With: You Love Her Coz She’s Dead, Rolo Tomassi
Saturday 21st June 2008 @ Thekla

Freaks, with long hair and fishermen’s hats, clumped together dreadlocks, ponytails, albino complexions, old guys with ruby red pentagram hoodies and one guy dressed as white - similar to ‘the Colonel’ - come out to mix with normal folk to witness what is a tri-annual event of Japanese bands to come to Europe, Melt-Banana.

They have to get through two bands before Melt-Banana come on and You Love Her Coz She’s Dead are first on. An electro duo, armed with a bass, strobe-light and their third band member, an Apple laptop, riding high on the waves created by the splash of bands like - specifically - Crystal Castles. They make their throw-back to the 80’s clear - the guy is wearing a Dirty Dancing t-shirt, while the girl is in American Apparel clothing. Bass playing is furious and the girl vocals are refreshingly screechy, as she blurts out the lyrics in single-syllable shots. 8-bit nuggets of electro-pop which the music world has been accustomed to, with a furious playing of a monotone bass which means it all sounds good but where is the experimentation? I think they’re somewhat hurt by the early start time for what was a very short gig; however, I think they’re playing later on the Thekla soon (7th August), well worth checking out if your in for a cheeky dance.

I don’t know much about thrash/death metal; I like The Daughters, and The Locust, mainly. Rolo Tomassi are strange when compared to these bands. They have excerptions of break-neck speeds coupled with interludes that slow right down with keyboard and female vocals drawing out notes. It is a strange coupling, as a pop-underbelly of their guitar style can be heard but it does not sit all comfortably with me. They seem to try and drown out the melody by turning all their instruments up so mountains of fuzz is created and the drumming is flat and boring when compared to most other bands of this genre. I was not excited as the respectable sized mosh-pit which amassed. The yelps from the female singer was repetitive one syllables, the keyboardist came to the front and made strange vogue-like dance moves. It seems they have a target of what they should be, but in my opinion they fall short of it.

Melt-Banana from Tokyo, Japan are heavy weights when it comes to noise. Formed in 1994, they have a huge following and it crawled out from all places to see this band’s first tour of Europe in three years to form a respectful mosh-pit. They aggressively play through their set and have a more listenable approach in recent years, in that their guitar and bass has a notable pop underbelly. They assault the audience ears with crashing drums, big riffs and a tidal waves of clear sounding noise. Coincidently, they played the first song I’ve heard of this wonderful band a number of years back. It was a pleasure; the singer’s garbled style fits perfectly with this semi-abstract music. While their records may be hard to listen - in that you have to be in the right mood – their live show is a real experience. Playing one song straight after another, not waiting for cheers to stop, they briefly interrupted it by playing the shorter songs on their new album Bambi’s Dilemma, which couple together, totalled about a minute and half, to two and a half minutes of music. They played two encores, rightly so, which they covered an unrecognisable version of The Specials’ Monkey Man. It reinforced the notion that the Japanese are the leaders of making noise and anyone else who tries, just falls flat. All that I’m left to say is that if you missed this, go see Acid Mothers Temple in August on the Thekla, towing in support from a personal favourite Afrirampo to redeem yourselves.

www.a-zap.com

Pete Winnicki