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After Alkmaar came Roadburn. After a restless night following the Alkmaar gig, where I was feeling a little disappointment due to the sound, but also to my unwillingness to seek out a better position, I decided to get up and get out of town sooner rather than later, and set off to Tilburg about 6am.
Roadburn as a whole was fantastic. I'm not a fan of at least 70% of the music on offer, but there was plenty to get into, especially the Japanese 'psych' and 'motorik' bands Kikagaku Moyo, Dhidalah and Minami Deutsch, of which the last was the best band I saw all weekened other than Motorpsycho. Earthless were also superb during their opening set, not so much with Damo Suzuki. Godspeed You! Black Emperor were phenomenal for about 20 minutes but after that just became quite boring. Ex Eye were a surprise – I thoroughly enjoyed them as did Bent, Snah, Reine and (I think) Tomas as they nodded and rocked during the last 15 minutes of the show, just a few yards to my left.
Motorpsycho were utterly brilliant! They put on a powerful display of heavy and melodic space jams with probably only two tracks (Bartok and The Cuckoo) coming in at under ten minutes. Un Chien was magnificent, especially in the middle jam section where I could audibly hear people around me gasping with incredulity as the boys increased the tempo and intensity again and again and again. I think a few minds were blown
Starhammer was also a highlight for me as I love the song, but in Alkmaar two nights earlier it felt like Snah lost his way as he bent down and twiddled with nobs, working on loops that never quite seemed to hit the mark (although he obviously pulled it together eventually … and how!). Here at Roadburn he was on the money from the word go. Freaking glorious!
Having said Starhammer was a highlight, I have to say, the whole gig was a highlight. Such a contrast to Alkmaar, which was, for me, hit and miss, with A Pacific Sonata probably being my favourite there.
The sound too was incredible. I think the 013 is now my favourite venue (of that size). The sightlines, the sound, the ambiance, the design, all superb. I stood about ten rows back, almost dead centre and the sound was clear as a bell. As Valderrama says above, you could hear a pin drop, and as he and supernaut point out together, an indication of (a) the respectfulness of the Roadburn audience, but also (b) the authority Motorpsycho commanded, not by name, but by their playing.
Roadburn was witness to a very special and powerful peformance, and I am sure MP will have some new fans as a result.
Following the show, I bumped into Tomcat and TheOtherAnders a couple of times – both of them looking a little wide-eyed after the magnificent performance. I don't think I'm the only one who thought this was a special show.
My Alkmaar experience was mixed. After three fantastic days in Amsterdam with Mrs Lizard, she flew home and I went straight to meet TheOtherAnders. Getting in the vibe, we walked a little, took the train to Alkmaar and all along talked Motorpsycho. In Alkmaar we met up with Tomcat, Ingo, Thomas, Alli and other psychonauts. I was a little overwhelmed to be in their company again, to say the least. I am, after all, as someone said, 'the new guy'. ha ha
At the gig I found myself alone, about ten rows back to the right. With Roadburn coming up I decided to actually use the earplugs I bought a few years earlier, but which I have never donned. The sound was atrocious. I thought it was the earplugs, so I took them out. No difference. With micro-movements here and there the sound sometimes came through better, but for most of the concert I was riding a wave of drums and bass on top of which fell a white noise hailstorm of mellotron and guitars. Within that white noise, if I concentrated a little harder, the guitars became a little more distiguishable, but the mellotron remained mostly lacking in clarity.
I had thought about moving position, and spied Tomcat closer to the centre and wondered if the sound was better there. But being tall I rarely like to push into a position ahead of others because I know I'm going to ruin someone else's view. If I'm already in position, others can choose to stand behind me or not, but not if I push in front of them. Anyway, I was still riding the wave and my psycho-tweaked brain and body were happy to stay there and to enjoy having the room to get my freak on.
So, with eyes mostly closed, body swerving this way and that, I immersed myself in the deep and had a great time.
After the gig I met with the 'nauts again and walked into town, where I then left them and went to my dorm room, looking for silence and contemplating my departure the next morning to Roadburn…
I saw Bent, Snah and Reine, possibly also Tomas, at Ex Eye on Thursday. They came in and watched the last 15 minutes. All of them seemed to be getting into it.
@theotherdemon – Thanks. I'm grabbing Amsterdam and Groningen now. Will work on getting into Motortrades.
@jms – Yes, I saw that surge of recordings, which is one reason why I'm asking now. I will keep my eyes open for that Oslo show too.
@pfnuesel – Thanks. I'll check it out.
@otherdemon – Thanks. I'll look into that one.
@karmadrome – Thanks. That's the one recording from that period that I already have. I was listening to it today – fantastic!!
@JERO – I agree almost completely. I listened to those Schizoid Man compilations just once. But I enjoyed the stitched one simply for the guitar work. I would not want to see this done again and certainly not by MP. I only mentioned it because of TraktorBass's Neverland post. Great Deceiver is a brilliant live document of the best (IMHO) incarnation of KC. Aside from the superb songs they wrote … like you say, improv and adventure are what set them (and MP) apart from the crowd. As far as MP keeping it fresh and exciting, I liken their approach to that of Neil Young: write the songs, get in the studio and play them, release an album, go on tour and play them – but above all, let those songs grow and breath and evolve in the process – and let it all happen as organically as possible. To do this you have to be a certain type of musician, a certain type of person. Bent and Snah seem to be that type of person, that type of musician. BRING ON THE ROADWORKS!! :STG:
@TheOtherAnders – A somewhat similar appraoch was adopted by King Crimson on two albums dedicated to 21st Century Schizoid Man. The album Schizoid Man has 5 versions of the song: the original studio version, an edit of the studio version and three live versions, each varying in length. Another album, Ladies of the Road, Disc 2 has one 53 minute version of 21CSM that was cleverly created by stitching together the guitar solos from at least ten different live cuts.
@ crosskip – Thanks for the correction re: Taifun. I just glanced at the timing and didn't think about the crowd. D'oh! Rookie mistake!
@ otherdemon
Yes, I figured some of my wishlist would likely not turn up because of previous releases, but either way I'm pretty sure we'll get Lacuna/Sunrise and at least two form The Tower. In Every Dream Home was fantastic live РI find the album track a little lightweight, but live, it's much more funky, has a lot more swing Рand I really enjoyed it in K̦ln, where it made a much bigger impression on me than in London. The biggest problem I see is the constriants omposed by vinyl. For example, Taifun in K̦ln was about 17 minutes, so what else can you pair it with except a short track like Feel. Maybe a shorter Taifun could be paired with Greener, Bartok, Cuckoo or ASFE.
Wishlist (though constrained by the limitions of vinyl):
A1 Un Chien part 1
A2 Un Chien part 2
B1 Mountain
PPP
B2 Lacuna/Sunrise
C1 Stained Glass
In Every Dream Home
C2 Taifun
Feel
Great news. Really great news. However, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for CD and/or download versions of III and V.
@Bartok – My top MP records as of today would be … damn, this could be a long list… but I'll try to keep it to five:
Trust Us
En Konsert For Folk Flest
HMF
LLM
LTEC
By next week, this list could well have changed! I mean, I can't believe I left out ITF10, DDU, Phano and HBM.
The thing is, I just become immersed in an album and sometimes it's one I haven't listened too so much. Like LTEC – it was ok, but Phano was my favourite from that period, then suddenly – WOW! LTEC is brilliant! I think Trust Us will always be in my MP top five, though.As for one era versus another – I can't really say, except that I can only get into about half of Demon Box, and a few tracks on TM don't do much for me, though mostly it's brilliant. I still haven't heard anything before Demon Box. Each 'era' and each album has characteristics I can get into in a big way though, which is just one reason why MP are so special.
I should add that "being too 90s" is not really an issue. Yes, it's possible to feel some music is too much of its time, and doesn't stand up well in the present, but for me, with the exception of much of the 80s sound, if it's good it's good.
As for Demon Box specifically, I cannot handle growly vocals on pretty much anything, so that means a lot of DB doesn't work for me. But that has nothing to do with it being a 90s album. Pretty much all the rest of it I either really like or am just happy to listen to. Maybe one day I'll have a DB epiphany
AS it's still only a little over six months since I first listened to any Motorpsycho, I've heard a lot of Motorpsycho music in that time – most of it repeatedly. The one album that I really didn't like on first listen but which suddenly revealed itself to me was Blissard. For some reason it sounded rough, awkward, lacking in musicality … Then one day, with over-ear headphones on, playing it on my very good player while wandering down to the shops, I was just bowled over by Sinful, Wind-Borne, Drug Thing and Greener. Funnily enough, I had two copies of the album on the player (one in FLAC format the other in mp3), so each track played twice before moving on to the next one. I think that helped!
I then went on to very quickly appreciate the album as a whole. And then recently I read Johan Harstad's book and my appreciation levels rose even further. While Bent's ability to write good songs was (in my humble opinion) evident before this, I think this album is when he really showed himself to be more than just a good songwriter but an exceptional one.
