Bush Hall is my new favourite venue and Stars in Battledress/The North Sea Radio Orchestra two of my new favourite bands. I wasn’t expecting either of those things when I woke up on Sunday morning feeling scared and sore and out of sorts and all that crap. I wasn’t going to leave the house; I just going to spend the rest of my life with the hood of my hoodie pulled up over my sorry head and my hands rearranging the vinyl is what it felt like. Then I got a call from a friend who wanted to hear music all the way over the other side of London.

So I went to Shepherd’s Bush, which is a place where you only go to see bands and buy your tent from the camping shop on the roundabout. It took a long, long time and I finally scampered into the warm, bright-lit foyer, late as usual, to catch the last few songs of the Larcombe brothers, Stars in Battledress, singing a sweet song that went “If you can’t sing everything, just sing anything” over a constantly shifting background of scales and studies. I could feel myself relaxing and smiling, almost tearful, and so glad I was there.

The North Sea Radio Orchestra had a choir and a conductor and hymn-book style scores; a bassoon and a nice line in pastoral minimalism. But it wasn’t like the schlocky gospel of the Polyphonic Spree or post-rock semi-classicism of Rachel’s or something. It was coming from this place where I’d like to live one of these days, when I finally say to London enough’s enough and move somewhere where all I can see are beech trees and hart’s tongue ferns. They sang settings of Yeats and Hardy and Tennyson, and when they finshed I realised I’d been holding my breath, still as a frightened frog under the Victorian chandeliers. If there was one thing I hadn’t expected when I woke up that day it was such beauty, and it was that beauty that held me warm all the way home. Maybe it was another maudlin reaction to another stupid night before; maybe it was a wake-up call. Either way, it unravelled me. I thanked my friend like it was all his doing, which it kind of was. It’s like that sometimes.

Somehow after that it got to be Wednesday. Last night I went a-mixing, getting together my psychdronenoise band’s first proper demo. On the way to my drone partner’s place we drove behind a van upon whose dirty back window someone had etched - with great care - not ‘Clean Me’, as you’d expect, but:

ACCIDENT OF PENIS

and above that, very neatly,

CUNTROCK GIANTS

We laughed so hard we almost went to Tesco’s by accident. After an early evening spent watching of Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain, with its climactic sequence involving the two leading male characters trying to ‘unite our swords! become as one!’ while being menaced by some dude in a red cloak who looked like Marilyn Manson and commanded a large red pulsating vaccuum of flame, it was almost too much. Mixing improvisations was never gonna be that easy, but after that message from the Van Of Wisdom, it sounded fine.

And Circle are playing on Friday, with Sunroof.

What more could a girl want, except maybe the Deathprod box set?

Posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2004by Frances May Morgan