Invada Invasion (Mogwai, Zu, Crippled Black Phoenix) – Colston Hall, Bristol 26/09/09

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Photo Credit: Steve @ Pit Pony

To celebrate the £20 million renovation of Bristol’s premier arts venue, Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame was asked to curate a suitable line-up of bands to inaugurate the event. Why they sanctioned so many bands who play at volumes that’d structurally endanger the most sturdy building is anyone’s guess, but at least it resulted in an excellent, if sometimes frustrating evening of EXCEPTIONAL LOUDNESS.

Thought Forms sent the tone nicely as their stately if derivative post-rock encompassed the foyer of the newly renovated hall; although they strictly adhered to the Explosions In The Sky approved soft-loud template, they were a much more palatable experience than the simply odd Team Brick. Curious if nothing else, his atonal choral-and-orchestra composition which seemed to be out-of-sync and devoid of anything approaching conventional melody was certainly “different,” although here I’d probably define “different” as “a bit shit.” One would think that the added extravagance of an orchestra would be a boon to Crippled Black Phoenix, whose music is usually as restrained as a Glenn Beck polemic but alas, it was not to be. Whilst their previous week’s London show rocked in every sense of the word, their scope and intensity seemed lost in the expanse of the Main Hall, coming across as a bit limp and self-indulgent. True, the last couple of songs were commendably epic (mainly because they actually used the orchestra in a non-stupid way) but there’s no denying this was a missed opportunity.

A cursory examination of Rome’s premier noise/free jazz/experimental metal combo Zu confirmed their just as blackly dense and unforgiving live as they are on record, but I soon departed their squalls of baritone sax and doom-y cacophonising for the more danceable delights of Zun Zun Egui. The oddly named three-piece first piqued my interest when an acquaintance described them as “tropical grunge” and indeed, that’s as good a description as any for this most idiosyncratic of bands (although personally I’d plump for “bhangra funk.”) Like a laid-back, less ear-piercing version of Ponytail, their left-field genre-mashing grooves provided a wonderful antidote to all the sledgehammer post-rock noise that otherwise dominated the event, which made it a damn shame the latter half of their set coincided with the start of headliners Mogwai. Needless to say, the Scottish post-rock veterans didn’t disappoint with a set played at such ridiculous volumes I’m sure I’ll never be able to hear certain frequencies again. Yes, most of their songs do sound the same- there’s only so much you can do with glacially-building guitar-centric crescendos but it’s delivered with such visceral force that it just doesn’t matter. The point is, if you can leave a show with a smile on your face even though you’ve just damaged your ears beyond redemption, I reckon it probably counts as a success.