quick review of infinite birth

As previewed here Infinite Birth played Chorlton abode yesterday. They were on first at around nine.

They started slowly and certainly a little quiet, but managed to spend the first few minutes building up a tension that wasn't immediately resolved. There is in fact something kind of unresolved about their sound that I like. Although bear in mind that while they've been rehearsing and practising through the summer, and while Lou and Graham also play together as Blood Moon, this was only Infinite Birth's second gig.

That lack of resolution is in a couple of tensions that are kind of inbuilt in the sound and approach. They are an improvising quartet but apparently approach playing live, at least on this occasion, with a vague outline of what they want to achieve in place. As anyone who's ever done any kind of improvisation will know it's tricky to know how much to plan things. You obviously want to leave yourself room to wander off the map if that's going to make more sense, but clearly in a group situation that becomes harder.

Another of those tensions is in the sound specifically, and the mixture of influences. Particularly evident in the drums, and arguably in the use of electronics and keyboard, there's the influence of dub. The big spacious echoes dying out, which melds well with the drone elements. Which somehow reminds me of the dubstep meets drone sounds of Mordant Music even while obviously wholly unrelated. Then there are the sounds that seem to come from a more recognisable contemporary improv tradition. The Xaphoon is sonically a cousin to the clarinet and other reed instruments used to splash colour across other textures, and much of what Lou does seems to channel experimental Sonic Youth by way of i'm being good.

Back to last night. After a deliberately slow and tense start Infinite Birth built very slowly to the first of three climaxes. It's hard to know exactly what to make of their prolonged locked groove climaxes, in as much as the critical shorthand - ecstatic, freakout, etc. - doesn't seem all that accurate. The sound is hypnotic and makes you feel good, kind of a cousin to meditation, but there's always an attack to it, and often those jazzy slashes of Xaphoon. And then the sound dropped down again. As I remember during the quiet section between the first and second climax the band did seem to struggle to find a common language, but gradually came back together and built up much more quickly.

The second quiet section on the other hand certainly looked a lot more assured. The sounds were quieter, things were left to hang, much of the sound was fairly abstract and there was no attempt made to resolve it. Again the noise levels were only built up slowly. I really liked the final section. There were spidery abstract chimes, harsh electronic squeals, caustic keyboard drones and propulsive, explosive drums. It was fucking superb. What was even cooler was that large numbers of people who were stood around and initially looked like they were only tolerating the band as some kind of eccentric folly were thoroughly spanked into nodding along and grinning.