Dead Meadow, Nadja @Amplifier, Perth 13/10/10

Thu 14th Oct, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Check out toxikon’s pics here

A night of ‘Psych’ awaited at the Amplifier on Wednesday, as it was Perth’s turn to welcome for the first time the Canadian/German ‘ambient drone’ duo that is Nadja and “Los Angeles’ most psychic hard rock ensemble” Dead Meadow.

A solid mid-week gathering at Amps saw Young Revelry and The Silents warm the room, with an even more solid gathering of nicotine imbibers choosing to hear both from the safety of the beer garden instead. It must sometimes feel frustrating for support bands to have the bulk of the evening’s punters a few mere feet away, breathing either fresh air or smoke, whilst performing to a few hardcore devotees inside, but this is how it works in this town. A good thing that there are no residential properties close by… yet.

A good thing indeed. Nadja’s Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff prepared their on stage desk of FX pedals, drum machine and assorted gadgetry with a calm, Zen-like poise, then hit what could only be a big red annihilate switch somewhere on the desk; suddenly challenging the venue’s structural integrity. Internal organs received a rare fibrillating work out and conceivably the Earth tilted on its axis a few degrees to the south.

For a humble duo on stage, crouched over their sound manipulator boxes and loopers and with a direct input into the Amplifier’s PA, Nadja put the A into Ambient and D into Drone. Glorious subsonic waves of treated guitar and bass with cutting drum machines carved a path through the room like a pyroclastic flow whilst possessing a subcutaneous yet uplifting sound that was, by the end of their criminally short set, positively joyous and trance inducing. This reviewer finds it difficult to locate the ‘doom’ reference in relation to Nadja’s sound, perhaps the only commonality being the glacial tempi, down tunings and sheer volume they employ in the live presentation of their soundscapes.

After a blissful half hour of Nadja sounds, Dead Meadow took to the stage and launched into Drifting Down Streams from their 2001 release Howls from the Hills. The rest of Dead Meadow’s set was peppered with tracks from their latest Three Kings release and the energy dissipated from the room in the same time as it had taken Nadja’s sub-bass sounds to recalibrate livers.

What started off with potential quickly dissolved into a soup of lanky uninspired 12 bar bluesy rock, with lead singer and guitarist Jason Simon punishing his wah pedal with solos that seemed to travel blindly and sputter into a no-man’s land of mock palatability. Bassist Steve Kille was in the driver’s seat for the entire set, his hands darting around the neck of his Rickenbacker bass, keeping a vague counterpoint to Simon’s incessant blues noodlings. New ‘old’ drummer Mark Laughlin was falling out of his groove left right and centre and his playing did nothing but compound the lack of soul, power and ‘psych’ throughout the performance. Whether this particular gig was a ‘bad night’ could be argued, but the songs themselves were short on the goods -with no definable hooks or lines…but full of sinkers.

A significant disappointment after the blissful, sonic experience that is Nadja live.

Check out toxikon’s pics here