Oh Lord, why do you hate me so much? Do I not pay my taxes and make charitable donations as I should? Yet, you see fit to test my resolve to write at every possible opportunity. Tonight, for example, even the sky was crying. Well, not the actual sky but the ceiling in Nice and Sleazy was leaking.
The cause? Those of you with an affinity for reality would blame the plumbing upstairs but those of you with even a moderate amount of artistic sympathy would know that God was, once more, moving in mysterious ways and pointing the figure of blame fairly and squarely at Acrid Lactations. An electronically disconnected duo devoid of any form of synchronicity and probably traumatised due to having been tazered in the womb by the thought police unleashed a relentlessly depressing example of Darwinian style musical evolution in reverse. I firmly believe that, on suffering tonight’s performance, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself would have picked up a Glock and – in German, of course – uttered the words “If something needs shot then shoot it seventeen times for the dead do not reoffend.”
Rashad Becker, however, was in a whole different league to what had gone before. Whilst still clearly divorced from the conventionalities of music, his knowledge of sound and how it can be used was both considerable and obvious. The normal verse-chorus-verse format is, of course, an irrelevance to the creator of soundscapes but he nonetheless created a structure to support his adventures in sound and mood and it was that very structure that brought an organic, and indeed approachable, quality to his performance. There was, in all likelihood, not one single real sound in his sonic armoury and yet his soundscapes were undoubtedly real and affecting. That’s what actual ability can do for you.
Up the stairs and out the door I go and I’ve been driven to drink once more. Thank you Jesus!