Music / UK

Kosmiche 19/11/06

04:08 / 21.11.2006
David Barrington
London

It were a cold night in Elephant & Castle, but the trek was worth it as the excellent Kosmiche club had squeezed itself into Corsica Studios again.

Stumbling past the James Chance wannabies and Russell Brand lookalikes, we were confronted by the first band, Hunting Lodge. The formula was, shouted nonsense, noise, and a hairy drummer wearing only Captain America pants. During their brilliantly chaotic set they gleefully re-arranged the rubik's cube of rock into new patterns, chucked it against a wall and then set fire to it.

Frenchman Mr.Duracell was releasing his full-on hyper-kinectic drum force next door. A cunning setup of drumkit triggered 8-bit cover versions of old Commodore 64 game music rendered on laptop. This guy could play, no questions. So entertaining that there was a danger of a smile falling off someone's face as he got deeper into his set, hi score!

Next up were The Early Years, whose space-rock persuaded my mind to drift out of the room and float down the road.

On it's return I found myself now somewhat drunk and precariously standing on a sofa as we witnessed Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. Absolute masters of repetition and abandoning any conventional build-chorus-verse-chorus structures, they slowly tuned their sound to the inner frequency of the universe and let it speak through them. I really can't recall which songs they did play, but I'm sure their classic Pink Lady Lemonade was in there somewhere. After what seemed like two hours and maybe only four songs that only dragged a little towards the end (note: alcohol is the incorrect choice here), the guitarist introduced his guitar to the floor and then threw the remains into members of the comatose but adoring audience. Peace.