June 2023: Portal To The God Damn Riff Dimension
Featuring Portals Festival, new music from The Ocean, and more
All hail bright futures for experimental rock
Touring in 2023 is no joke. Between the exorbitant costs of stringing together live dates, the rapacious policies of certain venues undercutting merch sales, the difficulties coming in to the UK, or in leaving it for mainland Europe, not to mention the legacy impact of a pandemic and the continual threat of cancellation due to sickness, and ensuant long-term health risk - well, kudos to all those who push through.
Given all this - it’s a joy that events such as Portals Festival exist. A niche, two-day indoor festival focused on weird experimental rock and metal music? Pulling in bands from across the UK but also big hitters and emergent stars of the scene from the US, Japan and Europe? Sure, if you can’t make it due to other Bank Holiday commitments, it can be a bit galling to miss the only London date of your favourite touring post-rock bands. But hey, at least they’re able to shape tours with these events, or even just play otherwise-impractical one-off shows. While ticket prices are up on previous years, for what you get this is extremely good value.
This year was my first attending Portals so I lack a frame of reference for the venue change from the Dome / Boston Music Room to EartH in Hackney, bringing the entire event into a single indoor space. Initial concerns about a congested one-way system and a restrictive re-entry policy proved unfounded - the entire setup was very smooth, with plenty of seating areas both in the Bar and the Theatre stages, clear signposting and helpful staff, and an inoffensive bump in my “stairs climbed” metrics on my Fitbit. And these are great stages - the Hall is an excellent space for heavier bands with great sound and sightlines, and the Theatre stage’s cavernous expanse, when paired with the right band, made for a truly huge sound and engrossing experience.
Look, I was always going to enjoy this, the line-up was stacked with some of my favourite bands and full days of live music tend to hit the spot. But this was a brilliantly curated event, where everyone I spoke with was unfailingly friendly and welcoming, and where the biggest concerns were around which band to partially miss in favour of food or a line-up clash. Cannot recommend highly enough and my only regret is having missed the Sunday!
This month’s playlist mostly covers bands from Portals as well as some other relevant cuts and new music. Scroll to the end or click to open in Spotify / TIDAL.
From the Pit: Portals Festival 2023 (Saturday)
EartH, London, 27th May 2023
The afternoon kicked off with Ogives Big Band, who warmed up a game crowd on the Theatre space with their schizophrenic song structures. Big crunching heavies and screams interspersed with fretboard noodling. Hundred Year Old Man opened proceedings on the Hall stage silhoutted in fog and darkness, augmenting their super atmospheric, almost doom metal sound with dual screaming vocalists. I liked what I saw of Astrosaur - an energetic instrumental three-piece powered by Motorhead-style drums pummelling you through riff after riff. There was clearly a lot of guitar heroics going on here as well, though from my position a lot was buried in the mix - the Theatre stage an unfortunate match-up for this type of sound.
I’d missed Bicurious at Arctangent Festival last year due to an early set time and a mild hangover, but we could hear how good they were even from the campsite. Up close, they’re simply amazing. A guitar/drums two-piece with vibrant, shapeshifting licks, riffs and tapping over octave pedals and loopers; occasional vocals designed to be chanted along to and wireless packs to ensure a big finale played within the crowd and up on the bar. Also treated to a new song in an almost Jamie Lenman style with much more singing. One of my favourite sets of the day.
Power duos are clearly in fashion this year with American anachronists ‘68 following with a highly unpredictable set. A powerful, post-hardcore adjacent sound peppered with deliberate humorous affectations (black tie garb, use of the crowd as an impromptu guitar stand, an ineffectual paper fan used to cool off mid-set). The frontman gives off vibes of Jeff Daniels in The Newsroom, but with the surrealism ramped to 100 and I guess country music replaced by punk? Handily dismantled the drumkit whilst they played their last song - nothing if not efficient.
You know what post-rock needs more of? Huge 15-piece bands with multiple percussionists, a horn section, string quartet and occasional nine-piece choir. Enter Human Pyramids and their euphoric orchestral / experimental sound, led by multi-instrumentalist Paul Russell running about the stage to conduct the strings, or harmonise the xylophones, or shred a bit on guitar, or just hype the crowd. The Theatre stage was perfect for this kind of broad spectacle. Definitely my favourite new dicovery of the weekend.
Erratum on last month’s edition - technically I had seen Lakes live before, but only a couple songs at a festival, owing to needing food and a sit-down. Stuck around for the full set at the Bar stage this time, the compressed layout of which was possibly not ideal for a six-piece (plus guest star Trumpet Tom) coming off a nightmare 24 hours of van breakdown. Nevertheless, the sweet harmonies and Midwest emo sound with pop sensibility held together well. Finishing early enough for me to catch the last song from AK/DK, whose two-piece double drums, double electronics had inspired a full dance party at the front of the Theatre.
Ah, Bossk. Everyone’s favourite Star Wars bounty hunter (no-one actually likes Dengar, folks), but also purveyors of dense, blues-y metal groove. Consecutive years of pandemic distruption and other festival clashes meant this was my fourth attempt at seeing them live but the first successful one, and well worth the wait. There’s clearly a great effort gone into shaping the texture and heaviness of the sound, with standout single Kobe hitting the perfect formula of mesmeric, glassy instrumentals leading into punishing riffs and screams.
The A.A. Williams formula of languid, dark ambient rock with haunting vocals building to a guitar tremolo picking crescendo may be a little predictable, but its execution both in writing and performance is nothing short of superb. There should be huge crossover appeal here - I can see this being just as compelling for those into, say, London Grammar as for your Explosions In The Sky fans.
Onto headliners And So I Watch You From Afar. In case you were wondering what the shtick here is - it’s big party math-rock. Yeah, that works for me. Backed by an impressive light show and a pogo-ing, moshing crowd chanting the unusual time signature riffs. It’s a weird and wonderful music scene and this was a true celebration of that.
Trains necessitated a departure before the end of the day (with the wonderfully named Big Lad scheduled to close out the Bar till 1am), but I did catch half an hour of the wonderfully avant-garde Nordic Giants. Decked out in full tribal outfits flanking either side of a stage dominated by a screen playing short films to the expansive, piano-driven soundtrack sound. Fully enthralling, at times disturbing - I seriously regret having to leave early, and I would definitely pay to see this show again.
See some self-recorded live clips on Twitter here: Human Pyramids | Bossk
On Rotation: The Ocean - Holocene
Released 19th May 2023 on Pelagic Records
A ninth album from post-metallers The Ocean (presumably) brings their multi-album geological era arc to a close. Changing up the writing process to drive each song’s conception from keyboards rather than guitars pays dividends here, playing out with a more nuanced, electronic-infused and original sound than the guitar heavies of previous albums.
This is rich progressive fare, utilising diverse instrumentation (horns, xylophone, sparse drum machines) with expertly-mixed songs of mostly understated heft. Off the bat we get the bouncing synths of Preboreal, which tightly builds over a menacing chord structure and meandering vocal line to a crunching, overpowering conclusion. The album really hits its stride with Atlantic, which nails the claustrophobic pacing of ramped up instrumentation and tension using deft modulations and its piercing dark guitar melody.
Throughout the vocal delivery is excellent - there’s no melismatic heroics here, just solid textural augments in melody and tone (see the mesmeric intro to Subboreal). There’s significantly less screams than on the Phanerozoic albums, but the judicious deployment of such wig-out moments (with the exception of the slightly overblown outro to Unconformities) gives a greater heft to these moments of onslaught. That track is redeemed by its guest appearance from Karin Park, who executes the well-trodden but effective trope of haunting female vocal over post-metal a la Converge/Chelsea Wolfe, topped off with a delightful major-key shift.
It’s not perfect the whole way through - the lull between Preboreal and Atlantic leaves something to be desired, and the closing tracks become less tactical and more base in their heaviness. The vinyl version cynically omits a mid-album track in favour of a bonus 10” only in the boxset. I also have no idea who the instrumental version of this album is for? (This is probably a wider gripe - progressive music isn’t natural karaoke fodder, and you’d never get a “no guitars” or “no synths” version of an album, but I’ll get off the soapbox now.) But there’s enough here to have me on both repeat listening and exploring their back catalogue, and wondering what might come next…
Listen on Spotify | Listen on TIDAL
Other News
Cult of Luna have released a new concert film & documentary, Full Moon, showcasing their Europe 2023 tour. It’s immaculately produced and adds to a growing body of cool material from the band beyond albums (see also: The Long Road North video game on Steam).
In other Cult of Luna news - the long-postponed Beyond The Redshift festival will now take place on 20th October across the O2 Forum Kentish Town, The Dome and Boston Music Room. First wave of acts announced includes Birds In Row, TRENCH, Ştiu Nu Ştiu, and… *checks notes*… Napalm Death? As good an excuse as any to see You Suffer in all its glory live.
65daysofstatic are celebrating the ten-year anniversary of Wild Light, and have re-activated their Patreon to release weekly demos and cuttings from the archives. A full album playthrough tour is scheduled for September, which I will sadly be across the Atlantic for.
The aforementioned Human Pyramids have recently uploaded their award-winning VR documentary for the music video Crackle Pop to Youtube. Delving into the synesthesia response of individuals who see colour and shape with music, and then rendering their descriptions over the band performing in 360 around you. Worth a watch if you have a headset.
Have you heard… Tengil
Despite my natural aversion to Apple, there was a two-year window where I had iTunes Music with a heavy discount from my mobile network, and where I managed to get its new music recommendations calibrated to discover some fun, unpopular left-field stuff. (As great as the high-fidelity of TIDAL is, its music discovery features are… not good.) I don’t recall exactly when It’s All For Springtime, the lead single from Tengil’s sophomore album shouldhavebeens, came up on my New Music playlist, but I do remember how it completely blew me away.
This is epic, chaotic stuff - think the best shoegaze-y parts and singing from Sugar Horse on Dadcore World Cup. You’ve got desperately high-pitched vocals, guitar picking at a million miles an hour, blast beats as the default drum pattern. There’s a nine-second song of silence whose only purpose seems to be to make the album song titles read as a poem. It’s definitely Marmite stuff - maybe you’ll see the often off-kilter drums and reed-y production as genius stylistic choices, or maybe it’s just bad drumming and mixing? It’s certainly not dull.
Listen on Spotify | Listen on TIDAL
Hey, thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter. I’ve pushed this one out a little earlier than planned, partly to be proximate to Portals Festival as a review piece, but also because a month has felt like a long time to wait between releases. There’s probably too much packed in to go up to fortnightly, so I might go with the flow and have an ad-hoc “sub-monthly” schedule for now. Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed, please subscribe and let me know what you like! I have a couple of pieces I’m working on for future issues looking at generative AI in music, as well as plenty of gig and festival band reviews, so if that sounds at all appealing do sign up.