An Evening with Trash Kit, Male Bonding and The Vivian Girls

I was presented with the opportunity to go see the Vivian Girls, a band I had not seen for about a year and was intrigued to see them again. Intrigued due to digging some of there recent songs and seeing how there performance was after countless tours.

The venue was in a church just off Dalton Lane and organised by “Upset The Rhythm”. The actual venue was pretty big and awesome like a big scout hall or something. There was an abundance of reverb in two of the evening’s performances, so I could not tell whether this had a positive or negative effect on the sound. Regardless it was well attended and the BYOB option was very healthy on one and all's pockets. Even though some punk dressed man and his girlfriend managed to catch a black cab to the gig, so I don’t think they were bothered.

The first band on was Trash Kit a favourite of mine both in music and personality. Needless to say they ruled again and I await the album on Upset The Rhythm. This is a group of girls who go from minimal tribal like chants to jerking post-punk rhythms in the beat of the djembe.

Go see them you arsehole!!!!!!!!!

Male Bonding is not a favourite of mine so I'll let there press release and wikipedia snippets provide the fodder to fill this article.

Made up of Robin Silas Christian (drums), John Arthur Webb (guitar & vocals) and Kevin Hendrick (bass and vocals), and rising from a flourishing DIY scene in their adopted hometown of Dalston, London, Male Bonding became a very real thing in May, 2008, with their first show, at an insane house party called “RAGE!” Male Bonding was born raging and it’s been non-stop ever since. That party evolved in to a split 7” release with PENS on Male Bonding’s own label Paradise Vendors Inc. (which sold out in a week). To date, Male Bonding has dispatched seven releases including a Flipper tribute 7” (on Domino Records) alongside PPM Allstars, Lovvers and Ponytail. The band has toured the UK with Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls and played shows with Lovvers, HEALTH, Fucked Up, Graffiti Island, Mika Miko, These are Powers, NISENNENMONDAI, Magik Markers, and Finally Punk among others. We are excited by, about and for Male Bonding. You should be too.
Sub Pop is a record label founded by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman in Seattle, Washington in 1986. Sub Pop achieved fame in the late 1980s for first signing Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and many other bands from the Seattle music scene.[1] They are often credited with taking the first steps toward popularizing grunge music, and have continued to achieve critical and commercial success in the new millennium, with popular bands such as The Postal Service, Flight of the Conchords and The Shins on their roster. In 1995 Poneman sold a 49% stake of the label to Warner Bros. Records.[2]
Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed.[1] A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air.[2] This is most noticeable when the sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude, until they can no longer be heard. The length of this sound decay, or reverberation time, receives special consideration in the architectural design of large chambers, which need to have specific reverberation times to achieve optimum performance for their intended activity.[3]

Speaking of reverb this brings me to tonight’s head liner namely The Vivian Girls will I was hoping to be awash with shoegaze psychedelia sending me into a euphoric trance however this was not the case. I found the performance to be a bit of a damp squid. This could have been down to the natural reverb in the hall clashing with the digital reverb coming from the band but it seemed to be swishing and washing and kaplooshing all over the place. With that said massive props go to the A'Capella song they did, it was fantastic, so good in fact some patron yelped in excitement. I don’t really know much but I would suggest they start with this one so as to have the crowd in there hand and then hit them with the instruments.

So in a nutshell, it started off OK (this could be down to sound issues, as I heard the singer complaining she couldn’t hear), the a'capella bit nailed it and then it kind of tailed off, well actually I left before they finished.

So there you go an evening of cheap booze and reverb but better than a poke in the eye.