Venue: Channel Zero / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 03.11.2012
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: €15
2012 is obviously the year of post-rock in Slovenia. Why? Because we’ve hosted, or are about to host, exactly the bands that started post-rock and the ones that matter in it today. The Slovenian alternative music crowd clearly responded great to the rise in post-rock’s popularity across the alt sphere, which in turn made it possible to organize gigs like these here. So far this year we’ve gotten through giants of the genre like Sigur Rós (concert report HERE), Crippled Black Pheonix and God Is An Astronaut (report HERE), as well as younger (and smaller) makers of today’s scene, like Kerretta, Sleepmakeswaves and Maybeshewill, plus a whole bunch of other, more local bands (say, Croatia’s Man Zero and Italy’s Aldrin). That’s an incredibly sweet haul of bands that actually mean something on the post-rock scene. But what counts for even more than the fact that these bands actually played here is that people actually showed up. That folks genuinely care about this kind of music. That quality you can’t argue with finally found an audience here. And that I expect the same for similar gigs in Slovenia down the road. Because it didn’t end on Saturday, November 3, with the fantastic trio of Tides From Nebula, thisquietarmy and Caspian – the Slovenian post-rock year of 2012 isn’t over yet. On November 14, true legends of the genre Godspeed You! Black Emperor come to Kino Šiška (together with Dirty Three; preview HERE), and on November 20 you can catch Junius at Orto bar (preview HERE). But what matters right now is the trio I mentioned earlier. A trio that packed Channel Zero with music enthusiasts and drove them to ecstasy, meditation, passionate kisses, attempts at levitation and the occasional yawn. All in the right context and at the right time, which at points didn’t even exist.
Even before the start there were so many people standing outside Channel 0 that I couldn’t believe it. The interest in the event was seriously huge. I actually had to wait in line. Okay, maybe I’m getting a bit carried away with my excitement over the turnout. Still. What I want to stress is that people clearly knew the bands (who have played here before, and at the door we even got a download code for a thisquietarmy live album he recorded last year in Ljubljana, awesome!). Already during Tides From Nebula they knew what the band was playing and called out for this song and that, raising fists at the announcement of crowd favorites. The Polish band got nothing but raised fists. Well, and applause. The astral post-rockers didn’t deserve anything else anyway. They were excellent, the performance flawless, the soundscaping rehearsed and precise. In general, most post-rock bands are the kind that work best in live situations. On record they’re fine, one of today’s almost cliché variations, but live it’s something else – from sensual soundscapes of otherworldly nebulae to brain-splitting explosions. Pretty much every post-rock band delivers that. This is music that just kills live, one way or another. And Tides From Nebula were no less killer, explosive and sensually receptive; the crowd was experiencing its first ecstasies, and a bunch of couples (another surprise) their first long kisses. The band’s name alone tells you they come from an astral background, that they bet on that cosmic vibe and all those sounds that make us picture Saturn’s rings, Curiosity on Mars and Armstrong on the Moon. The quartet was an excellent opening act for the night, wrapped in a rich curtain of sound built from countless pedals of one kind or another (delays included) belonging to guitarists Adam Waleszyński and Maciej Karbowski. Only one musician competed with that impressive pedalboard tonight (and probably won, though that doesn’t matter all that much) – the successor to the opening band, a Canadian hiding behind the alias thisquietarmy, Eric Quach.
Eric’s pedalboard is enormous, to put it mildly. Which makes sense, since this is an experimental one-man band. You can’t expect anything else. A drum machine, a million loopers, delays, reverbs, distortions… plus a few amps on top. And of course it doesn’t go without the cult Sunn O)))) amp. For some, thisquietarmy was a break from the more coherent, more melodic and more approachable music of the previous acts, while for others Quach’s abstraction was an even bigger escape from earthly reality than the music of Tides From Nebula. A little less than an hour-long story that ran without a pause, from a dark, sad, slow beginning to… a dark, sad and slow ending. The blurry visuals behind the permanently crouching Eric confirmed the droney sound that this guitarist, removed from this world, was weaving on a stage that didn’t feel like part of Channel Zero. Maybe because of the first rows with their mouths hanging open, maybe because of the missing couples who had stepped out for a smoke. A few of us were up on stage together with him, together outside the club. So thisquietarmy may not have fit the concept of a post-rock night, since his slow drone doom sound, mixed with elements of black metal and shoegazer fuzz, is miles (or light years) away from the music of the acts before him. Maybe not in the experience itself, but definitely in form. Still, as a buffer between two at least somewhat similar bands he worked great – those who wanted it took their kissing and their stuffed ears elsewhere, and the rest of us got our break in a different sense. Either way, it was a different experience from Tides From Nebula in every respect, and so an excellent buffer and warm-up for the night’s headliner – Caspian.
Caspian just put out a new album, called Waking Season. It “wakes” us up with the title track, and the band likewise “woke” us up from thisquietarmy (whether that was good or bad) when they hit the stage. “Waking Season” isn’t just the name of the album, though – it’s an ideal opener and a window into the band’s sonic atmospheres. Like Tides From Nebula, Caspian also have a fantastically polished show – energetic, full, rehearsed. They know how to build atmosphere, know how to get people up on their tiptoes, and then wreck it all with loud chorus sections. But their post-rock doesn’t aim for outer space; their music stands on different foundations. In my opinion it also flirts with math rock now and then, so it’s, if I may say so, more mathematically planned and leans more on guitar lines than the music of Tides From Nebula – overall, I feel Caspian’s music is less based on effects, even though the pedalboards of all three guitarists were nicely loaded with them. Technicalities aside – both bands had an unfathomable energy, phenomenally ramped up by shifts in the dynamics of the arrangements. In a way, Caspian conjured the same feelings in a similar manner to Tides From Nebula, even if their music is different – in texture and in execution. The band lived up to its billing as the headliner of this two-thirds post-rock night, and I can even say with confidence that nobody regretted coming to the gig.
At the end of the day, these are bands made for playing live. Especially Tides From Nebula and Caspian; their music is tangible, but only for a moment, and the moment counts mostly live, not on record. Most of post-rock is (sadly?) like that – an experience in the flesh, at a gig, as long as we don’t get lost in its typicality and (resulting) mediocrity. So this was a night of moments, energy and instants that can only exist with music.
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