Brighton 2003: Seventh Dial Of A Seventh Dial

After close to a decade in Southampton, moving away was a huge change. I missed plenty about Soton, not least all the friends I'd left there, but it was hard to deny that Brighton was an exciting prospect. The character of the town was very different - a little down at heel, for sure, but in a charming way. People seemed to dress better - which clearly never rubbed off on me - and were more liberal and tolerant in outlook, though it's worth pointing out that it was and remains a much whiter city. In Southampton, you'd cling to any signs of something alternative like a fucking life raft, whereas Brighton had so much going on - so many pubs, venues, record shops and bands. Seventeen years on, many of these have gone, or at least changed name or direction, and I'm no longer paying quite as much attention to most of the town's myriad scenes. But in 2003 I was champing at the bit to go and get stuck in.

Early in my time in Brighton, my new supervisor Bob asked what band I was going to see that night. No slouch when it came to music knowledge, he was nonetheless left at a loss when I answered, "Forstella Ford". Clocking his quizzical expression, I told him that he might have to get used to this sort of thing.

In fairness, I can remember very little about this first gig I went to in Brighton. I'd have gone on the invitation of my old Southampton buddy/bandmate/housemate Adam, who'd moved back to the town where he grew up a few months ahead of myself and Anna. I'm pretty sure it was at The Hobgoblin, now a well-manicured student pub but back then a crusty boozer which hosted a decent chunk of the city's punk and hardcore shows. And according to unearthed e-mails, they were supported by Plague Of Zoltan, who I'd seen play in Soton before moving. For years, I was reasonably convinced that POZ's guitarist with specs and brightly dyed hair was the young version of renowned comedian and writer Andrew O'Neill, and I've just discovered that he was indeed. He's described that band as “extreme chaotic hardcore/grindcore kind of stuff,” which seems like a pretty accurate summary. Oh, Forstella Ford? Really have no memory of their set, but I came across an LP of theirs on Level Plane five or so years later and they were pretty decent screamo/post-hardcore, which was pretty hip back in '03. I guess they fit into the swathe of bands who probably hoped to achieve more than they did, but about whom somebody is rhapsodising right now in a relevant Facebook group.

It wasn't just Adam and us who'd made the move from Hampshire to East Sussex. Amongst the various Winchester miscreants I'd met through Jimmy was a lass called Sarah, who'd got to Brighton sufficiently ahead of me to form Miss Pain, described on their website as "2 girl/1 boy electro-shock pop-ists". At some point in that first month, I went to see them play at the Freebutt, a venue which was very much the Brighton equivalent to The Joiners in Southampton. On this occasion, Miss Pain had decorated it with artwork from NewScientist magazine and Mills & Boon novels, which I guess captures something of their aesthetic. Here's the cover of their first single, to give you more of an idea.



I was still writing for Logo magazine at this juncture, and the first show I reviewed for them in my new town was Nina Nastasia at the Komedia. I'd seen Nina at the Shellac-curated ATP and appreciated her hushed intensity as a break from all the angular noise rock; seeing her headline a small venue was even better, particularly at this point, with the excellent Run To Ruin album out and Jim White out of The Dirty Three playing drums. I also ran into my new friends from work, Pete and Lisa, at the show.

In early August, it was back into the loving arms of the hardcore scene, and indeed the Hobgoblin, when I went to see John Holmes, The Sex Maniacs and (I think) Wives Of Seth. Somewhat alarmingly, I've discovered that the middle band's set has been uploaded for posterity on YouTube, including semi-regular glimpses of yours truly and Adam enjoying their garage punk/Motorhead-style racket. Start at 2:00 unless you fancy the raw excitement of watching people trying to get a guitar amp to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w2ICNnvu3o

My first encounter with venerable Brighton band I'm Being Good came a week or so later, when they played the Freebutt with Dutch band The Barnhouse Effect. The latter were one of those super-intense chaotic screamo bands and I remember them being absolutely spellbinding. I bought their 7", which was in a slightly annoying oversize sleeve that's inevitably been battered over the years. Great music, though.

A few days later, I went to see McLusky, again at the Freebutt. They were a seriously great band, but I do remember feeling a little homesick for Southampton; had this gig been at The Joiners, I'd have had a bunch of people to hang out with, but here in Brighton I didn't yet know anyone else who was into McLusky. I do recall droll frontman Andy Falkous berating the crowd for clapping out of time, on the grounds that it would make them play out of time, "and not in a good way, like Pavement or Fugazi."

Stop me if I'd told this one before, but on the eve of leaving Soton, I'd had a heads up from my friend Tom that a weekly rock mag was looking for freelancers in... Southampton (or Portsmouth). Undeterred by the fact that I'm now 60-odd miles further east, I got in touch when settled in Brighton. Before too long, I was spilling ink on albums by the likes of 400 Blows, Abominant and Fear Before The March Of Flames, and in August I did my first live review when The Gossip played, you guessed it, the Freebutt.

Three years before Standing In The Way Of Control, The Gossip were a powerful soul punk band on cult label Kill Rock Stars. It's not just elitism that makes me feel that they were at their best in these pre-fame days; with the sharper sound they adopted, the raw edge I enjoyed back in '03 was inevitably sanded down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBz8PWFHnl0

Miss Pain opened up that night, earning themselves the epithet "perversely pleasurable" in my review, while Hawnay Troof also made what felt like an unnanounced appearance (though I think they just hadn't been advertised) with a set of sassy lo-fi hip hop.

My next assignment was a rather different affair: British ska punkers Lightyear playing what was (at the time) their last ever Brighton show at the Concorde2. They were headlining what amounted to an all-day festival at the seafront venue, with a total of eight bands playing. I can't recall the exact bill, though my review tantalisingly suggested that it ranged from Austrian ska to Japanese hardcore. Due to space restrictions, I focused on the bands I was particularly impressed by: ace Finnish melodic hardcore types Manifesto Jukebox and satirical Dutch punks Brezhnev, whose charmingly-named singer MC Dogshit came out in a George W. Bush mask before stripping off to reveal a devil suit. Lightyear being Lightyear, their set ended with members stripping off, setting fire to their pubes, etc. As far as ska punk goes, I think they were pretty good...

Five days later, I was heading up to the smoke to review a more consistently entertaining show at Catch 22 in that trendy Shoreditch. Jimmy's garage rock sluggers The Blood Group put the bill together, with support from scuzzpunks Crash Convention and punk funkers Twisted Charm. The main draw, headliners aside, were Palehorse. At the time, this lot featured a couple of members of Million Dead - more of them later, as if you couldn't have guessed - but were a very different proposition. Sludge metal informed by Slint-style post-rock might sum it up in print, but the experience of seeing this lot live, with their two bass players and intense vocalist Seedi, was to be confronted by one of the most idiosyncratically abrasive outfits operating in the country at that time. The Blood Group were a more easily quantifiable outfit, firmly in the raucous tradition of The Stooges with nods to the likes of Black Flag and The Birthday Party, and they already had at least a couple of serious bangers in their arsenal in the form of This Is The Sound and Four Bars. More on them later, albeit under a slightly different handle...



As if to demonstrate my varied musical diet, my next couple of reviews, both for Logo, were alt-country troubadour M. Ward and elctroclash figurehead Peaches. The former played The Prince Albert on the day news broke of Johnny Cash's death, and I compared his guitar playing to John Fahey and Bert Jansch, and his singing to Conor Oberst and Kurt Wagner. It was a really sweet show, intimate and warm, which couldn't be said of Peaches at the Concorde2 a week later. I've not followed her career since with any great care, but already by this point it seemed like her comedy sex-rap shtick was getting tired. In my review, I rather cuttingly suggested that the highlight of the evening was a pre-recorded Iggy Pop appearing onscreen for their (admittedly brilliant) duet Kick It.

Considerably more satisfying was the following evening, when the Grind Over The UK III tour hit the Hobgoblin. This tour featured the extreme noise terror of Japan's Unholy Grave, America's Total Fucking Destruction, and the UK's The Devils (who I believe might have included someone out of the actual Extreme Noise Terror, along with the likes of Hard To Swallow et al). There's an event page for this show on Last FM which suggests that local hardcore types Abandon Ship also played; I don't remember their set specifically, though they'll be getting mentioned here before too long. Anyway, The Devils made a splendidly unpleasant noise, fronted by two vocalists whose decision to wear suits had little in common with the aspirational dress code of Strokes-style garage rockers. Nope, it was more like two office workers who'd gone straight out after work on a Frida night and were now absolutely hammered and spoiling for a fight. They also kept getting into mock-aggro clinches with each other, which was weirdly sweet. Despite their name, Total Fucking Destruction, who featured former Brutal Truth drummer Rich Hoak, were a little less aggro and a tad more technical. Key song title: the Cannibal Corpse-baiting Hammer Smashed Gore Fan. Finally, seeing Nagoya's Unholy Grave gave me a hint of what it must have been like to see Napalm Death in the Scum Side 2/FETO era. Absolutely (hammer) smashing, no-frills grindcore played with utter intensity and commitment. Here's what they sounded like, though I clearly have no fucking clue whether they played this particular tune.

Nearly a week on, I was enjoying some post-work drinks when I announced I was going to have to head off to see Lungfish at the Freebutt. This caused much hilarity among my friends and colleagues, somehow lacking a working knowledge of seminal bands on the Dischord roster. For ages afterwards, whenever I mentioned that I was going to a gig, my friend Perry would ask sarcastically, "Who are you going to see? Lungfish or somebody?"

I have it in my head that one of those early '00s melodic punk bands like Blocko or Southport might have opened, which seems odd now but would have been in keeping with the sort of mixed bills you'd still get in the punk scene back then. However, the only detail I can find about the gig is, ahem, my own review, which only mentioned Bullet Union as a support. These Londoners featured ex-members of various bands including Dead Inside, and played that rockin', Drive Like Jehu-style post-hardcore doodah. Lungfish were something else, though. They were one of those bands with unimpeachable gravitas, their music eerily timeless and singer Daniel Higgs, with his receding hairline and bushy beard, looking like he'd emerged from some dustier period of American history. Little wonder that instead of comparing them to, y'know, other bands, I instead referenced "the dance of the seasons and the rhythms of nature."

Around this point, some of my old workmates descended on Brighton as they'd been nominated for a countrywide prize, and the awards were held at The Grand. If one album could be said to span my old and new teams, it would be Four Tet's Rounds, so it was appropriate that my new lot were out in force for yer man's gig at the Concorde2 a few days later.

It would appear from my Logo review that the night was opened by somebody or something called Daisyn, who I can't immediately find online, but apparently they traded in the sort of underground electronica you'd find on labels like Skam at the time. More solidly in my memory, Animal Collective were the main support. At this point, they were playing sort of oblique, experimental folk: listless acoustic strumming, non-verbal chanting, tribal drumming, that kind of thing. This really wasn't what a crowd waiting for Four Tet in Brighton in 2003 were after, and much grumbling ensued. Six years later, many of the aggrieved would no doubt be losing their minds to the joyful psychedelia of the same band's Merriweather Post Pavilion, but for now Animal Collective were just about the worst thing in the world for the majority of those in attendance.

Four Tet, however, was just about the best thing. Concentrating on Rounds, but reworking the material just enough to keep it fresh without losing the crowd, Kieran Hebden proved that watching one feller, a laptop and some decks doesn't have to be a dispiritingly dull experience. In my review, I drew comparisons to DJ Shadow, Third Eye Foundation and Hood,while suggesting that She Moves She sounded "like somebody inventing hip hop in a Far Eastern mountain range." I don't think I was far wrong.

There were a number of really great, local-ish underground bands playing in Brighton at this point, and it can be hard to recall specific gigs by bands I saw often. So Trencher played The Freebutt on October 17th, but I can't say for sure that I was there. Certainly, at this point my reactions to these weirdos varied wildly gig to gig. Sometimes, I'd see them and find their synth-dominated carnival grind entirely unmoving, others I'd be blown away by their sheer no-fucks-given punkoid blasting. I was more constant in my devotion to Portsmouth psych-garage pirates You're Smiling Now But We'll All Turn Into Demons, who I'd known from their forays over to Southampton, and who played The Freebutt on October 20th. I was certainly there, but was this the gig where Dan from also-ace locals Cat On Form played in a new hardcore band, giving lyric sheets out to the audience? If so, what they were called and whether they did anything else are just two of the things my brain hasn't had the space to store.

By way of contrast, I'm in no doubt that Cat On Form were one of the bands who played Radio 1's imaginatively titled One Live festival, held across the city for several days in late October and early November. With a trip to London on Halloween, this meant I went to four gigs in five days. The first was a John Peel night which I'm pretty sure took place at Hove's Old Market, though contemporary listings suggest it might have been in the Corn Exchange. Wherever it was, locals Clearlake, something of a favourite of mine and Anna's, and not just because one of them appeared to live on our street in Seven Dials, did their thing, which was sort of lightly psychedelic English indie, like a sad Damon Albarn listening to the Flaming Lips on a transistor radio at a slightly drizzly car boot sale. But better than that sounds! Quite different to Themselves, anyway, which was the duo of Anticon-affiliated alt-rap talents Doseone and Jel. The Black Keys, then little-known and much championed by Peely, were pretty great, Dan Auerbach's cask-aged vocals lending them a more authentic sound than many of the other bands trying to make a go of this blues-garage thing. And headlining was Stephen Malkmus, who I hadn't seen on stage since Pavement played Reading many years earlier. At this point, he was onto his second album with The Jicks, and while I'd be lying if I said that I can name a single song off it without looking, he remnained a charming elder statesman of literate US quirk-rock.

Two days later, Mogwai were due to headline at the Concorde2, but pulled out due to illness. Locals Coin-Op, who included a couple of folks I knew through mutual friends, joined the bill, as recorded here...

https://pastdaily.com/2019/03/20/coin-op-in-concert-at-one-live-brighton-2003-past-daily-soundbooth/

That Cat On Form were next up. I was a big fan of this lot and their scrappily impassioned post-hardcore, and while their spiritual home was the Freebutt - where I would see them a couple more times before 2003 was done - it was brilliant to see them getting wider exposure.

With Mogwai out of the equation, Melt-Banana found themselves moved up to headline status. These guys had been Peel favourites since the mid-90s - they'd recorded a session in '99, the year after their Stimulus For Revolting Virus had made it to number 37 in the Festive Fifty. As an aside, that song title and guitarist Agata's penchant for wearing a surgical mask onstage makes them weirdly appropriate to be writing about when, at the time of writing, the world is under a Covid-19-shaped cloud. Anyway, back to happier times. Melt-Banana were totally ripping that night, the range of their appeal summed up when I looked at two of my companions, both entirely entranced: Adam, who was enjoying a fast hardcore thrash band, and Leesey, who was digging a kitsch, cutesy indie punk band. Spoiler: it was the same band! AND THEY RULED.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea98DEyuZao

The next day was a Friday, and as the One Live shows were arranged round their evening schedules, it was dance night. However, I'd been summoned to London to witness Sunn 0))) at the Underworld in Camden, thereby missing such treats as Fergie at the Honey Club. (I assume this was the one out of the Black Eyed Peas, but who knows?).

Sunn 0))) were an entirely appropriate band with whom to celebrate Halloween. Not that they were doing anything different to normal, the cowled duo simultaneously generating and worshipping their malevolent drones on a stage decorated with candles and dry ice. Mayhem's Atilla Csihar was on hand to deliver some inhuman vocals, and if his white radiation suit was incongruously reminiscent of Altern8, it only served to bolster his tricksterish presence.




The next day was back down to B-Town for one more One Live show at the Old Market, this time presented by punk show The Lock Up. A killer line-up of Turbonegro, The Icarus Line and Winnebago Deal was only slightly dented by the middle band pulling out to be replaced by Million Dead. Jimmy, with whom I'd been enjoying Sunn 0))) just the night before, came down, Winnebago Deal and Million Dead were both ripper and Turbonegro were an absolute joy. Thanks to being late to the party, and the Norwegian band's '98-'02 hiatus, it was the first time I'd had the pleasure of experiencing their camp denim'n'bovver deathpunk in the hairy flesh, but their glam racket was a technicolour joy. Talismanic frontman Hank Von Helvete talked of his love for Millwall and "blood on the terraces." Afterwards, we bumped into my friend Darren, who like many of the devotees in attendance was dressed as an eyelinered sailor and was probably covered in the fake blood that had been thrown about earlier. To this day, he is known to Anna as "Turbonegro Darren".

After all this BBC-sanctioned malarkey, it was back to the Freebutt the following week to make the acquaintance of sleazy locals The Guillotines, one of the many bands in town who never quite got the success they deserved. Not sure if singer Joe was already doing the thing where he got female crowd members to punch him in the face during the song Stronger, but that was very much the kind of thing he did. A couple of days later, wearing not much apart from a bondage harness was very much the kind of thing Mero, singer with Dublin queercore thrashers Knifed, did. This lost weren't about for too long, but did release a bunch of splits, including one with their kindred spirits Limpwrist. Also on the bill that night were the brilliant Humans The Size Of Microphones, another band familiar from my Southampton days. They played chaotic, Gravity-style noise, wore massive afro-type wigs, and, being rural chaps, commented sadly about how few stars you could see in light-polluted Brighton, onstage banter which was several hundred per cent more wistful than anything Knifed said that evening.



Next, something which I'd have sworn happened about five years later if I hadn't located the relevant e-mails: Simon came down to see dubtronic veterans Dreadzone at the Concorde2, I tagged along and enjoyed them far more than I'd expected. Another show which I thought happened later was a very unusual appearance from Melvins, performing live soundtracks to three short arthouse films by Cameron Jamie at the Sallis Benney theatre. The band played behind a sheet on which the films, one of which was about the slightly terrifying Krampus tradition, were projected, before the sheet came down and the played, I think, one tune of their own (exactly which one I no longer remember).

About a week later, it was back up to London to see Million Dead headline The Garage, with support from Jarcrew and Icelandic noisecore-crew-turned-sleaze-rockers Minus, before my indiest two days of the year, when I went to see Grandaddy (with Snow Patrol) at the Corn Exchange, followed by Belle & Sebastian (with Franz Ferdinand) at the Dome. Within the year, both supports would, of course, have outpaced the headliners in terms of popularity, Franz Ferdinand through enjoyably angular but accessible art rock and Snow Patrol by sounding like a marginally less mimsy Coldplay.

Sometime that December, I'd see my work pal Lisa's new band Lucca, but the very last gig of the year was back at the Freebutt, with Cat On Form headlining and the very-hyped-at-the-time The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg in support. The latter had something of the Blood Brothers about their presentation, while their sound incorporated various strands from mathcore to thrash, but they left me a little cold on the day. Cat On Form were great, obviously.

Phew! Going back through this, it's pretty clear I fell on my feet in Brighton. My new friends at work were sound, Adam introduced me to the local punks, and between the two of us, by year's end Anna and myself already had a bunch of mates in town. There were so many gigs on that I was really spoilt, the days of queueing to get into a Rachel Stamp show at the Joiners well behind me. My bands were in limbo but I was happy and thriving. Dunno about you, but I'm looking forward to 2004...