Svartvit
Svartvit, Knifeoutofexistence, Whose Body Is This
Svartvit @ The Bee's Mouth, Brighton, UK, 7 January 2024,
09 January 2024
Photo by Nick Roseblade
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The Bee's Mouth in Brighton is a place of curiosity. As you enter the bar you can't see where music might be playing. As you walk towards the bar, you see the stairs descending below you. As you follow the stairs, there is a room ahead of you. You expect to see a stage you're entering, but it's not there. Instead, you are faced with tables and chairs. Sometimes there is a sheet for views and sometimes a huge bed/couch. As you think “There can't be any music in here tonight” you spot a sign that says “Toilet/Music” and an arrow pointing at a hitherto unseen door. Go down a few more steps and then down some more until you reach a small room where there is indeed a scene. This is the venue for tonight's concert. The lighting was low, but welcoming. The audience chatted away and there was an air of acceptance and togetherness. No one would be made to feel out of place here. No matter if this is your first gig or your 101st. 50 people makes it feel chaotic and beyond busy, but tonight just under 40 will fill it giving it a nice full feel but also allowing everyone a personal space. Fortunately this is not a show about dancing or moving.
Whose Body Is This took the stage. There was that delightfully awkward moment when the first band goes on. They want to play, but not stop deep conversations waiting for a few more people to join. After this mental dance ended the music began. The opening salvo was, well, harsh. Feedback, high tensions and a general feeling of restlessness. This, of course, was meant to give you a brief blast of things to come while letting everyone know why they were at The Bee's Mouth. This didn't last long and was replaced with an ultrasound-like beat/rhythm, but for Rosemary's Baby. It was all over the shop, but totally mesmerizing. About ten minutes in a deep drone became our focus. Then it sounded like field recordings were being played under, over and through it, along with new rhythms and sounds, from synths and distorted electronics. The static was used to build things up and the electronics brought it down again. About twenty minutes into it it changed and sounded like industrial machinery. Jacaberes and shattering metal. Despite this sonic assault, you could still hear noises and sounds perfectly. A pint glass down. The sound of a cash register closing and the confused conversations of regular drinkers in the pub above. The set ended with what sounded like a test drone. It's hard to know what the themes of Whose Body is This were, but alienation, disorientation and sadness seemed to be at the top of the list. In saying that there were moments of joy and almost hilarity. At one point, during a short lull, some effects and noises were activated that sounded like a bullet ricocheting in a spaghetti western. Whether this was on purpose or how I interrupted the sounds is up for debate, but it was a welcome addition to the barrage.
After a brief intermission, soundtracked by seventies Neil Young songs, Knifedoutofexistence came to an end. If Whose Body is This was an exercise in when rhythm meets confusion, Knifedoutofexistence was about subtle changes to create textured soundscapes. I expected Knifed to come out of the blocks with a gun, but he didn't. Instead, he started the set with the recordings in the field or either trains or water. These sounds were then layered, and manipulated live, to create something crazy. Was it real or a waking dream? Very subtly raised and lowered sounds to create new textures. You could barely see the probes or his face move, but you could hear the changes immediately. Then bird recordings began to appear in the mix. This is where Knifed really started to ramp up the noise quotient of his show. His vocals were distorted to the point of animal gut sounds. And that was just the first quarter. After this dense feedback blasted from the speakers before giving way again to birdsong. It was all consumptive yet understated. You couldn't move from the spot, but it wasn't too much. The chains rattled. Vocals were delivered. Meanings in half. The nagging feeling that you've got it all out of reach. Then, on the last beat of the set, Knifed was like a wounded creature screaming, thrashing and going into his box of tricks. Then it all came crashing down and we were left with a slow and textured loop of Neil Young's underrated banger 'Train of Love'. The young man constantly cries “I will always be a part of you”. After a few dozen repetitions the set was over. Knifedoutofexistence is a true talent. His ability to control the crowd with an invisible touch is remarkable. While the set was more gut-wrenching than the opener because it was constantly cranking it up and down, it didn't feel like a punch in the face for thirty minutes. The use of on location recordings really helped to add something emotional and the use of Neil Young to close the show was inspired and shows that nothing was wasted. Everything was planned in advance.
The last performance, and it was a performance, of the evening was from Svartvit. After a brief technical issue where the PA had to be swapped out, perhaps due to the Knifedoutofexistence… set, Svartvit was down. From the start this was a different set. The lights went out and he was lit only by his own light source, a small steady torch light and the red fairy lights running around the top of the room. This gave the music a different, more poignant, setting. The opening moments of the set sound like a ship at sea. The sound of the creaking wood was overwhelming. Above this the Svartvit started creating noise, feedback and static. It was piercing. After a few minutes, all sounds were removed and he was screaming into a microphone that was fully inserted into his mouth. It was a powerful image. As these sounds echoed around the tiny room, a contact microphone was taken out and rubbed all over Svartvit's clothes, face and head before being punched, slapped and generally manhandled. Finally it was placed between his teeth like a vacuum. Here there were wet, guttural sounds. There's a line in Watchmen when Rorschach says the city is awful and “screams like a slaughterhouse full of retarded children.” This is how Svartvit's vocals sounded. At times the speakers would visually shake from the sonic onslaught being channeled through them. The outing of the set was scathing. Just caustic noise. The themes of the set were pain, endurance and suffering. The downside to the set was for thirty minutes everything was in the red. There was no building, tearing down and building up. This, of course, was what everyone wanted, but after the previous set of shades I was hoping for more of the same. What we got was something incredibly powerful and devastating.
As I waited for the bus home in the bitter cold, I ran through the night in my head. While the subject matter was challenging and, at times, difficult to sit through, it was thoroughly enjoyable and engaging. I'm still thinking about what I saw 12 hours later, which can't be said for the majority of conventional bands I see live.
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