Westport Bar, Dundee 08-04-04: Altres + Hennisi
Two local bands - two contrasting musical styles -one helluva magical evening.
First on were Hennisi, a four-piece of electric guitar, electric bass, drums and male vocalist. The set began with a squall of guitar chords that promised good things to come from the first few notes, and this was joined by deep resonant bass as the drummer - a female looking more like a younger relation of one of The Slits for those that go that far back - launches into this awesome Can-like chug, and the band power up for flight. Pretty soon in the vocalist saunters on stage, grabs the mike and out comes this wondrous voice, so intence and yet so assured, sounding not only like he's actually been on stage for a couple of hours already, but so powerful and in tune, it sounds like there's three of him singing the lyrics.
From there on the track just takes off as the band and vocalist fire up and soar, the basist pounding the notes while the drummer gives it everything in a slowly accelerating thunder, meanwhile the guitar ringing out as the vocals have you transfixed, all a bit like Jim Morrison-meets-Can-meets Siouxsie and the Banshees. From there on, it was acse of watching and listening open-mouthed with disbelief at how natural sounding a band you are hearing. Becoming ever more aggressive in a structured way, it becomes a case of spotting the influences - bits of Cult here, hints of Public Image there, blasts of Spear of Destiny elsewhere and so on. About a third way through the set, they go into this slower, or rather less thunderous, track that starts with all the hallmarks and some of the chording of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", so much so that you could actually sing the words to it and make it stick, but in typically inventive fashion, this lot turn it into a full-throated roar as the vocals simply soar and burn over the ringing guitar and strident rhythms.
After this it's a case of the devil on their tails as some classic slices of Kraut-punk are delivered with force and confidence, every track just sounding fantastic. The slower tracks really allow the drummer to shine with some wickedly addictive rhythms, while the faster, more aggressive tracks exhibit all the hallmarks of a classic performance and arrangement. The way they stick bits in when you least expect them - one track starts with the drummer on bongos, sounding like she's beating the living daylights out of them and just as you think this is going to be integral to the song, she stops, the song powers up and she goes back to the drums as though she just fancied a go at the bongo things (they weren't bongos but I can't for the life of me recall the name - big upright things anyway). During the set the vocalist gives it his all, even wandering off the stage and into the audience, so intense that you sit there scared silly he's gonna come over and trash your table while still belting out the song.
The final track is a tour-de-force as the vocalist starts on harmonica for no apparent reason then the song burns into life like a napalm gun then about half way through, rock-punk turns into twelve bar for the briefest of sections as you gasp to what sounds like Captain Beefheart fronting the Cult or the Doors twisted through a contemporary hardcore blender. Full of the unexpected, full of wild songs with structure and invention, a bassist who for al the world sound like he's just stepped out of New Order, a drummer who will just blow you away, a guitarist who provides the density of a blazing sun and a vocalist so self-assured he could run for Prime Minister tomorrow - and win - this is band you just have to see live - more than a concert, it's an experience.
Altres and me go way back - back so far that there were six of them once but two died. Tonight there were just three - I wasn't about to ask about number four! They were once Scotland's only synthesizer music group - maybe still are - doing Dundee proud since 1985 when we put them on the annual "UK Electronica" concert in Sheffield.
Tonight was their first full set - barring a short trial set a few months back - since those days - and it was worth the wait. With Brian Hutton out front on electric guitar, the two others on synths, the band start with soundscaping that slowly intensifies, and then a Tangerine Dream-like rhythm begins as they stride into the main body of the piece, the synth players trading melodies and backdrop atmospherics while Brian pours chords out of the guitar somewhere between Michael Karoli and Robert Fripp. This opening piece then slowly makes way for some Frippian chord clouds from the guitar as the textures mutate into a strange world of sampled voices and electronics that acts as a link sequence before the next section of the set. At that point, totally unexpected by me as they've never used one before (and, as it turns out, totally unexpected to them too - see further on for this amazing story), a female gets up on stage, grabs the mike, waits for the synths to turn into a gloriously chilled-out slice of flowing ambient-dub, then sings a song in this rich soaring voice, in perfect harmony and time with the music as this fantastic piece of almost Can-like dub, only electronics, electronic rhythms and guitars, blends up and down with the female vocal to provide a segment that could only be described as inspired.
This bit ends, the vocalist steps down, and the band then go into another long track that changes the rhythms into a more electro-percussive groove as the guitars and synths become ever more of a multi-layered mix of melody and texture on top, totally irresistible as you find yourself, a slave to the rhythm.
For the final track, the guitarist steps down leaving the two synth players to provide a surging, more melodic, rhythmically more "formal" all-electronic end to what has been a magical set.
Now this will amaze you - myself and Kath (the voice of "Inkeys") went up to Brian and congratulated him on a set well done, singling out the "piece-de-resistance" of the dubby track with the female vocalist, to which Brian said that he had absolutely no idea she was going to do that - he described how she just went to the front of the stage during the segue and asked if she could recite some of her poetry to their next song, to which Brian said "OK" and she stood up on stage and did it. Now bear in mind that while the band knew what was coming, musically, they had no idea what she was going to do, and the female had absolutely no idea at all what style the band were going to be playing as, up until that moment, she'd never net them before. Yet it sounded so natural - sounded like they'd rehearsed it for days before as she sang - and I mean sang - along to the backing, the lyrical structure and vocals absolutely spot on with the rhythms. I just had to speak with her.
Turns out her name is Michele ("with one'l') Mclaren, currently unemployed, presumably local to Dundee, not a singer, and yet she provided one of the most inspired, and quite incredible in the context, moments I've witnessed in a concert since the days of improvisatory Can. She explained how she just decided to do it on the spur of the moment and actually got a slight stage fright mixing up the lines of two poems instead of keeping to one - but there is no way you'd have noticed as her and the band soared through the section with grace and passion and so addictive rhythm. She knows none of them and they don't know her. She may never be seen again - but if she is, someone snap her up 'coz this lady is amazing - Banco De Gaia would welcome her with open arms!!! But all due credit to Altres, one of the UK's leading synth/guitar instrumental bands, with an inventive and satisfying comeback set that shows they still have a lot left to give.
All in all then, after my recent conversion to the Stone Roses-influenced delights of Dundee's Rising Suns a few weeks back (who I would love to see again soon), I'm beginning to think there's a lot more to Dundee's music scene that I'd ever realised, and on the evidence of all this, it's quality stuff too.
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