Health & Illness – Audio, Brighton – 19/4/10
3/5
By: Keri Kennedy
Congratulations are in order for the booker of tonight’s gig, not just for getting LA’s Health over to Brighton for one of just three UK gigs, but for booking Illness as support – surely one of the town’s best unsigned bands, and the perfect counter to Health’s ultra-ironic moniker.
Whereas Illness deliver taught, youthful spurts of noise punctuated with rhythmic right turns and u-turns, Health go the whole hog, all the way straight into your skull, at points beaming a combination of pure barbed noise (when at their best) at you full glare, and stuttering, overly constructed – gulp – prog at others. The first forty-five minutes of the set impress the most – and the earplugs given away free at the bar are vital if planning on doing anything that requires hearing for the next three days. When drummer Benjamin Jared Miller pounds his double bass pedal during ‘Death +’, it’s like a f*cking army are marching into town.
More bizarre though is the sight of John Famigletti flailing around onstage in quite possibly the worst shirt known to mankind. The guy has limitless energy, and a defined role in Health as noisemaker, but whether or not this encompasses playing the band’s rumoured Zoothorn (a mic/pedal combo that makes a yelping sound) is unclear on the evidence of tonight’s show. To be classed in a group known for noise as a ‘noisemaker’, well, that tells you a lot about the guy – nevertheless though, tonight he’s magnetic. You can’t take your eyes off him.
Towards the end of the gig though, things take a definite turn for the worse. Perhaps it’s telling that the band are about to release a remix album, but as the processed beats take over from the live kit, the formula works less effectively, and Health turn from noise terrorists to merely the Pendulum it’s ok to like. The element of chaos, of not knowing what’s going to happen next, gets lost, and it all seems somewhat staged. Only when the band return for a 50-second encore, brutal and crunching, do the earlier joyous moments seem anything other than a memory.
Rude health? Not quite. They’re not dead though. Far from it.
Artists in this article: Health, Illness
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment