AXXONN tour blog, part 2

19 February: Brisbane

The next morning I wake and feel hungover. How could it be, given that I only drank two beers and ate a ton of food? I head out to the van and grab my stuff ready to take it back to the hire company. Not thinking, I grab the passenger side door handle and think to myself “what’s this sticky shit?” Then the proceedings of the evening before come flooding back to me. I held my vomit-soaked hand to the sky and cursed the shit out of Ian Rogers. I’m pretty sure it was payback for something I’d done. The side of the fucking van looked like Rogers had eaten ten Crunchies and power-chucked the contents right down the side. So brutal.

We all meet up at 2pm for a soundcheck at the venue for the evening, Woodlands Bar. Luke Walsh, aka Blank Realm, is our sound tech for the night. In the world of sound techs he is like the finest gem one could ever expect, a keen and diverse ear for all things sonic and not adverse to mixing the hell out of someone giving him only two lines; it’s a nice change to the usual fuckwits I get recommending to me which of my two inputs I should put into left or right to avoid shit being out of phase. Soundcheck is loud, everyone has a crack and I get pretty excited about opener DOT.AY who’s joining the previous night’s line-up. The guy has a laptop and two Gameboys and makes the sweetest gabba/industrial/hardcore/chiptune/breakbeat/8bit beats one can think of. He’s pretty rad to chat to and his whole persona reminds me of a young Tim Hecker; I was nearly going to ask him if he wanted to hit the Gold-Coast afterwards.

We all meet back there around 9pm and DOT.AY gets away to a cracking start at around 9:30. The crowd is a little quiet and mainly stays stuck away in the dark corners of the room whilst DOT.AY moves like he’s playing to a raving crowd of acid freaks. I always respect someone that despite using a laptop as the basis of their sonic mainframe, still knows how to rock out, so much more interesting than button pushing. The crowd lap it up and give him a good applause at the end. Next up is Ian ‘Spewie’ Rogers aka AMBROSE CHAPEL … To be honest I don’t take too much notice of the first few minutes of his set but the ominous sound that starts to shriek out from the PA grabs my attention. I spin around to see him wearing a fucking raincoat; this is a common sight when you see Ian play solo, I swear it’s his PVC security blanket (I call it his ‘doom jacket’), but seriously, all jokes aside, when the coat’s ON and the hood comes over his head, look out, shit is going to get brutal.

Ambrose Chapel rips a perfect set of laptop doom. Really I wonder where this is going to go, he tells me of future plans for the Chapel project and I’m looking forward to it. Next up are sonic warlords Die On Planes, great guys who know how to use dynamics and gain structures superbly; their set is tight but short, it was weird and kind of felt like it was as little as 10 minutes. The crowd got pretty into it but still seemed reluctant to get into the main frame. Woodlands has this kind of sonic sweet spot, where the soundwaves enter your body not just through your ears: it’s not for the faint hearted, it’s pretty much anywhere on the dance floor, the closer to centre the better.

I decide to follow suit and play on the floor; three out of four of tonight’s bands have chosen it as their location. For me it’s about breaking down barriers between performer and audience, which certainly end up getting broken down tonight. I kick off my set and am pretty damn excited about nothing more than stamping on a beaut new custom-made pedal I have in my arsenal tonight by electronic guru Tim from Tym’s Guitars. This is literally a prototype and I can’t believe I’m using it live. As the set progresses I get more and more excited to get to the ‘big’ sections when I can unleash the new bottom end that has been so sadly missing of late. The Woodlands’ PA is ripping tonight and Luke is tuning it to within an inch of its life. Matt Brady pumps the shit out of his new toy, a bubble machine and it makes for a hairy ride as more and more bubbles pop over me and my gear and keys start getting slippery. There’s one track I play all on blacks and with my heavy hand it means my fingers are sliding all over the place. There’s a few wayward notes but I get over it and really don’t know if anyone even notices.

I finish up with epic track ‘Urine Mote’, an easy one to play (three chord progression) but super fun; the problem is my foldback is a bit out of whack with this one and my timing goes way out. I go with it and just dissolve the whole thing into a wayward wall of noise. I modulate things and let them get really nasty before tuning everything to eleven and cutting the release on the synth back to nothing. It means I can kill everything instantly, kinda like hitting a brick wall at 200kph, but in reverse. The crowd (well, the boys up the front) are a little unruly: one decided he wanted to play on after I’d finished but with my synth, it’s kind of the equivalent of kissing my fiancée or scratching my car so I inform him sternly that it’s not on; he didn’t really get the message, it was safe to say all his brains were in his biceps (probably with a lot of protein shakes too) so he was hastily removed from the venue.

All in all it was a super fun night and probably my most favourite AXXONN gig in Brisbane, not the biggest but the vibe was sweet.

Brisbane 9.2/10

Part one of the AXXONN tour blog can be found here.

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by collapseboard