Invisible Records "Lowest of the Low" tour
Thursday 3/12/98, Cain's Ballroom Tulsa, OK
review written - 3/13/98Good show, not great. The idea looked really good on paper and screen, but it just didn't translate well to stage imo (at least, not yet). The show *was* an endurance test, and wasn't quite as seamless as I'd hoped. The sets were short, but, for $15 ... it's one hell of a deal, so I'll stop bitching (for now) ...
Not Breathing started things off about 7:45. They set up for about half and hour ... and they played maybe 10 minutes. Yep, that's right ... about 10 minutes. Obviously there were some technical difficulties and I think the show started later than intended. NB was David Wright and Drew Fitzgerald. Dave spent most of the set investigating the connections of his rack of gear. What NB did play was very cool though, I didn't recognize it, might be something off the new one (which I haven't had a chance to listen to yet) ...
Each band had their own backing video projected onto white panels behind them. In between bands (they switched out pretty quickly, about 10-15 minutes), they would show/play various songs and videos by Invisible artists, such as Sheep on Drugs, Phylr, etc. The big one was the preview of Ogre/Atkins new project "Ritalin". They played 1 song 2 or 3 times between bands ... and it's very cool. Imagine Pigface's "Asphole" had rough sex with a Sheep on Drugs song which produced a bastard son that has all of the characteristics of Ogre's vox, Atkin's drumming and Lee Fraser's (Bagman, SoD) dnb programming ...
Next up was Bagman. Great set. Probably about 30 minutes. Lee looks quite different now, gone is the long black hair now replace with short-ish, scruffy-ish pink hair. The downside to this set was the guest vocalist / dancer. Apparently it was this guy's job to fire up the crowd, which he did for about the first minute of the set, then he was out of moves and out of things to say. So, he spent the rest of the set yelling stupid shit like "yo yo yo" and "wave your arms in the air" while trying to bust the occasional dance move (was way too winded though). Great set though, really good stuff unfortunately tainted by god-awful hip hop wannabe garbage. Loose the homey and this set will be much more entertaining ...
Next up, FM Einheit. Also probably about 30 minutes. FM played a rack of gear and a steel coil, about 4 ft long, hanging from the ceiling over the stage. FM would scrape and bang the coil, which created some rather interesting sounds. He was joined on stage by two young people, 1 girl who sang occasional melodic harmonies and various bird-like sounds, and 1 guy who did occasional beatboxing and miscellaneous sounds. The set had a fairly tribal feel/sound to it, and pleased me and most of the crowd ...
Next, Dead Voices on Air. Mark Spybey and a female (Elain Spybey?) It was a fairly typical DVOA set, Mark behind a rack of gear and small mixer, where he played a small stringed stick like instrument, a tape recorder, a New Years Eve type noise maker and did vocals. They did 4 pieces I believe, 3 of which were of the more ambient (beatless) variety. I recognized 1, he plays it quite often and I think it's on the first Drug Test compilation as well. The highlight of the DVOA set a very nice dnb version of Download's "Base Metal". Similar to the original, but with many more bass and snare fills. Very nice. This set had a few feedback and low volume glitches here and there, but otherwise was quite good. Side note - a big "fuck you" from me to all of the Tulsa assholes who yelled shit like "you suck" during DVOA's set ...
And finally (and man was I tired by this point) ... Pigface. I think their set began about 9:50 and went to about 12:20. Their set started with a 5 to 10 minute video ... kind of a Pigface documentary with various footage from the Glitch and Son of a Glitch videos (a warning to you GPO haters ... the first several minutes of this intro will scare the shit out of you!) This show is the 5th time I've seen Pigface, and I must honestly say that it was the most disappointing. It wasn't that the show was bad, just not as good as the others I've seen. There were occasional missed cues by vocalists, and at times the instrumentation became a mushy wall of sound. I think my biggest problem was the lineup. They just didn't mesh too well (not yet at least, 1st show). Jared from Chemlab just plain sucks. The man doesn't sing ... he screams over the music. Meg Lee Chin I like most of the time, but she can by annoying at times too. The rest of the band: Martin on drums, another guy on drums (from Test Dept?), another guy on percusion (for a few songs), a guy on cello, Curse Macky (Evil Mothers) on vocals and keyboards, Charles Levi on bass and Bob Dog (?) on guitar. I'm sure they'll sound better with a few more shows under the belt. The set was essentially a "greatest hits" (sans "Suck"), most of which I've seen Pigface do before in the same manner. I only remember two songs from the new album, "Kiss King" and "Nutopia", and the intro track was used as well. Other songs played: "7 Words", "Chikasaw", "Ten Ground and Down", "Murder Inc", "Asphole" (this was really bad), "Divebomber" (this was really good), "Autohag", and with about a dozen members of the crowd on stage (most of whom didn't seem too familiar with the songs or any instruments) "Hips, Tits, Lips, Power", "Fuck it Up" and various jams/improvs/etc. Nice long set, but a bit too drab and straightforward for me (not enough variations on the songs, they pretty much played the exact same versions as they did on the "notes" tour ...) Levi, Bob Dog and the drummers do know how to lock into one hell of a solid groove though ...
So, all in all I'm glad I went ... but be forewarned: be well rested for this thing and prepared to take in a lot of music. I drove 3 hours to see this and 3 hours back right after, so I wasn't in the best of shape for such an outing. The potential for all sorts of interesting collaborations was completely ignored ... no one from the earlier sets joined one another's sets or Pigface. The Pigface set was so straight forward that I wondered to myself if I was actually watching Pigface or a cover band who does the same versions of the same songs tour after tour. This show had such great potential for experimentation, like the '95 K.C. "notes" show with Caspar Brotzman and the '93 Chicago Metro "fook" show with Genesis P-Orridge ... these shows had an experimental spark to them that this show was lacking. There was nothing particularly memorable about this show. I greatly appreciate what Invisible is doing for us though. 5 or 6 bands for $15 is incredible. The videos, sound system, merchandise selection, etc is icing on the cake. Getting all these people together and moving them and all the gear all over the country for a solid month is an awesome undertaking ...
Merchandise: 4 t-shirts ($15 apiece, free Drug Test 3 compilation with a t-shirt purchase): 1 Pigface ("Asshole" on back), 1 FM Einheit, 1 Invisible Records ... and the other I forget now. Cds ($12 apiece for all): Not Breathing "Starry Wisdom", Scorn "Zander" and "Whine", Bagman "Wrap", Ammer/Einheit "Radio Inferno", FM Einhiet "Sensation Death", Dead Voices on Air vs. Not Breathing "A Fire in Bronx Zoo" and a few others I can't remember now. Pigface logo stickers for $1 apiece ...