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get hustle 200
Lineup: Get Hustle
Date: 21/09/2007
Price: £5/£6
Info: + Spin Spin The Dog + Wander Phantom (ex-The Swarm)
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by Jordan Dowling

Some thing feels slightly unusual. Hundreds of people, resplendent in various band t-shirts, are crowding the pavement outside a 100-capacity venue. Outside, and even inside, tickets are hurriedly being sold for double-figure amounts. Bunkers Hill’s location, built right onto Nottingham Ice Arena, gives things away. Tonight Incubus are in town; people going to ‘the gig’ are taking a hundred steps left. Clarity. For a few minutes at least.

Openers Wander Phantom are birthed from the ashes of The Swarm, but the Derby based four-piece are no majestic phoenixes; they are circling vultures with Kevlar beaks. Each flap of a wing brings tremors and thunder storms. The two basses duelling for prominence occasionally weigh down the songs and the doom-laden, almost spoken, vocals can grate. But for the most part they create a pretty impressive path of destruction, running somewhere between the relentless riffage of early Pelican and the unhinged rock of Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster.

But for sheer mayhem and fearless experimentation Get Hustle (pictured) take gold tonight. It’s easy to point fingers in the vague direction of Lightning Bolt, Hella, The Locust or, y’know, any band that blurs the boundaries between music and noise, or simply push any boundaries; the difference here is that Get Hustle retain the old rock and roll spirit. There can be no accusations of muso wankery or noise for the sake of noise: Get Hustle make you believe in what you are hearing. They make you feel it, as real as sweat dripping down your back or goosebumps pock-marking the back of your neck.

And because of this there is always a sense of control rooted in the midriff of every aside and tangent the band take you on. You get lost in the music, in the walls of rusty electronic noise, pneumatic drill drumming and predatory wails. But the band never get lost themselves. In a small room next to a sold-out arena holding 'the night’s gig', it all makes sense. Wish you were here? You damn well ought to.

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spin spin...

...the dogs!

They were incredible too. I saw the gig before their hiatus when they supported Jackie O-Motherfucker and Lightning Bolt almost three years ago and I remember all the completely bonkers antics, but I'd forgotten how darned fucking good their songs are.

Get Hustle were indeed wondrous too. That last song with the tape looped organ and mind-bogglingly good drumming...wow!


SSTD

Spin Spin The Dogs were amazing....why no mention??? WP were standard, ok stuff, better than The Swarm were but not my cup of tea...but SSTD and Get Hustle were both insanely great.





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