Om @ Fowler's Live, Adelaide(15/07/10)

Sat 17th Jul, 2010 in Gig Reviews

The first thirty odd punters scored a free poster as we entered the bar area but we were met with closed roller screens barring access to the stage, suggesting things were not on schedule. The first act came on quite llate but the evening somehow wound up ending earlier than stated.

Space Bong opened things up with their brand of sludge doom and even though I see these guys like once a month I don’t tire of their memorable riffs. What I did tire of was the annoying feedback intro that made ears bleed and outstayed its welcome. I’m all for headline acts having lengthy noisaludes to create atmosphere, but support acts would find their shortened set time better spent on actual music, not to mention crowds would benefit from having their hearing for the later bands.

Also, I think Bong would be better minus one of their two main vocalists, and by giving their guitarist more singing parts because I enjoyed the dynamic of his melodic vocals. All that aside, the music does not disappoint, with some nice guitar leads here and there and everything combining well for the last track, a higher tempo sludge n roll number.

Up next was the mysterious Blarke Bayer / Black Widow. It was a pair of people but I wasn’t sure if one was called Blarke Bayer and the other Black Widow, or what the significance of the name was until I got home. Their loop guitar ambience was superior to the problematic feedback mentioned above, but this time, ambience and noise was to be the entirety of set. The pair was a lefty guitarist with an assortment of delay and loop effects, and a drummer using both soft mallets and sticks, at one point throwing sticks in the air haphazardly and letting them hit whatever on the kit.

The went through some pretentious noise exploration with some highs and some lows, interesting at times, other times clear they were just reading each other for ideas. So an unstructured vortex of sound was the name of the game, and the onus was on the listener to make sense of it. A waste of time for some and interesting to others, while I think it could have done with some visuals, with my suggestion being a David Lynch film playing alongside on a screen.

Punters then prepared themselves for something equally perplexing and mysterious in the next bracket, as an afghan rug and a chair were being set up for Lichens. When all was ready, it was just a lone vocalist, Robert Lowe on stage with an assortment of pedals. He first laid some vocal groundwork and then sang over loops all of his own voice, from soulful and sweeping to scathing. As the layers built on one another in the singular track that was the whole set, it tested the limits of some of the equipment with crackling in the PAs, but in a roundabout way it enhanced it all. A very interesting artist indeed and completely unexpected.

Perhaps if Lichens had joined forces with Blarke Bayer / Black Widow, they’d have made something impossibly immense, but instead we had a curious couple of interpretable acts that weren’t for everyone but had some people captivated. At least we were hearing something new.

Lowe moved his gear aside to join the trio that is Om. He would be doing even more in this role than he did by himself, using tambourine, organ and guitar, and the vocal style we had just heard would return for some key moments. Bass player and vocalist Al Cisneros seemed a bit bored with it all but played well, the fatness of his thumb style playing on a beautiful Rickenbacker proving that guitars aren’t always needed. They all seemed casual on that corner stage, talking to each other, stretching, tuning without any theatrics to speak of.

The music was gloomy with both subtlety and vehemence, both world music influences and Black Sabbath derived doom riffing. Tracks Cremation Ghat I & II played part in the slowly evolving setlist. At Giza was an extremely long undertaking and apparent centrepiece, an endurance test even for the most patient listener but a rewarding one when the distorted bass kicks in. The band played for over an hour but had only played about five tracks, giving you an idea of how lengthy and slow burning these songs are. After mixed opinions on the bands in the middle of the night I think everyone enjoyed Om and left satisfied.