Drop Dead Festival

Day 4 - Bands in order of appearance:

Death Of Abel
Bloodygrave & Die Lust
Gemeine Gesteine
Soviet Soviet
King Dude
Velvet Condom
Modern Witch
Phoenix Catscratch
Reliq
TheLegendary Pink Dots

ADS, Berlin
Sunday September 4 2011

Fourth day of our Drop Dead oddyssey. Don't peak too soon, kids, we've still got another two days to go.

Fortunately, Death Of Abel is a fairly low-key opener: a neo-folk trio, getting all angsty over a plangent guitar. Occasionally, one of the trio beats out a tattoo on a floor tom (for that essential neo-military effect), and the singer has moments of high dudgeon (for that essential neo-emotional effect), but in the main the band trundle along in a fairly civilized fashion, so it's not like we're obliged to hit the ground partying tonight. We can sit in the corner and let Death Of Abel's Germanic angst and plangent strumming flow past like a neofolk version of the river Spree. Just not quite as wet.

But a little plangent strumming goes a long way with me. Let's see what's happening in the big room. Oh, look, here's Bloodygrave & Die Lust. With a name like that, this band should surely do goofball horrorpunk songs about zombies. Surprisingly enough, they're nothing like the name implies. Instead, two figures, mere silhouettes against the lights, generate an old-school electronica sound, as if channelling the spirit of 1980s Sheffield.

The Cabaret Voltaire-ness of the performance is incongruously counterpointed by one band member's surrealist psychobilly quiff - c'mon, with a hairstyle like that, there must be some songs about zombies in the equation somewhere. But if the band has any such stuff, thay ain't playing it tonight.

Back to the back room now, which seems to be poulated by earnest avant-rock types watching a band which is also populated by earnest avant-rock types.

This is Gemeine Gesteine, who seem to take their cue from all of Sonic Youth's cerebral and introspective bits. It's interesting for the duration of a few songs, but there's only so much earnestness I can take at this hour of the evening. Gemeine Gesteine trundle industriously onward until it gets to the point where I'd almost welcome a song about zombies.

So we'll return to the big room now, where we can catch the first band of the night that's at home to The Rock.

Soviet Soviet come from Italy, not (as you might guess) Russia. I don't even know if you could get away with a name like Soviet Soviet in Russia today. If you did it ironically, perhaps.

But I digress. Soviet Soviet are a kind of Placebo-meets-Pixies thing, all high-tension new-wavey rock songs driven along by a gritty, Jean-Jaques Burnel bass, with guitar sweeping over the top like an out of control ice skater, and a vocal yelp that reminds me - somehat unexpectedly - of Nick Cash of 999.

There, I bet Soviet Soviet never expected to get an old punk comparison. But the band do have an energy and an intensity that is as punk as you'll get, so maybe there's some logic in there somewhere. Yes, I dig Soviet Soviet. Drop Dead needs this kind of post-punky edge.

The back room could certainly use a little post-punk edge right now. I cautiously put my head round the door to find that things have gone all strummy again. Who's booking he bands in here, Joe Strummer? On the back room stage at this moment we find King Dude - a bloke, a guitar, and, you've guessed it, some strumming. Well, let's give hm a song or two just in case something interesting happens.

I'm just about coming round to a vague appreciation of King Dude's meandering neo-folk when I catch the lyric: "We dance like birds in the air". Um, I don't know if you've noticed this, Dude, but birds don't dance in the air. They fly. C'mon, let's get outta here before he tries to get us to swim like ostriches, or something.

Fortunately, the main room still has its post-punk juice flowing. Velvet Condom are on stage now, giving it their Soft Cell-meets-T. Rex ramalama - an odd combination of influences that actually works rather well. The guitarist hurls himself about, whacking out the powerchords like he's ripping telephone directories in half, while forcibly expressing his new wave weltschmerz on the vocal. Meanwhile, his colleague on the keyboard maintains his reserve and generally does a good job of being The Sensible One.

Velvet Condom seem to live a double life. The band's recorded works are dominated by electronics, and far more downbeat and restrained than the live incarnation. Which is all good, but the show is the thing. I can't help thinking Velvet Condom really need to bottle their live essence.

In a way, Modern Witch are also a band with a dual personality. Much of their recorded stuff is lo-fi electronic fuzziness, bedroom instrumentals with frayed-at-the-edges production values. I had the vague impression that the band was some sort of crash-landed version of the Flying Lizards, all DIY messthetics and frosty atmospherics emanating from vintage synths. But, on stage, they're not like that at all.

There are two Modern Witches - a bloke in a Hawaiian shirt, attending to the electronics, and a girl in a highly un-punk yellow dress, who leads the partying. Yes, partying. For Modern Witch turn out to be a weirdly warm, decidedly danceable, counter-intuitive party band. It's a bizzarro-electronica twanky party, mind, with those ragged edges much in evidence in the sound, and plenty of out-there vocalisations and distorted beat workouts backing it all up. But with Ms Witch stomping and grooving up front it's clear that the general idea is to cut loose and groove.

The band knock off their version of Red Zebra's 'I Can't Live In A Living Room', and if the song throws a rather wan light on Modern Witch's own songwriting - because their original material doesn't have that kind of memorable odd-popness to it - nobody in Drop Dead's back room is going to quibble tonight. Who knew these spooked DIY noisemakers would be such fun?

Under a barrage of blue light, Phoenix Catscratch are scratching up the main stage. I always think this band would clean up in the East London new wave scene if they ever got to play to that audience. Berlin is as close as they've come so far, which I suppose for a band from Athens counts as almost there. What's more, Phoenix Catscratch have supported S.C.U.M and The Horrors in Greece, which isn't bad going. There are plenty of bands in London - right on the spot - who haven't managed to get plum slots like that. So, in the new wave success stakes, Phoenix Catscratch aren't doing badly.

What Phoenix Catscratch are doing right now is making a noise like electric cables being tied in knots. There's a gusty ebb and flow to the music, and a tight, tenacious grip on a no-frills new wave aesthetic. Phoenix Catscratch are all twitching rhythm and scrape-your-bones guitar, squalling synth and a deadpan male/female vocal to-and-fro. They're a lugubrious combination of Devo and the B52s, a strange but inspired influence mash-up that works brilliantly in a generic area where too many bands can't see further than Joy Division's long shadow. The Drop Dead crowd has certainly taken Phoenix Catscratch to their hearts, at any rate: the band plays to a sea of bopping bodies. If the band can do it here, they could surely do it in (say) the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen. But who's going to make it so?

Meanwhile, in the back room, things are getting heavy. Reliq are an exercise in weighty doom-wave, but filtered through a left-field sensibility which means they steer clear of the full ghastliness of heavy metal. For this, I am suitably grateful.

Reliq thunder and grind like an army of concrete mixers, all avant-rock angles and lead weights on every crunchy powerchord. In a way, they're like a heavier Manflu, and I suspect both bands probably have the same neoprog/sludgecore influences kicking about in the background: a little bit of Kyuss, some Electric Wizard, Hawkwind at their most gonzoid. Betcha I'd find that stuff in Reliq's record collection if I broke into their house one night. Not that I'd try that, mind. They're far too scary.

But Reliq have a secret weapon the old-school sludgers can't match: a female vocalist who rides the band's slow 'n' low styings all the way to the basement. While I can do without her attempts at that identikit-metal "Huuuurrgh!" noise (everybody two-bit metal vocalist does that these days, which in my view is a good reason not to do it), she's a key element in Reliq's out-there sensibility. Yeah, I'm down with Reliq. However low you can you go, Reliq will take you below.

It's headline time in the big room, and, although the festival is by no means over (still those two more days, remember?) tonight's final band counts as the overall Drop Dead headliner this year. The Legendary Pink Dots are here to tell us some strange tales and mess our heads up with their avant-everything post-rock sonic landscapes.

The Dots are only tangentally connected to ye olde rock 'n' roll. They don't nail everything to a 4/4 beat, and their choruses don't go yeah yeah yeah.

The Dots do, however, have some extravagant outbursts of guitar-scribble, which spreads itself like a brilliant mess over the oddly-patterned electronic carpet. The sound is all hiss and shudder, rising from ambiences to climaxes, and over all this Edward Ka-Spel, the Dots' very own electric wizard, weaves his weirdness. Part other-worldly shaman, part eccentric geography teacher, he conjures up whole universes in a Dagenham accent.

It says much for the Dots' bizarre theatricality that even a power cut in the middle of the set seems like part of the show. But then, power restored, the band roll onward, the sound building and swelling, until 'Russian Roulette', a thing of slinky foreboding on record, tonight becomes a righteous caterwaul in the face of pesky reality. "Your number's up! The chips are down! You thought you counted!" shrieks Edward Ka-Spel, as if he's having an epiphany in a boiling stew of guitar thrashing and hellfire electronics. This is the Dots at their cryptic best, the recondite harbingers of who knows what. You never quite know what Edward Ka-Spel is on about, but whatever it is, it's coming to get you.

OK, lets head for the ausgang, before daylight gets us. Days five and six follow...

On to Day 5 of the Drop Dead Festival here.

Back to Day 3 of the Drop Dead Festival here.

The Legendary Pink Dots: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Reliq: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Phoenix Catscratch: MySpace | Facebook

Modern Witch: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Velvet Condom: Website | MySpace | Facebook

King Dude: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Soviet Soviet: MySpace | Facebook

Gemeine Gesteine: Website | MySpace

Bloodygrave & Die Lust: Website | Facebook

Death Of Abel: Website | Facebook

Drop Dead Festival: Website | MySpace | Facebook

For more photos from the Drop Dead Festival, find the bands by name here.