Lydia Lunch, James Johnston and Ian White were back on „the ship” once again, and after last year’s mindblowing Retrovirus gig, I was more than looking forward to what they were going to do this time.

But firstly, let’s talk about derTANZ. It had been a while since I last heard them live, so I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I was definitely more excited about them opening for Lydia Lunch than I was about last year’s support band, and – oh, boy! – they didn’t disappoint. The moment I heard the bass, I knew this was going somewhere. It is the kind of dirty, distorted bass sound that makes you question why most bands even had guitars in the first place, while wondering what Rob Wright might be up to these days, and remembering how much you love Shellac, when a perfectly positioned, close-to-deafening shriek pulls you back into the audience. This by itself should be enough to make me giddy, but when accompanied by tight, syncopated drum work, the result is ecstatic.

Some might call it post-punk, they themselves might call it freepunk, but it’s also the kind of noise rock that has been missing from the Hungarian music scene for so long, and finally, there we have it: a sufficiently dissonant, simple, but heavy rhythm section (too bad the drum groove falls apart a few times) with an interesting addition: Kovács Gábor’s singing. It’s from a completely different musical universe. It starts out deep and haunting, then it turns into a chant (sometimes even reminiscent of Jim Morrison-esque spoken word), then there’s a shrill, a scream, some praiseworthy shouting, and yes, it is more often than not a tad off-key, but it still all fits together fine enough. There’s not a word uttered between songs, only when the last sound of the cacophonic jam session has died off do they announce their name and say good night, so we can all grab a drink and get ready for Big Sexy Noise.

Tovább / Read more »

The Queen of No Wave in Budapest again with her fellows from Gallon Drunk under moniker Big Sexy Noise

on Dec 17 in Budapest at A38 with der TANZ (Hu)

What is No Wave? Listen to our playlist with only Lydia Lunch hits