The
Hope + Ruin, Brighton, Wed 17th June
Happening
to walk past the venue earlier in the day, I found they've recently
placed one of those old-fashioned long white name strips outside. So
the names Irmler and Liebezeit were spelt out to one of Brighton's
busiest streets. And of course most simply trudged straight past.
While to those of us steeped in Krautrock lore those lengthy,
foreign-sounding and entirely unprepossessing names couldn't seem
more enticing. However much it might sound like hyperbole the bands
they stemmed from, Can and Faust, were credible contenders for the
most important band in the history of everything, ever.
How
could you sum up the appeal? The nearest I could manage, at least for
comics fans, would be when Marvel and DC staged the Superman and
Spider-man team-up. It's not just two greats, its two reality systems
coming together. Liebezeit drummed with Can, Zen masters of metronony
who could take a groove to trance states. Meanwhile Irmler played
home-made keyboards plus any number of other invented or extemporised
instruments in a multitudinous collective who brimmed with deranged
invention. Like the Velvets, they could coin and discard musical
styles and ideas which later bands would build careers around. While
Can's method was to boil music down, Faust's was to rip it apart.
While Can's credo was less is more, Faust's was that more could be
more too. Put them together, I wondered, and what do you get?
The
result is perhaps closer to Neu!, the third great Krautrock band,
than either outfit they were in. There's the same sense of music as a
serene, gliding force, as if untroubled by gravity. As is always the
distinction between great and merely good musicians, what they did
didn't seem impressively hard so much as infectiously easy. You felt
they could have continued playing for hours without breaking a sweat
or furrowing a brow. You felt like anyone else cold have got up and
joined in, just through getting swept up in the sheer joy of it.
While
drums often merely provide the base line for other instruments to
jump up and down on, here neither instrument led. When I saw Irmler
earlier this year, accompanied only by a woman drawing, I didn't feel
it that engaging. Yet give him another musician to spark off and the
magic is soon unleashed.
Liebezeit
played ostensibly simple patterns, but subtly shifting throughout.
Jah Wobble has compared his playing to a man running, and for all its
marshalling of the power of repetition there's something very organic
about it. Rolls often kick off with a lift, throwing the emphasis on
their beginning. Rather than dominating Irmler would often pass
through sections of tone and washes, like colour fields. Only for the
last number did he – literally and metaphorically – pull out the
stops for some powerful surges.
Sometimes
you get the feeling people come out to see great musicians from past
eras just to say they've seen them. It's like a form of
commemoration. Not this time. In the small but crowded Hope, the
mesmerising set went down a storm. What are Irmler and Liebezeit
doing these days? More of what they've always done. If that's not
inspirational, I can't imagine what is.
My
starter's guide to Krautrock is here..
The
same tour but from Glasgow...
Coming soon! Speaking of less is more, expect more of less soon...
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