There’s no doubt tonight’s bands, Luo, Alarmist and Town Portal form a fairly oblique pool of math/prog/jazz/post-rock, but a good attendance goes to show that well-curated bills are appreciated and people vote with their feet.
Luo performed the role of enthusiastic warm-up, injecting their set with some fearsome drumming (including some crazy arrhythmic fills for the chin-strokers amongst us) spiking over a banquet of warbling guitars, yawning bass and eerie soundscapes. At its best, it was quite compelling, but there were some frantic moments, too. No small amount of skill on display, though.
Their departure saw a familiar pattern being set for the evening: band offstage, cue masses of equipment changes and an outpouring of bearded young men onto the pavement outside the Hare and Hounds to cool down (it was the first sweaty gig of the year), exchange top ten muso moments of the show and give their ears a chance to recuperate.
 
Dubliners Alarmist, this evening’s promoter Small Pond Recording signees, brought something quite different to the party. These chaps really are virtuoso – quite often having two or three instruments on the boil at any one time – each! Early nods within their set to Battles and Don Caballero were quickly displaced by the realisation that they have their own thing going on. Their ability to link songs with ethereal interludes whilst simultaneously looking like they were fixing broken equipment or tuning guitars was impressive – not only through their apparent ambidextrousness, but also because they were lovely little pieces of music that served to glue the songs in their set. The way they subtly changed atmosphere throughout their time under the lights suggests some classical training or, at the very least, appreciation.
 
A special mention must go to the set’s second track, ‘PG Films’. For me, this highlighted everything that is good about Alarmist – a sweeping, sliding arrangement, elegant rhythms, wonderful interplay between instruments and very, very cool guitar playing.
Let there be no mistake that Luo and Alarmist brought considerable volume to accompany their musical chops, but Town Portal (also on the Small Pond Recording label) are on another level. The Danish three-piece consist of just drums, bass and guitar (considerably less equipment than the other bands tonight) but the sheer visceral power they produce is both gut-wobbling and teeth-rattling. More than that, the sheer brutality of their performance is simply astounding. Their drummer looks like a Viking, and “by Thor!” he has the power of 10 drummers! It should come as little surprise that he later went on to break his foot pedal (which he obviously then fixed like a swordsmith would repair a battle-weakened Viking sword).
 
You’d be forgiven for thinking that there are certain restrictions placed on instrumental three-pieces, but for what Town Portal lack in variety of instrumentation or an absence of vocals, they more than make up for with the scale of their composition. It’s nothing for one of their songs to span dark metal, math rock and honest-to-goodness poodle rock in the space of four minutes – each and every song delivered with a telepathic tightness that verges on unreal. They are like a single, sentient musical being, albeit with a machine-like accuracy and focus… and nice Scandinavian manners. They gave the other acts a bit of schooling tonight and I genuinely hope they will back on our shores before long.
Adam Atkins