I felt the epic standard of Lucifer Rising and I thanked the Egyptian gods to have summer back as I rode my bike down Skalitzerstrasse. The air was like being in a warm swimming pool and I could only think about cold beer when I arrived at the Festsaal Kreuzberg Keller Tuesday night, 17/7/07. I’d noticed a lot of English being spoken in the streets and cafes all that day and also amongst those who waited for the show.
New York’s Airport War opened the night in a dark corner of the venue’s basement. The single man, single turntable linked to box effects screeched on quite suddenly and remained a steady screeching sound-wall throughout. It marked the first time I remembered earplugs at a noise show, and I was thankful it was this one.
Airport War manipulated what looked like a thick white square record with one hand to create harsh static, hyper feedback and crunchy clicks. At first I thought he was using a Stanton record needle against thick paper or plastic, but upon closer inspection I noticed that the square paper indeed had the grooves of a pressed record.
airportwar
The set ended after about 5 and a-half minutes as abruptly as it started, and Airport War walked away leaving the audience in ringing silence. I was told it was very similar to the sound of a tram slicing through iced up overhead lines on a cold wintery night by an ex tram-conductor in attendance. I was sure he was drunk on vodka, but it turned out that he was drinking water out of a vodka bottle. I tasted it while we listened to the Neil Young being played between sets.
Next, Heatsick Steven Warwick sat down in front of his amp, keyboard in his lap. The small 80’s Casio had less than half of the original 32 keys remaining and I was told that the black keys were broken off during heated performance. He broke the white ones off later and never replaced them because they weren’t needed. He told me his style changed after that. Warm, melted droning began to fill the concrete room. As it earned momentum through hummingbird gains it reached a tumbling semi rhythmic pulse. I later found out that Steven’s keyboard ran out of batteries so he put it down and stormed over to a drum kit, starting into frantic almost-drum-solo accompaniment, pausing only to catch-up on beer intake. His set was intuitively perfect in length.
steven warwick
The Religious Knives from New York City are made up of Maya Miller and Michael Bernstein (‘Heavy Tapes’ cassette and art label), and Nate Nelson (Mouthus and co-runner of ‘Our Mouth’ label) played as a 4 piece, but I’m not sure who the fourth dude with them was - sorry.
Religious Knives' set started with a Nord on a table in the red spinning lights, producing a warm ping ponging line with no one present to play it. People crowded around and watched expectantly. I went over to the sound guy to see what was going on and he threw his hands in the air, shrugging like “I don’t know man, it’s not me!”
religious knives
About 15 minutes later Religious Knives came on and started into their set. The pinging synth line changed to lofty sounding church organ and RK traveled in and out of grimey rock and psych with the members taking turns on echoing vocals and keeping tight eye contact. The set moved between Psychic Ills and the Doors and I hate to compare them with other bands so mercilessly, but the music struck me as somewhat standard, therefore comparison is necessary. RK followed in the wake of the proceeding sets by keeping theirs quite short, but it didn’t suit them as well as the acts before. They needed more time to get the audience involved and even despite the short length, my attention wavered.
I asked Heatsick his opinion of the set. He told me that he’d seen the Religious Knives a few times before, that this set reminded him a bit of Rudolph Grey and that this was indeed his favorite.
Interview with Steven Warwick/Heatsick<
