Sometimes I think I should stop calling these little musings reviews and instead call them something cool like "The Basement Diaries" as most of them seem to involve shenanigans in a basement. Tonight was no exception and in the dull red glow - some might call it ambience - of the 13th Note, The Lava Experiments, Laki Mera and Glider set about the task of being the entertainment.
New to my ears were Glider and making their acquaintance proved to be a pleasure. As a band, they had figured out that songs should have a start, an end and a melody. Consequently they balanced the rougher vocals of Colin Hamilton against the sweetness of Katherine McLeod's voice and powered their songs along with the steadily building intensity of distorted guitars. It was a combination that worked well.
Laki Mera had much to commend in their performance. There was the elegant perfection of Laura Donnelly's haunting ethereal voice for a start and a remarkable fluidity in the musicianship - they had obviously practised a lot - that gave their songs a near hypnotic quality that transcended the confines of the post rock electronica genre. Perhaps they didn't quite connect with their audience as they should have but they did bring to mind one of those four in the morning conversations - "If you could see everything, what would you look for?" My answer was beauty (I'm shallow, you see…) and tonight even my ears told me that was what I was beholding.
The headliners were the Lava Experiments who seemed rather conventional by comparison with the other bands. Nonetheless, they gave a solid, crowd pleasing performance of songs in the shoegaze/emo style. I had the idea that, if the band members grew their hair really long then they could be the post punk version of Gong. In fact, that would allow them to start an entirely new genre - sandal gaze perhaps? Anyway, music like this is all about attitude and repetition and the Lava Experiments fed the audience what they clearly wanted to eat.
Talking of food, all that music had made hungry. A reliable source had told me previously that Guinness was actually food so it was time for a snack in the upstairs bar.