Gig review: Maquina @ The Dome, 20th May
I'll get right down to brass tacks: if you haven't seen Maquina live, you need to see Maquina live, and if you have seen Maquina live, then you need to go and see them again (but you probably don't need some midwit music blogger to tell you that).
The last time Portugal's hairiest industro-kraut-fuzz-noise-dance-rock trio descended upon fair London town, n0teeth unfortunately already had plans, but we weren't gonna let another opportunity slip through our greasy meathooks this time. Ever since our good friend A Model Of Control recommended them, Maquina's tunes have been in heavy rotation at Mr Internet dot biz HQ at all hours and all volumes.
We turned up at the Dome to find a completely differently laid out venue to the one in which we saw Die Krupps last year. It turns out the Dome contains two venues, one called Upstairs at the Dome which is downstairs, and another called Downstairs at the Dome which is upstairs. n0teeth has definitely got this the right way round and hasn't misunderstood some pretty basic fact of North London metaphysics after a decade+ of rave-induced brain damage.
Live as on record, Maquina are everything 2000s dance rock could have been but for its contractual obligations to American Apparel and clean, sterile, officially-sanctioned hipness. A whirlwind of cold steel and hot flesh, instead of a dribble of lukewarm piss in a pair of skinny jeans. The bass exploding from those Fender cabinets could have popped Lemmy's warts.
For about forty minutes there n0teeth almost understood what it was like to freak out to MC5 on bad acid and biker speed at some post-Manson, pre-Altamont happening; grooving and writhing as if under the hypnotic spell of some particularly loopy acid techno trance but sober to the giddy gills and hearing nothing much more elaborate than the combined efforts of a guitarist, a bassist and a (howling and screaming) drummer.
There's nothing retro or nostalgic about Maquina besides their hair (facial and otherwise). Their sound is pure forward propulsion, futurist speed and sweaty relentless energy; high power music by low tech means. It's the same distinctly human pulse which throbs beneath the techno-organic bombardments of your Factory Floors, your Scalers and your Mandy, Indianas (whom we had the pleasure of moshing & flailing to at Heaven a few weeks ago).
It's not just machinistic machismo for the sake of it. The Lisbon lads exude a cheerful raucousness; a sense that they're a chaotic party band whose sound is only just held together by the lockstep precision of that shrieking wildman behind the drumkit. His formidable lung power suggests he could comfortably eat your favourite death metal vocalist for breakfast but the white-hot fury is deployed with a mile-wide shit-eating grin.
n0teeth won't tell you again. Go and see Maquina. Get sweaty, get loud, get physical.
Obrigado, fellas.