Chapel of Noise/Airing Dirty Laundry

One of the coolest places to hear noise these days is Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel. Great acoustics that only a stone chapel with a super high ceiling can provide, plus all their shows are low-key and free. Went to see Nmperign a while, which was the perfect act to see there. Super quiet avant trumpet/sax whisperings and grindings that seriously messed with the circuitry inside my brain. The only downside was that folks that were just there to maintain their noise hipster street cred can’t sit still quietly and not talk on their cell phones. During something as intensely quiet as a Nmperign concert, it’s a huge distraction. The other big find of the night was Fluxmonkey, who’s an older cat who’s been been building synths in his basement for years and now blows new jack noise kids out of the water.

Friday night I went to go see Hair Police and Religious Knives at the Chapel, which I was super excited about. Robert Turman opened and laid down some seriously heavy ritual Satanic dark drones. Hair Police played next and slayed as always. They started of with a really sparse jam of Connelly screaming punctuated by feedback before breaking into some of their “songs”. I really like how Hair Police write recognizable songs that still border on chaos and improvisation. They’re always a good time live, though this set was a little lower intensity than the last time I saw them. Next up was Brooklyn’s Religious Knives, which I was excited about since I really like their albums and dig the whole Double Leopards drone family. Well, I was in for a bit of a disappointment because it was hands down one of the worst, most amateurish performances I’ve seen in years. They couldn’t keep time to save their lives, the guitar playing was inept at best, and the sound was wretched. Even cutting them slack for having to play in a huge, booming venue without their drummer after a band as intense and together as Hair Police, watching Religious Knives was as painful as watching a really bad cover band of your favorite band ruining your favorite songs. I almost didn’t even write about the show because I’m not into bad-mouthing other musicians, but I thought I ought to give the Knives an old-fashioned internet tongue-lashing/tough love. Why bother playing a show if you’re going to do it less than half-assed? Maybe you can get away with a sloppy show in Brooklyn, but don’t come to Ohio with that crap and try to pass it off as “Velvet-Underground-inspired-psych-rock”. If you can’t even play your own songs, that means you need to go home and do what the old jazz cats used to call “woodshedding”, which to the rest of us means “practicing until you are a competent musician”. I know everybody has their off nights, but you could at least try…