Gig Guide
Saturday September 6th
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· 12 Below: Parfait
· Bath St: CHEF [uk] & Jason Howson [ak]. Dubstep Intnl.
· The Backstage: 'Frequency' Dunedin DJ extravaganza
· THE BOG IRISH BAR: Sweet Naval Oranges
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18 June, 2008
Kahu, Spectrum, Dimmer - The Backstage 27/3/08
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Kahu, Spectrum, Dimmer - The Backstage 27/3/08
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First up Kahu takes to the stage at a very respectable hour and proceeds to slowly conjure immense landscapes with only an electric guitar and a series of effects pedals. The landscapes are built from the valleys up, glacial, huge. A voice is added and evokes a powerful, mountain carving wind, layers are progressively added then just as deliberately stripped away to leave nothing but void.
Kahu is the solo work of Tristan of High Dependency Unit and the progression is perfectly obvious and natural. Stripped of the tightness and intensity of the rhythm section songs ebb and flow in their own natural time, managing to encapsulate the formation and eventual dissolution of the Earth in minutes. Quite incongruously Tristan is concerned with the length of the set, when he asks the audience what the time is the reply he gets of, “Time for lots more” only seems to indicate the the set is nearing its end.
Maybe the presence of Spectrum has something to do with the seemingly regimented set, after all Spacemen 3 was reportedly split over the difficulties Pete Kember had with being uptight with the rest of the band. That band ended nearly twenty years ago, producing the pretty well known Spiritualized and the much more obscure Kember projects Spectrum and Sonic Boom. Even Spacemen 3 records are kinda obscure these days and Spectrum records even more so. So what were we going to get tonight, on his first trip to New Zealand? Would we be getting Spacemen 3 material that we are more likely to know (and hence respond to) or would it be a case of only wanting to present new, more relevant material?
It starts awkwardly, the combination of strange accent and echo serving to render Spectrum’s opening comments inaudible. A question as to whether we had heard of Stereolab (I think that’s what he was saying, anyway) eliciting nothing from the expectant crowd, not even a solitary cough. The first song sounds promising, a Krautrock beat soaked in pulsing organs, but a few seconds in and the sound cuts out and the lone figure of Kember searches around his substantial electronic rig to try to fix the problem, and quickly succeeds. Momentum, however, is not easily regained and the polite applause and occasional whoop from the audience seem to indicate the crowd reserving judgement. The first song pretty much dispenses with anything close to a danceable beat for the rest of the set, from here on it it’s slow organ, the occasional sound like broken power lines and flat, toneless singing.
To be honest it’s a bit boring, probably quite nice if you’re collapsed in the corner full of illicit drugs, but not so much for the earnest listener. A small concession is made to the past with Spacemen 3’s Let Me Down Gently getting an airing, and this serves to show just how little has changed in the past twenty years. It’s an almost exact replication of the Spacemen 3 version, except created on stage by just one man with electronics replacing the other band members.
Which I think says a lot.
The set ends with appreciative applause, but it’s not quite convincing
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