I’m walking to work to a job that my loves do a good job of distracting me from. I’m cutting my teeth for the evening. A two-song Soundcloud sample sent from Indus Traps runs on repeat through my fittingly neon-pink earbuds. How am I going to take notes tonight? I just want to shut-eye and sway…
Deadbeat At dawn
All intentions to get lost in the in the movement and murk of the two Indus Traps tracks I’d honed in on, were either kicked firmly out or postponed. In the dark of the back of Rough Trade, Deadbeat at Dawn make no fuss of the stage. One moment’s quiet and it’s gone.
Slush heavy drums, open hats and metal work start painting the walls in treble and blast. Competing for volume, clarity and presence, stern dystopian sounds spill over and under. And it’s coming at a hell of a speed. And it’s twice as much noise as you’d think from two people. And I don’t know where it’s going but it’s ending in static and radio voices.
Next up comes cleaner, something less frantic. By either design or lack of meat in the room, the snare packs that big 80s reverb soaked sound that props up a more cinematic end-of-days soundtrack. If the first song was violent, this one has scope but that’s not to say there’s a calm on the way.
Throughout their set DBAD move from frantic Alec Empire to 28 Days Later through postrock Surf Solar upheavals and kraut repetition. If the pace of the changes ever hurled me off guard, I’d get caught in the wide churning subs underneath. My favourite moments arrive when they’re hooked into each other… there’s parts where even though busy and crammed full of clatter, intricate cymbals and cascading arpeggios, nothing changes for long enough to get lost. They look like they’re getting lost too. There’s parts of this Blade Runner burnout I love.
Tray Electric.
DBAD have dismantled the future and removed their machines from the stage. In their place in the centre is a half cockpit stack made of loop stations, synths, buttons and switches and behind it all; Tray Electric. I’m not sure I know what to expect.
It’s a much smoother ride. It’s slick and it’s smooth. It’s masterfully deceptive. The loops that make up this semi-frenetic Beaucoup Fish Vs Lazy pop get made one by one on the fly. It took me some time to work out just how much work there was going on to pin these prick tight tracks down.
Tray’s unashamed voice gets prettied in reverb, it’s a home demo showcase with bedroom walls blown out. It’s something surprisingly soulful. It’s something surprisingly live. I’m in awe of the simultaneous recording of samples, releasing of beats, vocoder pitching, pitch bending and singing. Every synapse of Trays lining up a whatnext and he even finds time to look like he’s enjoying it. ‘Come Around’ is the song that wraps all that in one.
Sometimes the only pay off is one more addition to meticulous texture. Sometimes it’s tightly spun pop. Sometimes a cliché get’s worn so well you realise how and why it became a staple …and you lap up its use one more time. The practice that must have gone into this. Occasionally dizzying, always enjoyable, ends on a four-to-floor eclectroclash high designed for a much bigger stage.
Indus Traps
This showcase of Nottingham / post-Nottingham electro wraps up exactly where my day began, right down to last song of being first song of the day.
A mention of photographs stealing your soul and “I guess this song is about soul snatchery.” That’s how it’s opened… hinting strangely at themes that I wasn’t guessing would run on throughout. Themes of opening up, clawing back something given, something taken, something lost, maybe at something that wasn’t quite got.
Lou Barnell’s movements and vocals match half designed. Staged unfurling of limbs and long notes mixed up in organic snaps and syllabic delivery. Ambitions are set, jarring between a flexible/inflexible that leaps off the back of a Lone meets Burial meets ‘There Is Love’ Four-Tet sound that underpins all with a constant claustrophobia. There’s no vying for position. Both Lou and her soulsound catcher Dirty Freud serve each other. He keeps the order she seeks to break.
This is sound meets story meets exhibition. Songs about anger, about restraint, hard not to pick out the shade of resentment but I couldn’t say where it’s aimed. And funny it all disappears in the confidence shown in the talk between songs. And lovely to have it delivered so freely. It’s like dancing in sketches when sketches will do.
For the final three songs their intentions shift. More exploratory and more refined in purpose. Recorded harmonies play back up and loop, music grows more discordant, ‘Badman Sounds’ opens up room for more abrasive vocals complete with input from part time Prodigy members. Shimmering strings give new woozy urgency to the acidic pop of ‘Ride Me Like Lightning’; ‘Trouble to Protect You’ crammed in between. There’s talk of success and ‘song of the week’ and it’s easy now to see why.
As much as the set glistened and popped with the sheen and the glamour strapped to it, there’s a dirt underneath I was pleased to see picked at – something I hadn’t twigged on my last walk to work. Something I look forward to more of.
– Will Wilkinson.
Indus Traps played Rough Trade in Nottingham on October 12th
With support from Deadbeat at Dawn and Tray Electric.
Find Indus Traps @ www.cargocollective.com/IndusTraps
Find Tray Electric @ www.facebook.com/TrayElectric/
Find Deadbeat at Dawn @ deadbeatatdawn.bandcamp.com
Contact me @ facebook.com/willwilkinsonagain
Photos by Roo Inn
