Holiday Edition (16-30 April): six gig listings, six gig reports, 1 (one) piece of merch
hello,
spring is springing hard, and we’re listening and loving to the new BC;NR, and bombs are still falling on Gaza and so many other places (not „just“ places, houses, fields, forest, animals: people, people, people, people blown apart, crippled, bereft, violated), and I’m still hurting, and maybe you are too?
… I’ve been away and wanted to spend the time in different ways, so no aiming-for-comprehensive listings this fortnight. I still couldn’t resist wanting to share some things I found. But first a resource I’ve been wanting to share for quite some time:
a newsletter, directory for personal artist sites, jukebox, overall beautiful piece of internet for what seems like a really rather significant part of Vienna’s experimental/free music scene. :))
…now for a low-effort listings for some hopefully brilliant musical Easter leftovers: (be warned tho, the nepotism rate in my selection is much higher than normally owing to the circumstances ((but i’m not saying who 😈))::)
Thu 24 April (tomorrow!!) – modern to contemporary classical followed by probably really sick electronic live jams – up to 28€
Thu 24 April, too – R’n’B/Hip Hop release party – local gay music prodigy with large live band fucking finally releasing his EP, the demos were lit 1.5 years ago already 20€VVK, 25€AK
Saturday 26 April – punky queer latin dance live act release concert & party with quite the stuffed lineup – SOLD OUT but ask me I might sell my ticket for going to the gig below instead, or maybe someone else is selling theirs 🙂 (22€?)
ALSO saturday fml – Osaka based six piece fuses black metal aesthetics with the endorphin rush of peak time hard trance and gabber – pay what you can
Not musical at all but it’s my newsletter yay! next Tuesday Hauptbücherei: book presentation about protest and revolutionary? cultures in Iran, Japan, Pakistan, England – come to learn, come to stage a protest at the presentation, don’t come, join this telegram channel, what do I know what you should do! But probably something?!
Wednesday 30 April – Local Psych and dark Prog night, 15€AK – I like Great Grey Funk and yesterday’s listen of Green Coloured Sun was also intriguing if not original (but you don’t always have to be original do you!)
Same Wednesday night, sigh… – Punky extravaganza and a splendid excuse for a nostalgic trip to Schlor – hardcore, noise, post-punk, … pay what you can, donations go to abortion help funds
also I wanted to share some short reports about gigs I went to since you last read this:
Xenofox @celeste, 3 April
Missed most of the first set but they played two of quite generous lengths. It was kind of as expected, which is very good; the recording does give me more warmth (in a way similar to this record by Able Noise) than the live experience but I think the ability to emotionally connect to music is so much a function of having heard it repeatedly. Anyway quite ecstatic music iirc! I’m still intrigued by crowds of old people listening to this weird-ass music; probably an issue of my biases. They were having funny chats in the break. I think I really like celeste as a place in general…
Sahra Halgan @flucc, 4 April
Rock’n’Roll is alive and well and Black of course! It was such a nice party, she and her band were playing super nice, sick grooves, guitar + hi-hat freakouts. It was well-visited by a really mixed, joyful crowd. Sahra Halgan herself seems like a complete queen, her stage presence is dignified and joyful (whoops I said joyful again), and her backstory if you care to look it up just makes this more believable and even more of an honour to have her visit us.
Sonntag’sdisco w/ Björk Haider @flucc, 6 April
This event series seems like just the cultural institution I thought it was. You might want to be a person that enjoys a certain type of (boomer) cringe (and also antifascist!) humour but I happen to very much do. Drehli Robnik played tracks from at least the last sixty years, not clubby but very much danceable, did a proper job doing somewhat informative introductions to many songs and singing along on speakers, and didn’t even try to musically lead up to Björk Haider which played, just as promised, an industrial noise improvisation. My main issue with the set was that it wasn’t as funny (by far) as their name; otherwise I did really like it after getting into it, it wasn’t exceptionally exciting for me but I couldn’t tell how personal and situational that take is. What I can say is that it’s not the most chaotic, glitchy sort of noise that I’m probably more drawn towards.
life is beautiful @flucc, 9 April
While confessedly I did have my doubts (looking back I would rather say: difficulties to connect to the style of their playing and improvising) at first, I ended up being pretty wowed by what the London eight-people-collective did and, looking back cherish, the experience even more. They brought an ultimately joyful (but not weightless at all) happening of riffs, raps, jams, spoken word, written word, dance, together in a way that I feel like isn’t a forced or very conceptual but more a free and uncensored mixing of modes of creation and expression. In any way it was much smoother and cooler (and yet much more approachable, too) than what I’m barely managing to write about it. I guess life is beautiful.
Shovel Dance Collective @Nová Libeňská Synagoga, Prague (pictured above), & silent green Kuppelhalle, Berlin, 13&14 April
Beautiful instrumental drones, beautiful and epic folk singing, cute and friendly stage presence, and a political edge (not that their general work isn’t deeply political lol) that feels genuine and vulnerable and like they are willing to take some genuine risks. Like most of us should.
But if you have the time and luxury to do something seemingly not very risky (tho who is saying that truly facing art doesn’t demand taking risks, at least on your insides?), do make it out to Krems on 10 May to see them and other experimental and heavy and wonderful English and Welsh and Irish folk artists live! (Donaufestival!)
Chloe Ryo, Yao Bobby & Simon Grab, Slikback @flucc, 18 April
My attention and relaxation took a long time to get to nice levels so I don’t feel like I can comment on Chloe’s set other than that she seemed cool and nice and made cool sounds. Yao Bobby & Simon Grab were less noisy than expected but really sick, I love a live synth jam and if it’s a Swiss boomer nerd with a Palestine T-shirt doing it to the rapping of a angry Togolese activist guy and getting progressively more dubby with it, well what’s better than that?
Turns out: Slikback is better than that. Slikback indeed gave me the energy I didn’t feel I had anymore, they grabbed me by the attention span, and I don’t even want to describe it because I tried it before and failed. I don’t know if describing what their set was made out of can convey the powerful fuckery that happened more than describing chords can convey some of, idk, the most beautiful and poignant pieces I ever played on the harpsichord – although that’s maybe a weak point to bring up because I kinda resisted learning the theory behind the chords until the end of my education..
Anyway, speaking of T-shirts – did you click the link? did you see it’s sold out?? well when I clicked it I saw there’s just one shirt left so guess what, I bought it (XXL) and we’re going to embellish it into the first and totally unique piece of lärmletter merch to hit the city! It’s gonna cost something that’s fair-ish which is gonna be more than 55€ because that’s what I just paid for it, but maybe not much more because you’re doing your part for the culture for being a walking advertisement board for us, too. You can get it by simply being the first to tell us you want it! And you will get it by June/early July probably because we will get it somewhen in May! And you can pay now or when you get it because we trust you and you trust us!!
:*****