Power noise has now been around for so long it must surely have achieved the same level of cultural cachet as its less rhythmic, sex crime obssesed ancestor, power electronics. At least I assume it has, because half an hour from close of business on Thursday our good pal M rang to say he had a spare ticket to see one of the subgenre's heavyweights not on the top floor of Electrowerkz on Saturday night but on South London's hippest industrial estate that very evening.
Granted, the Quietus has yet to afford the likes of Hypnoskull or Manufactura the same damp-gussetted adulation it gave Consumer Electronics at the height of techno-industrial-noise-Other in 2014 or so. But the fact that Imminent (fka Imminent Starvation; I'm glad somebody finally fed the poor bastard) can headline a show at a non-"scene" venue like Ormside Projects, far outside the North London goth-industrial complex, shows that the Ant-Zen sound has breached containment and found favour among audiences who didn't necessarily grow up arguing whether Terrorfakt had sold out by signing to Metropolis with trenchcoated, greasy ponytailed Americans on the Sykospark forums.
Normal fans of weird & extreme music, in other words.
Yeah Yeah (South Bermondsey) Industrial Estate
We arrived at the venue to the delicious smell of baked goods from the dark kitchen opposite. London is blessed to still have such a fine cluster of experimental electronic venues around this Peckham/Bermondsey/New Cross hinterland "between Millwall and the incinerator" (thanks M), which is home to Venue 18 MOT, Avalon Cafe and others: at some point the area will be getting a new Overground station, a double edged sword which will simultaneously make it easier for us bridge & tunnellers to get here and make it easier for developers to justify demolishing the venues that are the very reasons for us making the journey from north of the river.
Inside, Conrad Pack, a new name to us, was warming up the crowd with an apparently all-live collection of satisfyingly bassy, syncopated sounds shaking their way to our bones via the early 2010s post-dubstep/almost-techno hinterlands. It's Simon Reynolds' hardcore continuuum and we're all just vibing in it.
The YoD Squad
Second on this pleasingly eclectic but logical-when-you-think-about-it lineup was Years of Denial. Not a band whose recorded output has ever quite made me leap across the room to rewind the track and crank up the volume, but I have an enormous amount of respect for how long and how determinedly they've stuck at their para-industrial techno-darkwave thing whether it's been in vogue or not. An admirably hardworking act who have been around almost as long as Boy Harsher and certainly on this ting a good few years before all the other LA bands hopped on the gleaming black chrome bandwagon.
If Andrew Eldritch and Beta Evers had a child and raised her on film noir…
Live, YoD do not disappoint. Their set was superbly paced, building up from slow and somber dark waves to a cackling crescendo of slamming techno body music. Frontwoman Barkosina went from slinking around the stage like a hitwoman looking for someone to poison to furiously barking (sorry), marching on the spot, commanding the crowd. By the end of the set she had ditched her aviator shades in favour of a balaclava seemingly made from a frilly black pair of knickers (if anyone knows where to acquire such an accessory hit ya boy up). Meanwhile her bandmate (formerly of Piano Magic, a band who I've recently come to realise I'e been confusing with Four Poofs and a Piano for some years) deftly ramped up the whipcrack electronics with the smoothness and gradual flow of a well-executed DJ set.
"This is suicide disco."
Years of Denial were an odd choice of support act at first glance, but then you realise that, happily, nobody gives a fuck about Dark Electronic Music Type X belonging in one silo and Dark Electronic Music Type Y belonging in another. "It's all just house music innit" quips a friend in attendance. Indeed!
Human dislocation, location, location
So how, then, does a bloke with a laptop follow an act comprised of a bloke with a laptop and a woman with intimidatingly cool, menacing stage presence? Easily: by wrenching from the depths of that laptop an astonishing barrage of mechanistic noises, layer upon layer of intricately programmed beats and rasping feedback, laced with apocalyptic acid techno flourishes that send the mind spinning into another realm.
Aciiiiiieeeed!
Power noise done just right can be the greatest form of electronic music you'll ever hear. Immensely satisfying metallic clangs interspersed with plenty of crunchy distortion but never so much that it becomes just another exercise in harshness for its own sake. Smarter than aggrotech but more accessible than pure noise.
Imminent has honed his craft over a few decades, skilfully avoiding the trap of getting stuck in club-friendly 4/4 beats and turning power noise into mere industrial club fodder by fusing the experimental sides of noise and techno to create something different and texturally fascinating.
That's not to say his sound doesn't hit hard; for those of us who crave nothing more than being bludgeoned around the noggin by thick slabs of distorted bass, Imminent's live set delivers in spades.
Much like his support act, Imminent structured his set so that the slower sounds came first and built up to something much more groovy and rhythmic. By the end, Mr Internet and crew were flailing our limbs like Charismastics receiving near-lethal doses of their Lord and saviour's light in the front row of some US megachurch. And then the whole thing ended abruptly, leaving us all slightly shellshocked but exhilirated and mentally calculating the feasibility of catching the last train back across the water.
Not only a fantastic gig but probably one that could've served as a great introduction to industrial for anyone curious to know what it was all about.
And call me a rivet head cliche but you can't really beat industrial music in literal industrial surroundings, either. Here is a piece of Bermondsey that hadn't quite finished rendering:
