Somewhere in all space and time there is a place where it all makes sense. Then again, maybe none of anything is meant to make any sense which also makes perfect sense if you don’t think about it. It made perfect sense, for example, to seek shelter in a basement from the onslaught of multinational sport sponsorship that passes for football these days. Finding Zaïmph, Heather Leigh and Richard Youngs there moved sense to a whole new dimension.
A stage lit in red. Smoke aplenty. A mannequin dressed in robes. A delirium waiting to be unleashed perhaps? Perhaps became a certainty. Heather Leigh centre stage with her instrument of choice, the pedal steel, and, forcibly divorcing it from its usual Nashville home, she used it to exorcise demons from the darkness and force them to dance the dance of discord before fading everything into the temporal abyss of the eternal. This was a wordless symphony worthy of the Krell.
Cunningly providing comic relief to contrast with the intensity of Heather Leigh, Richard Youngs then took to the same stage and parodied the pretentiousness that many would see as part and parcel of the underground music scene by simply staring at his guitar for ten minutes before randomly hitting a few strings. It was an inspired performance that allowed Richard Youngs to, as the immortal bard would have put it, portray himself as having hairy palms from excessively spanking his musical monkey. With the right management he could have his own television show by next Thursday.
And then there was Zaïmph. Armed with and impressive amount of Heath Robinson-esque onstage electronics she dispensed sonic intoxication of remarkable potency that took the listener off into an inner space full of blue shadows and Richter scale subsonic rumblings. It was as if a spell had been cast for all free will duly surrendered to her hypnotic musical influence and, with all souls now kidnapped, what would be the ransom? The ransom would never be known for, as the midnight hour drew near, all became silent and Zaïmph, gracious in victory, released everyone into the night.
Sense is hardly essential in multi-dimensional space but you might care to ponder why there is more light in the underground than there is on the street.