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Bikini Atol/Lydia Lunch
Exeter Cavern - 26/4/04
Mmmmm... Arty feminism
The only way I can think of describing Bikini Atol is as Art Students (notice the capitalisation). Willfully pretentious (says the person who was sitting in the Cavern sipping white wine, reading a book and muttering chess strategies under his breath) without having the material to back it up. A bit like prog rock on a pub rock scale. It's hard to pin down their influences exactly, it might be Rock Action era Mogwai, though god knows why they would choose that. The vocals seemed out of place (not bad, just unwelcome. The singing was actually quite good if you ignored the lyrics) and the keyboards were way over the top at times. I'm being way to harsh here, a lot of the time the music was very, very good, very nice and very relaxing and the musicianship was good enough to suggest they can do better in the future. Lose the vocals and the odder keyboard moments (sampling a rattlesnake and the sound of waves crashing anyone? No takers? Oh.) and you'd have a decent instrumental space rock band on your hands.
7 out of 10
Lydia Lunch's spoken word performance is a witty and vitriolic attack on... just about everything actually. Men, the government, war, society today, more men, society yesterday, sex, relationships, the media, those two men left cowering in the corner that she'd missed earlier, nothing is spared. Delivered with a good variety of speech, growling, snarling, shouting and even some singing this is a woman with a point to make and she's not going to be happy until you've been pounded into agreement and/or submission. The music that it was set to was atmospheric jazz with saxophone and another horn (some kind of slightly squashed trumpet, I'm not good at naming these things) courtesy of Terry Edwards. It suited the mood perfectly and saxophones are just sexy however they're used. It wouldn't have actually have sounded out of place on the soundtrack of a David Lynch film. Actually, that's a reasonable analogy for the whole performance, it is the musical equivalent of a David Lynch film, at times uncomfortable, controversial, disturbing (especially if you're male) but always seductive and fascinating it'll suck you into it's own little world and leave you feeling refreshed, if a little bewildered, at the end. A work of art.
8 out of 10
