The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower

Once an industrial sprawl of custard making activity in the early 20th Century, Birmingham’s Custard Factory – originally built by Sir John Bird, the inventor of custard no less – in 2005 is now an achingly hip sprawl of art studios, galleries, cafes and a 40 ft sculpture made of earth, fire and water called The Green Man. Even as you enter its confines the sheer modernity of the place strikes you through protruding architecture and stylish bars that surround what appears to be an outdoor swimming pool outside tonight’s venue The Medicine Bar! That's right, an actual fully functional swimming pool.

Of course the highly erratic noise emanating around this circular area fits into such surroundings perfectly. Open the glass doors into the venue and the sweltering racket assaults you like a shower of glass piercing through your forehead. Tech-noise arsonists Seduced Woman Dead clearly show little remorse in their affliction. These tight-trousered locals let loose a playfully rich tapestry of styles that veer from crushing grooves to squealing dissonance and camp spoilt brat whines, and often within the same 10 seconds! Amidst this corrosive clamour vague slithers of melody are squeezed out, only to be vaporized by the sheer intensity of their attack and made all the more maddening by hand claps in ‘A Selection of Crow Calls’ that attempt to introduce some warped dance dynamic to the stage. Indeed, those brave few that do attempt to dance end up looking like coked-up Thunderbirds puppets in the process!

New kids on the block maybe, but witnessing them tonight its clear that SWD possess something so fresh and innovative it’ll make your ears pop!

Noise Noise Allure! on the other hand are just plain scary. Imagine being invited to the annual village barn-dance in the eerie American town that played host to Rob Zombie’s disturbing horror-comedy House of 1000 Corpses. Imagine a room filled with deranged psychotics and wild-eyed freaks having a ho-down, and now imagine Noise Noise Allure as their house band. See what I mean? Scary stuff. Fronted by a grown man dressed like a typical 1940s child with neat, comb-over hair, thigh-length shorts and polo shirt - who forever squirms and stomps about the stage like a kid who's just been sent to bed for hitting the neighbours cat with a slingshot - NNA are somewhat of a psychiatrist's dream. Not least because either side of this weirdo his guitarist / bassist cohorts intensify the surrealism by sporting perpetually grinning see-through masks and groove with all the funk and soul of experienced soul-funk legends. But musically they're even harder to pin down.

Like Daughters brainwashed with a disco-funk infatuation this is a freakish amalgam that jars and stutters like a de-railed train at the hands of a drunken British eccentric. The guys in NNA clearly revel in such emancipatory freedom, screaming undecipherable squeals inbetween songs, guitarists still grinning gleefully while all around them pints are left unsipped as punters attempt to get their heads round such compelling lunacy. Mad as a hatter, all of them but an utterly alluring noise none the less.

Thing is though, if it’s deformed, outlandish genre-rodgering you’re after then few come more chaotically destructive than San Diego jazz-punk hybrid The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. While less unpredictable than their predecessors, these madcap Americans are still on a mission to dismantle all semblance of form to their music, and in the campest way imaginable. Guitars lunge; feet stomp; backs arch and band members waver about the stage as if drunk on some kind of kinetic punk rock energy, clinging onto microphones with their bare teeth as spiky drum patterns ricochet off their spasming bodies. It’s seems an intensely arduous task recreating the energy displayed on their recent ‘… Fascist Brothel’ album, but these guys are clearly up to the role, if a little choreographed and rehearsed in their moves.

Once the distortion dissipates none of us are really quite sure how to react, as if the stage was somehow a time portal into the future of punk rock and, now it’s finished, makes the prospect of scrolling through our ipod library on the train home an outdated, mind-numbingly dreary experience in comparison. If this really is the future of punk who knows what they’ll be capable of in a years time!