To fill up the weekend, I picked up some tickets to go to a gig while D and I were in Bristol – Teeth Mountain performing at the Cube Microplex.
It took us ages to find this strange little venue – half lecture theatre-half garden shed, we finally discovered it halfway up the hill towards the University in the shadow of two 1960s tower blocks.
I’m normally pretty good at selecting decent bands to watch, but tonight was a bit of a mixed bag. The support artist took to the stage on his own and, using found sounds and loops, delivered a couple of multi-layered, quite rocky songs. Unfortunately I didn’t catch the name he performs under – a great shame because I’m sure his recorded material is pretty impressive stuff given what he manages live.
Unfortunately for us we were expecting things to get even more interesting when the main act, Teeth Mountain took the stage. However what was billed as cutting edge experimental music with tribal overtones was nothing of the sort. Whilst the two drummers at the back expertly built increasingly complex and hypnotic rhythms, the rest of the group had clearly decided that they were going to do whatever the hell they wanted, whether it made any sense or not. Random snatches of notes, barely in tune, came from the sax player and guitarist and after a while, well, we’d had enough – I’d expected some sort of structure to their pieces but this was like watching a bunch of self-indulgent three year olds playing in a sand pit…
Well at least it was nice and cool outside by the time we left the venue. A disappointing night