.jpg)
Photo:
As the queues develop outside Heaven tonight, the reality of quite how interesting tonight might just be hits home. Side by side, cyber-goth tech-head kids decked out in luminous attire, and old tweed-wearing specky 30 something Fall fans wait patiently to see Mark E Smith’s much talked about collaboration with German electro-rodents Mouse on Mars. The diversity of tonight’s crowd is as painfully dysfunctional (you can almost hear the older crowd tutting at the state of the beat hungry youths, between moaning about their flat pints of expensive lager etc) as Von Sudenfed should be on paper (MES - as we'll now call him - over grindy tech beats?), a possible musical disquiet that makes things all the more exciting.
Sometimes it takes something to hate to bring a crowd together – and tonight’s live support certainly provide the perfect target. The mob handed prog/electro/disco troop Chrome Hoof bore their way through a mixture of instrumental and vocal meanderings, using a load of different instruments and time signatures, which, whilst maybe interesting on record, are tiresome live. Punchy brass sections, and fast accelerating riffs reminiscent of music from a cheesy action film are mixed with experimental, drawn-out beats that sit uncomfortably alongside the cacophony of instruments onstage. Chrome Hoof are certainly at their best when they go for a more hardcore tack, allow synths player to have a scream, and get grimey on the vocals. Shame this only happens once tonight.
XXteens had to change their name from Xeroxteens coz of copyright rubbish etc. Shame, as the old moniker suits this bad grainy photocopy of so many better bands down to a tee. Take lead-singer, Dirt Dog Cash, for example – his slurry, off-beat indecipherable mumblings are pretty reminiscent of a certain Mark E Smith, aren’t they? Is he not aware he is actually supporting Mr. Smith tonight, or is this a homage to the great man himself? Painful, either way. The rest of the band also do their best to be a bad “Star’s In Their Eyes” version of post-punk greatness, with a combination of twangy basslines and discordant guitars.
Ever the show-off, Mark E Smith opts for a “push through the crowd” approach to get onstage, and he stomps across the stage to the backstage area (with long-suffering wife Elenor in tow). It is Jan and Andi from Mouse on Mars who are first to emerge and crank up the grimey, bass-heavy beats. Von Sudenfed are ready to go. They look like they are having a brilliant time, fiddling with switches, laptops, pedals and synths with childish excitement; an excitement that is totally infectious, and soon has the crowd bouncing along merrily. And out pops MES to rapturous applause.
The beats are horrifically catchy, and as the band fly into the raspy ‘Fledermaus Can’t Get it’, MES comes into his slurry own. Incessant shouts of “I can’t get enough …” come as sporadically as one would expect from a man rarely sticks to the recorded vocals of a song. But rather than huge silent gaps in vocals, the German mouseketeers sample snippets of MES’ already spluttered words from tonight to fill gaps – brilliant. Songs merge into a beautiful mess of many, with stand out moments from other single ‘Rhinohead’, and the fantastic ‘Family Feud’ (a master class in Mark E Smith egoistic/piss-taking brilliance, with the line ”I AM THE GREAT M.E.S” repeated again, and again, and again, over ultra smart beats.)
There is no denying MES rules The Fall with a vice like grasp; his onstage live shenanigans (turning off amps, moving mics etc) are part and parcel of being a Fall band member, a humiliation one suffers until you finally expend your sell-by-date and get your inevitable p45. It is interesting therefore to see MES in a totally new musical context. Evidentially he tries to exert the same musical authority over MoM, occasionally thrusting microphones into their faces, or trying to twiddle a button behind the scenes. But the effects are inconsequential. The mice just retain the happy-as-larry grin that has adorned their tech-head-faces throughout, safe in the knowledge that unlike flicking the off switch on a Marshall stack, playing with a button on a laptop is something over which they have complete mastery.
The guys return for an encore, and wrap everything up with a total mess of blurred electro that morphs from chaotic samples of feedback, into something quite brilliant in its precision. MES does his best to force any noise out of anything, keeping the MoM lads on their toes with sound after sound to cope with (even forcing his mic into the lighting rig at the stage side gets some kind of sampling use). And EVERYONE leaves happy.
