant? Certainly, not me! But I’m sure glad it did. Because of the band’s image and reputation, they attract both the hardcore fan and the mildly curious, but one thing’s for sure; the band’s full on show means that no one leaves disappointed.
Self-described purveyors of “slow rock”, Outlander deliver rhythms that are totally addictive and they effortlessly sweep the crowd along with them. Hypnotic in their repetition, Outlander create a Novocaine® buzz around the listener, a cotton wool fuzz that’s so comforting in its softness before…pow!, the band shock the listener back to reality with a crashing crescendo, inserting a huge musical exclamation point into proceedings. Yet, more often than not, Outlander operate insidiously and worm their way into your subconscious and before you know it they become part of your physiology. There’s a cinematic quality to the soundscapes the band create, so don’t be surprised if you find them soundtracking a blockbuster in the near future.
Nottingham’s earthtone9 operate with the kind of schmaltz you’d expect from a band who’ve been in the game for several decades. There’s no time to waste on fancy introductions or suchlike and it’s a sense of urgency that suits the bands sound very well; the harshness of Helmet and Neurosis coupled with the textured nature of Tool makes for a winning combination, and when delivered with the band’s trademark tenacity you have an explosive affair. It’s kind of like being trapped in headlights with a huge juggernaut bearing down upon you; you know you should move out the way but you are paralysed by it’s brilliance. The singer’s mic skills are unrivalled and he leads the charge, closely followed by a band who are on the lookout for trouble. To paraphrase Iggy Pop; “when you play live, you’ve really got to stomp on it”. How? Like earthtone9, that’s how!
Having taken their name from two Black Sabbath songs, Electric Wizard are a band who wear their influences on their collective sleeve. Yet, to write the band off as mere copyists would be totally unfair because the band have definitely got their own thing going on and have taken the doom/stoner template into new realms. There will always be something eternally cool about occult imagery, retro horror such as Psychomania and bands like Black Widow, and it is to Electric Wizard’s credit that they took them and rolled them into something new. With the stage bathed in blood red light the band appear to opening track ‘Return Trip’ and they lay waste to the venue from here on in. Like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders, this is the most heaviest metal you can imagine; an ocean bearing down upon a shipwreck, the band dredge up riffs from the very depths of Dante’s Inferno and then play them through a wall of Marshall stacks. It is not a show for the weak of constitution as the band assault our eardrums with some of the most sickest sludge-based sounds and then do the same with our eyes as the band play against a backdrop of swirling psychedelia. It is a bowel-loosening and bone-shaking lesson in doom that the band dish out as they melt our skin with a relentless riff-based assault. ‘Satanic Rites Of Drugula’ is a definite highlight, and if anyone is left standing by the time we near the set’s conclusion then they are felled with closer ‘Funeralopolis’. A masterclass.
Record producer Rick Rubin once said that you can’t play anything after Slayer, and a similar thing applies to Electric Wizard. The Wizard’s sound is so strong that nothing can really top it, so this festival does what it does best and goes off on a tangent (pun intended). Only at ArcTanGent could have the spaced out sounds of Mogwai follow the heavy metal attack of Electric Wizard…and that is precisely why people love this festival so much. Formed in Glasgow in 1995, Mogwai came onto most people’s radar via their debut album Mogwai Young Team, and since then the band have carved their own furrow, all the while expanding and refining their sound, reaching a peak with latest long player As The Love Continues. It’s a track from that album which opens proceedings in the shape of ‘To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth’, a track which proves that the band have lost none of their chutzpah and they set about casting their spell over Fernhill Farm. The greatest thing about instrumental music is being able to infer your own meaning, and Mogwai’s songs provide plenty of scope for that. It makes for a more collaborative, interactive experience and it is this what keeps the crowd engaged as the band take the crowd on a wild journey that visits deep (and as yet) unexplored parts of their psyche. This constant engagement takes a fair amount of energy and as the band bring us back down to Earth with closing salvo ‘We’re No Here’, many present look spent (but in the best possible way) yet they still find the energy to give the band the ovation they so thoroughly deserve.
As the final chords ring in my ears, my thoughts immediately turn towards buying tickets for next year, you’d be mad not to.
Mogwai Set List:
- To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth
- I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
- Kids Will Be Skeletons
- Rano Pano
- Hunted By A Freak
- Ritchie Sacramento
- Ex-Cowboy
- Drive The Nail
- Every Country’s Son
- How To Be A werewolf
- Like Herod
- Old Poisons
- Remurdered
- We’re No Here
