Phantom Band + Malpas + I is Cinema @ The Rainbow, 4th February 2011
With a studied introspection possibly brought about by having to wear his Nan’s Christmas present cardigan, Brum’s I is Cinema’s lead singer, Dominic, presents an ambivalence that equally might convey total indifference and/or an agonised wrestling with his tortured muse.
There’s method in this band’s seeming madness with counterpoint percussions, guitar swathe crescendos and some heavy, dirge apocalyptic distortions. Reminders of those 60s experimental fusion ‘happenings’ at The Roundhouse. It was a brief set of enigmatic promise that matched their cryptic name. I have great expectations.
Set list: Naz, Edward, ‘unnamed’ (new song), Apocrypha, Testa.
A brief mention for Malpas because to heap any additional praise on this local outfit would have me damned as an incestuous. (See previous reviews). The highlight for me was the grandiose ‘Charlemagne’. You really do need to see this band.
Set list: Sails, River, Green Light, Charlemagne, Us Afloat, Sea, Promise.
The delightfully genre warped Phantom Band (‘experimental, proto folk rockers’) headlined a disappointingly half-full Rainbow in the middle of their national/European tour. With a blustery wind trembling the Rainbow’s rafters hoodie lead singer, Rick Anthony, opened the no-option brief set with ‘Throwing Bones’.
There’s a drone, slide guitar, slightly unsettling but hypnotic ambience that permeates the whole set. Amiable chaps to a fault but beneath there’s a tingling mood of psychedelic sub-textual unease. Notwithstanding the bassist was drinking wine – from a glass! I mean, how Glaswegian rock and roll is that?
Flavours of Moody Blues chilling with Hawkwind came to mind and mantras pop out from my notes several times. When Anthony plays a most peculiar instrument seemingly contrived of tracheotomy tube connected to a gang socket the band indulge in a dark, monastic like dirge that makes his hoodie rather apposite. The impossibly youthful, and regally named, guitarist Duncan Marquiss, is let leash with a blistering fist-full of psychotic wasps during ‘Folksong Oblivion’.
If I’m right with the set list, song five left me less than impressed so I won’t name it in case I get it wrong. But that was a momentary lapse of reason possibly on either or both of our parts. There’s all sorts of eclecticism bubbling in their creative crucible with wisps of Joy Division, confessional Tom Waits and, oddly enough, space-invader samples. Throw in a piquancy of fellow Glaswegian’s The Silencers eponymous (and criminally neglected first album) together with the kick-drum, let’s head butt a charging rhino, aka Secret Machines’ during closer song ‘The None of One’ and you’ll begin to get the picture. Sorry for the name checks meaning no disservice whatsoever. More a homage to their productively misspent youth and patient parents’ plundered vinyl collections. They’re on the cusp and we’d be very wise to keep a close ear to the ground as work continues in progress (watching out for that rhino of course).
Set list: Throwing Bones, O, Folksong Oblivion, Everybody Knows It’s True, In The Corn, A Glamour, The Howling, The None Of One.
Review – John Kennedy
Photos – Ian Dunn