King Alexander

“FFNGRRNGZRNCHRZXXXxxxx”, concrete slabs of noise arrive from nowhere, slap crash into the centre of the room. Fuck Buttons have turned the laptop on. One second there is chatter, clinking glasses and greetings, the next all is wiped-clean by blocks of impure sound. What is initially impenetrable, becomes slowly understandable as the frequencies mutate nearer and farther from each other; changing intervals creating changing tones of white noise. Hair Police created thick grinding noise like this in ‘Dawn Dead’, but Fuck Buttons are taking this sound into an evolutionary process: the dissonance between tones creates buzzing, the buzzing creates rhythms, rhythm creates motion, and the motion is visceral tribal drumming. This is more parts playful than frightening, tiptoeing the borderline where playfulness turns nasty. It must be playful; a gameboy is utilised, washing machine cylinder is rolled, shaken, electrified. It must be frightening; the two Fuck Buttons scream, mouths agape and tonsils shaking. They turn the laptop off to halt all sound. Our ears are warmed, but a rest is appreciated before they smoulder and burn.

Scarecrows on the other hand, how I could listen to you all night. How you contort your jazz, keeping it soft and velveteen but never moving into lounge territory. How you lay out sheets of blues and greens, then flash, nay stab, over it with rainbow bright harmonies. On such a small stage, the collection of instruments fight for space and fight to take the melody. From violin, to trumpet, to keys to bass, movement between instruments and movement between moods is fluid. Somehow, and it’s not as simple as it sounds, scarecrows find a space wedged between understated post-rock, almost Explosions in the Sky, and the jazz (for those who aren’t real jazz-hounds) of ‘Feast of Wire’ era Calexico.

In some ways, the evening peaks too early; from listening to multi-instrument playing genre-bending melodies, we swap back to stop-start screeching raw-k. It could seem regressive, but these bands do the aforementioned guitar assault in a way that deserves your attention. King Alexander have a pierce-point voiced grrrl, singing “do you respect me? / do YOU respect me?”, commanding your attention like it’s a Bikini Kill concert circa 1993. Their guitars are as serrated and insulting as their deceased Cardiff neighbours, Mclusky. Although not as verbally insulting, this quasi-feminism still wants some revenge: “If only there was something / hiding in the bushes / waiting for you on your way home!”

Ack Ack Ack could be lambasting us with the most shit-hot of political theorems for all we know, but it would be wasted singing through a gas-mask, so I take it as unlikely. Gas-masks can work wonders on a face, an otherwise polite and friendly aspect can quickly turn alien and intimidating. You’d think breathing would be problematic, but Ackx3 are slicing and chopping at guitar strings as if they have access to oxygen tanks. These jerked-up, axe-chopped sounds can split brain cells. If the audience were lacking attention at one point, everyone is harpooned back now – whether we like it or not. And, even though I’m no sucker for punishment, I can’t help enjoy the sounds of my mind being disassembled.