Esben and the Witch
Blood Music
Corsica Studios, London
Wednesday November 23 2011

If there isn't already such a thing as post-krautrock, I think Blood Music have just invented it.

They fill this south London railway arch with strange, relentless rhythm-pulses and impressionistic scribbles of guitar. The band ain't much to look at - three scruffy geeks, heads-down and intent - but the noise they make surges and expands and demands your attention. They're almost wilfully anti-commercial, but I guess that's half the point.

Blood Music's dressed-down, downbeat demeanour and their minimal vocals probably ensure the band will remain a cult act among kosmiche-heads, but I dare say Blood Music will be happy with that fate. It's not like they're trying to be the Arctic Monkeys, after all.

Now that we're talking about relentless rhythm pulses and impressionistic scribbles of guitar, we should note that all of the above also apply, in an equal-but-different kind of way, to Esben and the Witch. But in the case of our headliners, there's also the addition of an unerring sense of theatre, a willingness to turn the dramatics up to eleven, and, underpinning the lot, songs constructed from towering atmospherics, bursts of squalling guitar, and outbreaks of sudden percussion.

Esben and the WitchEven before the band take the stage, we're alerted to the fact that Esben And The Witch don't inhabit the conventional rock band zone by the careful placement of the band's on-stage props. Transparent heads gaze blankly at the audience, lit from beneath by little LED clusters. More LEDs light up fearsome array of effects and the underside of the drum - yes, that's drum, singular: Esben And The Witch don't have anything so commonplace as a standard drum kit.

The lighting is stark white, angled upwards, making columns in the smoke. Bizarrely, the band also appear to have an old home hi-fi on stage, its battered speakers pushed right up to the edge of the stage, firing point-blank into the crowd. The ambience is half David Bowie (Thin White Duke era) and half Aleister Crowley (mad old druggie era), with a side order of eccentric electronics geek. The band haven't played a note yet, and I like 'em already.

And now, here comes the music, descending on us like an electrical storm over Lambeth. Flailing in the fog, vocalist/bassist/percussionist Rachel Davies multi-tasks like a heroine. Over in the dark corner, guitarist Daniel Copeman bunches over his guitar, scrabbling at it as if trying to tangle the strings. Meanwhile, opposite, the bespectacled and studious, Thomas Fisher conjures atmospheres out of a keyboard.

The three band members are unassuming and resolutely un-glam - but then, with music like this, and a stage presentation that's all about the atmosphere, you don't need sequins. The sound builds into fearsome, booming resonances, all sheets of skidding guitar and machine-gun bursts hammered out on that one long-suffering drum.

But then, just when you think it's all going to hit a crescendo like a stormy sea breaking on rocks, the band step back from their own hurricane and allow a touch of delicacy to come through. Esben And The Witch can swing from brutal to delicate in a second, from a percussive onslaught to swooning fragility, and somehow make this ebb and flow seem entirely natural.

As the band launch into 'Swans' the keyboard dies, but Daniel Copeman covers the sudden absence of sound with a meticulous jangle of guitar, Rrachel Davies keeps the vocals coming, and I'm sure half the audience didn't even spot the problem. 'Marching Song', the band's big anthem, hauls everything unequivocally back on track - it's a haunted hymn, all dynamics and spookiness, a one-song encapsulation of what Esben And The Witch are all about.

After the show, it's almost a surprise to walk out of the venue and find that the prosaic, grubby streets of south London still exist. If a haunted forest had grown up around the venue while Esben And The Witch were on stage, somehow I would not have been even slightly surprised.

Esben and the Witch: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Blood Music: Website | Facebook

For more photos from this gig, find Esben And The Witch by name here.