"Any kind of popular trend is infinitely more wholesome than listening to old records. It's more important that people know that some kind of pleasure can be derived from things that are around them - rather than to catalogue more stuff - you can do that forever"- HARRY SMITH
........................"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may / Old Time is still a-flying / And this same flower that smiles today/Tomorrow will be dying"-ROBERT HERRICK
Another highlight of Incubate -- but not the least bit industrial - was Buzzcocks, who headlined the final night.
Several people mocked me - Mr Retromania, the caustic critic of reunion tours -- for visibly enjoying their greatest hits and not-quite-hits revue. But what can I say? A favourite band, I never did see them at the time, they're pretty fucking tight and energetic considering how haggard they look, and - strangely -- they still sound quite modern.
In fact one of their recent albums is called Modern, isn't it?
The gig was just great, but this here performance of "Harmony In My Head" was decidedly off, not cos of the rendition but on account of this bizarre interlude mid-song where Steve Diggle does a kind of... rap. Not rap as in rapping, but this stagey, overwraught soapbox-declamatory routine in which he inveighs against... well, your guess is as good as mine. As "Harmony" ended, Pete Shelley could be heard muttering "what the hell was that?"
Diggle has also got into doing these disconcerting guitar-heroics, lots of axe-brandishing and pointing of his arm and finger into the crowd as if to say "didn't I blow your mind?" -- dramatics that are way out of proportion to the very basic powerchords being struck.
One of my favourite Buzzcocks tunes, performed a long time ago.
Singles Going Steady, as immaculate an artifact as anything pop's produced in the last 100 years?
still have a bit of a deaf spot with them... in fact I reviewed the Macro Dub Infection CD Johnny starts with so must have played it many a time, and that Coil track made no impression on me then...
grown to dig 'em more in recent years, but of all their stuff this is still the one that shivers my marrow
Coil-talk reminded me tangentially that the highlight for me at Incubate 2012 was the Chris & Cosey set: a sort of greatest hits revue, a bit like what I imagine seeing Sweet Exorcist in their prime would have been like (if they'd actually played live): slamming yet eerie, sensual and dark, techno but veined with industrial (the famous Tutti cornet came out to play, great reverby gashes of sound from a headless guitar)
this YouTube (shot from someone's phone no doubt) doesn't capture it really
this one is slightly better
Incubate was full of industrial stuff, much of it from Legacy Artists
Nurse With Wound (disappointing, a real flat souffle, a porridge of chuntering Meat Beat Manifesto type breakbeats that seemed to go on for hours + aimless scratching from the Man Himself - who's belatedly discovered turntablizm, it seems - + recited text from a black lady up front -- apparently at some NwW gigs, they actually have an MC!)
There was a rather touching documentary film shown about Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and his late lady love...
Not industrial exactly but industrial-tinged / industrial-and-Goth influenced were Raime, who were brilliant. The texture-play of their sound really comes out when played through a big system, and superb use of cinematic projections (mostly Tarkovsky I think)
Raime at Incubate was a live set, all their own music; this below is a DJ set at Boiler Room and talking of industrial one of the first things they play is Cabaret Voltaire...
Another Incubate highlight was not industrial but it is Mugwump-related - Maria and the Mirrors. Despite, or perhaps because of technical difficulties that kept bringing the set to a halt and had the band almost tearing their hair out, it was terrifically tense and exciting. "Not industrial at all"-- well, the combination of pounding manual rhythm and sampled/electronic sound-smear did occasionally make me think of The Young Gods and of Cop Shoot Cop, who sometimes get loosely lumped in 'industrial' ...
