Wednesday at Bleach played host to two Brighton bands and an interesting one from London. The Soft Walls has been a band I have been longing to see for some time, after getting their brilliant first album No Time (produced by fellow psychedelics’, Hookworms). Headlining the show was London act Vision Fortune, consisting of brothers Austin and Alex Peru. Previously on local label Faux Discx, the duo are now signed to ATP Records. Now touring their new album Country Music, I wondered how their sound has progressed.
 
First band on stage was Royal Limp, a six piece consisting of vocals, two guitars, keyboard, bass and drums, producing a post-punk rock with psychedelic tinges. With constant Hammond organ chords and the second guitar creating an atmospheric wash of sound, it was hard not to get sucked into the music. The vocals screamed influences of The Fall whilst the audio had the monotonous drone of a Velvet Underground record, making it to be a very enjoyable listen.
 
The Soft Walls is the solo project of Dan Reeves, who is the label head for Faux Discx and a part of Brighton droners Cold Pumas. The Krautrock inspired band of four, played a captivating set. Like much of their No Time album, the show was mostly seamless, never giving the audience time to gather thought, and once the music started you were under their motoric spell. The band were always sharp. Midway, they played a couple of slightly more grungy rock songs but ended with a tremendous Kraut masterpiece. Suddenly the band were walking off stage, releasing you from the impended dream they had put you into and allowing you to again ponder the reality of life outside a Krautrock trance.
 
Vision Fortune’s set up had slightly changed from the last time they played in Brighton, where they produced a phenomenally powerful set at The Great Escape 2013. They kept the same concept of playing in a pitch black room with just a strobe light annoyingly pointed at the audience, but were now a duo rather than the original three. Their once dark post-punk/kraut which came from a mesmerising bad trip from an unknown corner of their imagination, was now a more electronic set up. Samples and looping beats held the songs together with multiple textures created by droning vocals, layered electric and bass guitars covered in effect, and made it a disorientating listen, confusing some listeners but drawing others in. To me their sound came across as if it was trying to be UNKLE or Massive Attack with its industrial sounding trance that at points swayed into a Hip-Hop experimentation, although I don’t think that was what they were going for. Overall, a very interesting set, but it fell far below my expectation of what the rumours had promised.
 
For me The Soft Walls were the winners of the night, upholding their place as one of Brighton’s best bands. Vision Fortune on the other hand were confusing to me. It seemed they had opted out of the enthralling motoric drone-rock which had captured every listening conscience, for an electronic experimental Trance like sound which failed to have anywhere near the same effect.
Iain Lauder