I caught Hot Snakes last night at the Sala Rossa - a set of just over 20 songs from all 3 albums, including a 4 song encore, delivered in a quick and clipped manner without any unnecessary stage banter or theatrics. Rick Froeberg looked a bit like an angry Stephen Wright and the place was packed, testament to the cross-genre appeal of the group, which attracted both the Franco-garage and post-hardcore crowds, but not so many females, which probably goes to prove my earlier assertion about the Hot Snakes/Drive Like Jehu pairing being to this generation what Shellac/Big Black was to the one previous.
Your favourite Bote-Noire clerk tells me that Dan Bejar (ya know, Destroyer!) is in town, possibly renting movies with his mother. Below are some random mp3s, pretty standard stuff. Russians love Nick Cave.
Sonic Youth - Victoria.mp3 (A Kinks cover, from 1988 Peel Sessions)
Echo & The Bunnymen - Bring On The Dancing Horses.mp3
Nick Cave - Red Right Hand.mp3
Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead.mp3
Christian Death - Romeo's Void.mp3
Queer Crypto-Fascist Corner!
Death In June - What Ends.mp3
Death In June - All Pigs Must Die
Boyd Rice & Friends - People.mp3
Current 93 - Holy Holy Holy.mp3
The Legendary Pink Dots - Neon Mariners.mp3
First there was Crisis, the lefty political punk band. Shortly thereafter, Death In June formed, with Douglas Pearce, Tony Wakeford and Patrick Leagas. They released The Guilty Have No Pride and Burial before Wakeford left for his rather erratic and more-miss-than-hit Sol Invictus. After Nada, Leagas left as well, joining 6th Comm... After that, Pearce carried on, conspiring with like-minded sorts, such as David Tibet (Current 93), Boyd Rice and whatever plump and pasty music nerd with a buzzcut might be around to great effect, essentially charting a whole genre of creepy as hell, pseudo-nationalist groups (such as Michael Moynihan's* Blood Axis
) that exists concurrently with Nick Cave, has some roots in the droning solo albums of Nico and the writings of 19th century neo-Pagans on pre-Christian civilizations, and makes a great deal many allusions, in album design and performance, to an idea of a mythologized Europe that never existed. Of course, putting all that into a blender, and adding a dash of misanthropism, is a fairly solid recipe for an ideological musical form that recalls, oh, I don't know, the Nazis, but really, there's nothing to worry about from these people, unless you live in Eastern Europe or Russia. People care about this stuff there, although I can only speculate whether Death In June fans will ever reach the level of fanaticism that characterizes the Manowar fanbase, whereas in North America, most fans will be kids who put the Magic (The Gathering!) cards away at an earlier age than their friends and picked up a Nietzsche book.
*Some more astute readers might recall Moynihan as the author of "The Lords of Chaos", a book which chronicled the Northern European Black Metal scene, and which, having read, one imagines was written with a smirk on the author's face.
And all of this brings us to tomorrow night, when, after Devandra Banhart and 6 Organs of Admittance perform a hallucinogenically-inspired set of Olde Invisible Folke ballads and Mountain Songs, Pavilion Projects will present (in co-operation with PopMontreal and Warrior Magazine) The Ten Commandments at Korova, from 12-4am. The Ten Commandments is the plural manifestation of one singular David Lewkewitch, former resident of Victoria, BC and source-point for songs about Rivers of Blood and Divine Retribution. In the lineup, Ami Brousseau (formerly of Victoria's Ghosts), ConU film grad Matthew Law, visual artist Michael Doerksen and saw-player Samara. In the wings, Michael Gira and Young God Records?
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