Echoes and dust

February 03 2009 @ The Macbeth, Hoxton.

With so many little nights on all over London it’s sometimes hard to sort the wood from the tress, so to speak, but in Goodbye, Faithful Kingdom we think we’ve found a little gem. Operating out of The MacBeth pub in Hoxton and on irregular dates, it might be hard to catch but if tonight is anything to go by its well worth seeking out.

Organised by the guys from The Monroe Transfer, their sound influences the theme of the evening and the night offered up variations on the theme of Post Rock, by significant variations.

First up were Brassica. They name Pink Floyd, Ozric Tentacles and Aphex Twin amongst their influences but that doesn’t tell half the story. Constituting two laptop / keyboard jockeys, a cellist and a ‘singer’, they come on stage looking for all the world like Slipknot meets Phantom Of The Opera and produced an assault of deep bass, grooving breaks and sampled and resampled vocal noises that captured the audience’s attention from the kick off. So often electronic based bands like this can be musically interesting but as boring to watch as someone checking their emails but not Brassica, the frontman gives a show worthy of pre-insurance salesman era Iggy, you couldn’t take your eyes off the stage.

Our hosts take to the stage next. Before coming tonight we checked out the tunes on MySpace and wondered how they were going to replicate their string heavy sound in the modest confines of The MacBeth. They did it by cramming a string quartet, violin, viola, cello and double bass, on to the small stage alongside two guitarists and a drummer. They announce they are only going to play two songs tonight and it soon becomes apparent why. Their songs are epic journeys through a number of audio landscapes. The first track was spell binding, with elements of Talk Talk and Godspeed amongst other s. The second was slightly more standard post rock fare bringing to mind Do Make Say Think. If anything lets them down it’s a few technical deficiencies in the playing but your certainly can’t fault their imagination or ambition.

The headline act, and the reason that we have dragged our sorry arses through a snowbound London Town, is one of Echoes And Dust’s bands of last year, Glissando.

Seeing them tonight makes us doubly gutted that we didn’t catch them at the Union Chapel a few weeks back because the music they play is so beautiful, so delicate and plaintive it’s almost lost in the somewhat spit n sawdust surroundings of this pub and is made to be listened to in a space of greater reverence. But that aside, they still shine out here. Not wanting to detract in any way from the two bands that had gone before, this was the difference between listening to professionals and enthusiastic amateurs.

Richard and Elly, ably assisted by a full band, produced such wondrous noise; gentle, haunting and moving. Combining songs from their album ‘With Our Arms Wide Open We March Towards The Sea’ with new material, they kept the audience enraptured throughout. It’s just a shame a few more of the crowd that had obviously come to see the hometown bands didn’t stick around for it, their loss though and those that did were richly rewarded.

All in, an entertaining and enlightening night and we’ll certainly be looking out for the next one. Once we have details we’ll share them with you.