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Winning the award for most diverse and musically pioneering music festival on the British calendar (yeah you heard me ATP!), Supersonic offers a vast plethora of obscure musical treasure, from minimal avant-electronica to ‘heavier than thou’ black metal, Supersonic has it all, and with last years event was called off early due to a bomb scare expectations are extremely high. With a belief that ‘the high life is actually the medieval life’, first band of the day, Circulus sound like the band you formed in school music lessons utilising every instrument the under-funded establishment had to offer. Creating a unique blend of medieval progressive psych-rock, Ciculus are bizarre and very surreal. Claiming a belief in fairies and pixies and dressing up in period clothing no-one in the audience seems to know if they’re ‘4 real’ but no-one really cares. Its early afternoon, the suns out and the alcohol’s flowing. So stand back, close your eyes and party like its 1699. Next up is Alexander Tucker. With various technical difficulties to contend with Tucker ditches his usual blend of bleak lo-fi psych-folk and instead creates a wonderfully rich improvised vocal loop. The gamble pays off, its dark and brooding and a huge success. After four hours in the sun it was time to take refuge in the Supersonic theatre space, just in time for the droning delights of Final. Justin Broadrick (Jesu/Godflesh) aka Final builds up layers and layers of white-noise over which he drenches in dark ambient electronica and guitar harmonics. It’s a bizarre sensation sitting there in a vastly over-capacity theatre battling drowsiness and having walls of electronic noise smashed into my face by the ridiculous power of the Supersonic soundsystem. And I thought the sun was hard-going. After listening to a rather fantastic Thrones from behind a closed door (the Supersonic staff finally decided that they needed to limit the number of people in the theatre, unfortunately I was one of the ones who was not limited) we made our way back outside into the cool summer evening and prepared ourselves for the ‘main event’. With an imminent new album to promote, Isis mean business. Drawing heavily from Neurosis and Godflesh, Isis make post-metal that is at times brutal and confronting and at others fragile and delicate. It’s powerful, demanding and totally awe-inspiring. Just
as my ears finally stop ringing, San Francisco’s High on
Fire take to the stage and absolute destroy them. Drawing heavily
from their most recent Relapse records released Blessed Black Wings High
on Fire play a wide blend of heavy stoner-metal. It’s metal in the
purest sense, dirty, aggressive and very fucking loud! As the final droning
distortion rings out from High on Fires amplifiers, like a horror movie
killers final attack, we leave Supersonic 2006 with our eardrums in tatters
but our hearts firmly in Birmingham. Metal has returned home. |
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SUPERSONIC
22nd July 2006