Mountains of coke in the VIP...
My friend Martha, she gets around. She's half Thai, half Philippino, comes from Stratford, goes to university in Glasgow studying languages, spent a year in St Petersburg, and just got back from a year in the Czech Republic.
So I see her once or twice a year during the brief periods that she's back, it's nice, she always takes time out of the 3 or 4 days she's home we go to this Wetherspoons pub in Stratford and catch up.
But I texted her about meeting up on friday, but she was going to see Mogwai at the Royal Albert Hall (her sister is married to Martin, the Mogwai drummer). But she texted me about 4 to say that she couldn't make it, and did I want her ticket?
So I got to see Mogwai for free, in a box in the Gods in the Albert Hall, was so awesome.
Someone once defiend post rock, i.e. Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor etc, as a scientific experiment into seeing exactly how long you could make someone wait for the good bit of a song. But there's advantages to this approach. The longer you wait for the good bit, the more you trance out on it, the more of a rush it is when it hits.
They Played Mogwai Fear Satan, which I'd never heard them do before. And it starts loud-ish, builds to a certain level, then ebbs out. Mogwai shows have incredible lights flashing white lights, red lights, blue lights, whirling floodlights. And the lights ebb with the volume, getting slower and less spasmodic over the 5, maybe 7 minutes that the song winds down over. And then it comes back in, so much louder, loud enough that you feel it rather than hear it, and the lights go absolutely crazy, and it's an old trick, and it's not a clever trick, but it's a great trick.
I swear, when it kicked in, the sound and the lights and the sensory barrage, I could hardly breathe. It's like being on pills, without the sweating and heart palpitations and worrying that your brain's going to stick to the back of your skull and give you an embolism. And I think the whole point of post rock gigs is to cause that reaction, because without the wait, and the volume, and the lights, you can't get that kind of reaction. It's like your brain's so totally overloaded with information that it just floods your with endorphins and leaves you to it.
So I see her once or twice a year during the brief periods that she's back, it's nice, she always takes time out of the 3 or 4 days she's home we go to this Wetherspoons pub in Stratford and catch up.
But I texted her about meeting up on friday, but she was going to see Mogwai at the Royal Albert Hall (her sister is married to Martin, the Mogwai drummer). But she texted me about 4 to say that she couldn't make it, and did I want her ticket?
So I got to see Mogwai for free, in a box in the Gods in the Albert Hall, was so awesome.
Someone once defiend post rock, i.e. Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor etc, as a scientific experiment into seeing exactly how long you could make someone wait for the good bit of a song. But there's advantages to this approach. The longer you wait for the good bit, the more you trance out on it, the more of a rush it is when it hits.
They Played Mogwai Fear Satan, which I'd never heard them do before. And it starts loud-ish, builds to a certain level, then ebbs out. Mogwai shows have incredible lights flashing white lights, red lights, blue lights, whirling floodlights. And the lights ebb with the volume, getting slower and less spasmodic over the 5, maybe 7 minutes that the song winds down over. And then it comes back in, so much louder, loud enough that you feel it rather than hear it, and the lights go absolutely crazy, and it's an old trick, and it's not a clever trick, but it's a great trick.
I swear, when it kicked in, the sound and the lights and the sensory barrage, I could hardly breathe. It's like being on pills, without the sweating and heart palpitations and worrying that your brain's going to stick to the back of your skull and give you an embolism. And I think the whole point of post rock gigs is to cause that reaction, because without the wait, and the volume, and the lights, you can't get that kind of reaction. It's like your brain's so totally overloaded with information that it just floods your with endorphins and leaves you to it.