15th Jan, 2009. Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW

One of the best things about the plethora of summer festivals is the sideshows that accompany them. The bands get to stretch out with longer sets and multiple acts are often presented on the same bill. This show featuring Fuck Buttons, Dead Meadow and Afrirampo was a fantastic lineup choice that was diverse in sound but worked perfectly as an evening of contrasting musical brilliance.

Afrirampo were fairly unknown in Australia prior to these first shows yet they have travelled  extensively and can count Sonic Youth and Lightning Bolt among their fans. The Japanese female duo of Pika (drums, vocals) and Oni (guitar, vocals) skipped onstage with a spoken word chant about being hungry and looking for koalas. Pika ventured out into the crowd before hitching a ride back to the stage on the shoulders of an audience member. This set the scene for a show that was part cute pop performance art, thunderous White Stripes primal rock and psychedelic melodic drone. Both were accomplished musicians and played with a raw enthusiasm that won the ears and applause of an audience that came with no preconceived expectations. They surely must be fans if not friends with Japan’s Boris who also trade in music that is both beautiful and destructive. Pika pounded the drums with unbridled enthusiasm and Oni’s guitar work ranged from rapid fire staccato strums to delicate picked melodies in the prettier songs.

Dead Meadow have been prowling just beneath the radar of stoner rock and indie fans for a few years now. They pull in disparate influences like J Mascis, Kyuss, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Sabbath and create a sludgy groove of churning riffs, all thick and sticky that wrap around you like a heavy rug. They looked suitably 70’s with the drummer’s Allman Brothers moustache and bass player Steve Kille prowling the stage with a look not dissimilar to Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men, moonlighting in The Velvet Underground. After the manic performance from Afrirampo, Dead Meadow was a chance to let the eyelids relax and the head nod along to their hazy psych sound. When they lifted the tempo (slightly) as on the choppier ‘What Needs Must Be’ their trippier side morphed into blues based boogie while still brilliantly retaining the space and timing that is a hallmark of their style. Swigging from a bottle of whiskey through the set, they looked suitably done and dusted by the end of what was a glorious sweaty performance.

Fuck Buttons are one of the many bands to recently emerge featuring that word in their name (Holy Fuck, Fucked Up, The Fucking Champs and even… Fuck). Generally you would expect a hardcore punk band to take on the expletive to increase the shock value of their name but that doesn’t fit with Fuck Buttons, either in their music or their look. Two unassuming guys that could have stepped from an American Apparel catalogue appeared on stage and positioned themselves opposite one another behind tables of equipment, effects and a laptop. They put together a well paced set that was built on their layered approach. They laid a bed of bleeps and twisted electronics before adding percussive elements that bordered on industrial and at times were accompanied by tribal pounding on a single floor tom. The vocal contribution consisted of one of them screaming unintelligible words into what looked like a kid’s plastic toy microphone and radio. It worked extremely well given that it was their only human interaction with the audience. Their final two tracks were their best as they brought all the elements of their sound together and progressively dialed it up like a floor filling dance track.  Layer upon layer of static and white noise over a subsonic rhythm that finally got the crowd moving until they cut it off like a steel cable snapping under extreme tension.

Congratulations to ATP for not only putting on what was an exceptional festival but allowing the audience to witness three unique and very different bands, in particular Afrirampo who won the hearts of many who had never heard of them but I’m sure would have been searching them out online the next day.