Moving Units / Klang - London Highbury Buffalo Bar - 1/4/03
3/5
By: Toby L
It's the real spirit of punk, that's what it is. Providers and nurturers of 21st C. guitar-driven vivacity and a self-fulfilling urge to rage along musically in a scene fashion-coordinated or not, Artrocker tonight provide the platform for two bands possibly the most uniquely bizarre in London for the ensuing month, and it makes for effectively surreal viewing.
It's Klang first up, and - yes - we've seen her before; ex-Elastica's Donna Matthews residing once again in the limelight, guitar, vox and groomed fringe, backed with new entrants, wide-eyed Isabel Weidner on bass and cap-adorning drummer, Keisuke Hiratsuka. Presumably, if there's one aim in the band's repertoire and icy live-show, it's to instil a non-conformist tendency to provide a sultry, tinny racket, whilst never really play many chords. Yes, a tad like her old band then.
And, like Matthews' prior guise, it's altogether inherently irresistible - steely smacks on her Rickenbacker colliding with untreated pummels of deep reverberations in Isabel's direction, and Hiratsuka's minimalist time-keeping amassing the produce to a glaringly stark-rock prospect; just look at the chilling 'Outside My Area', or debut-single, 'L.O.V.E' - the letters declared over a bleak backdrop of late-70s understatement, a miracle case of instrumental-perversity over predictability. It's raw, not wholly dynamic and could incur your grand-parents a heart-attack, but there's a sumptuous tone to the whole affair that proves demandingly alluring. No surprise that, following their set, a bag-full of self-recorded cassette-tapes sell out in one minute flat - souvenirs for the, rightfully, newly-devoted.
Moving Units, at first, wouldn't seem to have it as easy. Mid-set, frontman and chief-howler Blake Miller's guitar-string snaps. He spends five minutes replacing it in pure silence, onstage. As if that weren't enough, drummer Chris Hathwell loses his sticks mid-performance, as they fly into the air. And that happens twice.
So, how come MU still manage to provide a feverish performance most bands their level - i.e. recent tour-mates of Hot Hot Heat and The Pattern, with a debut-EP soon-to-emerge - fail to produce, even after all the initial promise? Let's be honest here - when the media and radio start wilfully blurting a band's name off to be a part of a dynamic new scene and a raging, hormonal feast of hooks-ridden rock-disco, you'd be right to become apprehensive... But Moving Units will remove your inhibitions with their four-minute tinges of darkly brooding joy and yelping shrieks, eccentrically capped by Miller's on-the-spot gyrations, Hathwell's fearful display of Keith Moon-esque nuttiness and bassist Johan Begoli's almost-Swedish restrained cool.
'A series of character-driven, severe heart-palpitations and blows to the head' seem the nearest sound-depiction in words, as exemplified with the aptly-named car-crash of noise that forms 'Melodrama', the anthemic, fist-in-the-air righteousness of 'Between Us & Them' and a show-ending that comprises cow-bells, distortion and lots of muso stroppiness to first-rate effect. As you do.
Brutally savage, and occasionally one-cannoned it may sometimes reveal, they sure ignite and fuel one fire in the disco that's unlikely to subside any time before this summer; so slip on your dancing-shoes and prepare yourselves for one fiercely embarrassing boogie.
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