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2009-05-24
NL – Tilburg - Little Devil |
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| It is a sunny Sunday afternoon heading towards Tilburg and the Little Devil. Unfortunately this club is located in the middle of the city in a street in front of the central station. To find a parking slot is a hopeless thing in a city that hates cars. The venue is as big as my living room, a little bar, a pool table and then 3 steps down the liveclub with a tiny stage. Show was set to kick off at 5pm. I arrive a bit late at 5pm, and so does the tourbus. Argh… The girls behind the bar told me that everything got pushed back for at least 1 ½ hrs. Ok, time for a bottle of delicious Belgian cherry beer, or two, or three ;) While sitting and drinking outside the pub I watch the guys of BUNKUR arriving on bikes with an amp in the basket at the handlebar. Wow, that’s stylish *lol* Ok, it was the only one, probably in addition, they brought this way… ;) :: pics :: Finally everything got started, they basements fills up with around 50, 60 people. :: BUNKUR :: indulge in very slow, heavy drone-like and noisy sound cascades. Two bass players, drummer and a sound wiz. Latter had to vegetate next to the stage, but at least we got Mr. Broers from the side, while the both 4-stringers only presented us their backs. They had to watch the drummer who was setting the pace, if you want to call it like that ;) I’m not sure if I got 4 tracks or only one track to listen to…. Anyway, during the 30 minutes spanning performance drummer T13 roughly 5 times (ok, ok… much understated ;)) raised his arms for a fulminant drum/cymbal strike, what also resulted in plucking bass-strings and singing. And all around these wafting Drone and Doom sounds. Pretty cool, but at the end too predictable and unspectacular. Besides, there were a lot of sound problems, which should last the entire evening...
Afterwards
:: SECRETS
OF THE MOON :: really tried to get all band members
on stage. With success! But without ANY room to move. Much more
singer sG had to look out for not getting LSKs bass into his face,
while (live)guitarist Ar ran risk to fall down from the stage
while headbanging. Sound is still terrible, as well as the lights.
What lights btw.??? Only the air conditioner works perfectly,
I even had to put on me zipper. The set is quite short, 4 songs
from Antithesis album, Bleakstar and one
new song from the upcoming album Privilegivm, due
in September.
Little confusion
:: JARBOE
:: is about to enter the stage. They have switched
the headliner-slot with Esoteric for the entire tour. JARBOE
presents on this tour her new line-up, consisting of Fade Kainer
(keys) & Josh Lozano (git) of Inswarm, Erik Wunder
of Cobalt (drums) and Cedric Victor (bass). Josh has to
play next to the stage, in totally darkness, and is the only one
who plays himself in kinda rage, freaking completely out, so that
the fans again had to watch his guitar for not getting slain.
In between he steals a drum stick and maltreats his guitar. JARBOE
had to do an interview beforehand, looked extremely tired and
unflattering. The terrible sound pisses her off and at the end
she gives up totally annoyed. Her accentuated singing goes completely
down, her micro hardly ever works and the sound gets dominated
by feedbacks and dissonances.
And it didn’t
get any better. With stoic rest :: ESOTERIC
:: built up their equipment. And that takes some time
;) Seeing all these boards full of effects leaves me gobsmacked!
I mean, I have already seen a couple of bands with lotsa stuff
on stage, but ESOTERIC truly top them all. Three guitar
players, one bass player with a 6-stringer and every of them with
2 boards full of effects. Guitarist Kris has to play next to the
stage, keyboarder Olivier in front of. The rest stays on stage
and mark time. Sound is still bad and the intensity of the sound
gets lost. But it gives me a clue what ESOTERIC is about,
since I see them live the very first time.
Upshot: I wouldn’t call this show a disaster but it was for sure a pain for everybody involved. The sound was terribly bad, the PA dilapidated. Relaxation only afterwards came up a little, when the Little Devil emptied out and remaining fans and bands had some small talks while drinking beer. Some time after midnight I said goodbye, because I still had a 2 hrs drive to master. Being back on the parking-lot I fished a 51.70 Euro ticket from windscreen. WTF??? It’s a Sunday and a huge board says I don’t have to pay on a Sunday? Are they fooling me??? Well, will gonna push my luck… |
| story & pics © Dajana |
