Month: December 2019

Best Concerts Of 2019 (Pt 9) – Here Are Euphoric British Glam Popsters TEMPLES…

Posted on by JL

Turn Up The Volume looks back at his favourite concerts of 2019…

TEMPLES – Botanique Venue, Brussels – 19 November 2019

Here’s the original review…

Never change a winning formula is definitely British quartet TEMPLES‘ chosen strategy.
After listening to their recent, third album Hot Motion it was quickly clear that the band had decided to keep doing what they do best since their debut LP Sun Structures back in 2014, which is writing glam and glitter pop songs with the three inseparable ingredients you need to succeed: catchiness, tunefulness and euphoric sing along choruses. Mind you, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Many tried/try that formula over and over again but only a few become successful at doing it as it should be done to get the listener in an elevating mood.

And it also helps when you look like young God-like pop stars too. Anyway, last Tuesday
in Brussels, after a short false start, due to technical problems, the ecstatic Temples show took off and turned the full house, with a large fanatic fans representation, pretty fast in
to a state of euphoric elation, with a clever mix of old stompers (Keep In The Dark / Shelter Song / Certainty ) and new standouts (The Howl / Holy Horses / Hot Motion). As I’ve seen the band a couple of times before I had a déjà vu once in while but seeing the greater part of the audience going nuts frequently was a pretty sight to see and keeps yourself exultant too. And with turning the one and only encore ‘Mesmerise‘ into a sort of Jimi Hendrix like psychedelic guitar outburst the band reminded us that 90 minutes with them is about a thousand times more entertaining than sitting in your lazy couch all evening long watching crap on TV.

The whole set reproduced on Spotify…

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TEMPLES: Facebook

(All pics by Turn Up The Volume!)

Best Concerts Of 2019 (Pt 8) – Here Are Manic Post Punk Preachers BLACK MIDI…

Posted on by JL

Turn Up The Volume looks back at his favourite concerts of 2019…

black midi – Beurschouwburg, Brussels – 10 October 2019

Here’s the original review…

If you went to this gig without ever hearing this electrical juvenile London quartet called black midi I guess your unsuspecting ears would have been impressed as never before. These adventurous youngsters sound like an experimental post-punk turbine producing ferocious Black Sabbath drones resonating actually like bombastic prog-rock firework with ever-changing, manic Frank Zappa-esque twists and turns. Yep, demonic and hypnotic 21st Century disturbance with the crushing impact of a deranged steamroller.

Their repetitive build up/break down noise pattern goes sometimes faster than your aural reception and messed-up mind can actually handle. And at times the four members – two guitarists, a bassist and an octopus drummer – seem to play each a different song as if this was a free jazz-rock gathering while main vocalist Geordie Greep‘s haunting Scott Walker like vocals tried to give the uninterrupted cacophonous havoc a voice now and then. Arresting!

Crowd pleasers 953, Near DT, MI, speedway and bmbmbm, all standout highlights of their astonishing debut LP Schlagenheim worked perfectly to keep the audience buzzing. But some new pieces were thrown in and caused both puzzlement and bewilderment among the spectators as rhythms and dynamics went relentlessly forth and back and vice versa without really going somehwere leaving a what the bloody fuck is going on here feel.

Seventy-minutes of non-stop (no communication with the audience whatsoever, even
no ‘hello‘ nor ‘goodbye‘) freakish electricity was a bit too long, but be assured the hype
is for real. These innovative and imaginative noise misfits learned a lot of mind-boggling experimentalism from the past and they turned their impressions into something truly special for today and for the future. Don’t forget, they have only started!

This footage will give you a firm taste of their perplexing power…

black midi: Facebook

Here’s their manic debut LP ‘SCHLAGENHEIM‘ in full…

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(concert pics by Turn Up The Volume!)