Black Lung @ Sin Saturday 26thApril 2008

Sun 27th Apr, 2008 in Gig Reviews

David Thrussell returned to Sin on Saturday in his Black Lung costume, treating patrons to some old school industrial techno from a gothic horror novel.

It was a fairly small group that actually hit the Sin dance floor, only a few finding the hard beat amid the waves to bounce around to. A good thing really, since this wasn’t your jump up and down on the spot kind of music. That isn’t to say that the audience was small, the walls of Gilkisons Dance Studio (Sin on Saturday nights) were thick with those who had come to soak up some of the dark ambiance and be lost in the layered sounds of the cataclysmic world in Thrussell’s head, as translated for the masses by a couple of computers.

Black Lung is the architect of a sonic horror story, the genius of which, is that it is told entirely without words, and so it can be whatever your twisted little mind comes up with on the night, and it needn’t ever be the same tale twice. No lyrics leaves the way open for the listener to play a choose-your-own-adventure part in the music.

If you do need a theme or starting point, the track names on the album The Coming Dark Age can give you some guidance. If you let them, Toward the Petro-apocalypse / The Sins of Megalopolis will narrate you into a dirty, polluted world of greed and war over finite resources; On the next hearing, Black Lung might show you another futuristic catastrophe, which is the result of hubris and human nature. If sinister politics and destruction aren’t where your imagination runs to, The Coming Dark Age might just be some really groovy multi layered dark techno to which you can dance or bliss out, depending on your state-of-mind of choice.

The set began with no fanfare, one minute there were DJs Boxer and Brad mixing a revolutionary set in the corner, a black curtain disguising the stage. The next minute there was a gap in the curtain, and a guy with computers standing there, intently sculpting the mood and mixing our metaphors with the aid of lights and smoke machines.

Aside from the humble nod that escaped the cloud of Thrussell’s unruly blonde hair, acknowledging a howled appreciation, there was little physical interaction between DJ and audience. Most of his concentration was engaged in creating an aural landscape and interacting in a metaphysical sense instead.

Enveloped in this apocalyptic soundscape, the people danced, or swayed, or stared, or spun until, in seemingly no time at all, Thrussell was ducking down behind his desk, ready to disappear again. Not wanting it to end yet, a couple of alert fans noticed him go into hiding, and crept up to the desk to shake his hand and ask him to stay for just one more track, which he obligingly did. Still it was over all too soon, replaced by music that, through no fault of the Sin DJs, was one dimensional and simplistic in comparison.