Raw Power achieves exactly what it set's out to do - showcasing raw and powerful experimental music

You could do worse that start summer with a weekend being blown away by a kaleidoscope of drones, and if you made it to the third instalment of Raw Power, the festival of Baba Yaga’s Hut in Tufnell Park, that’s what you would have got. 

With 26 bands over three days, programmed with 15 minutes between sets to ensure those wanting to be drenched in sound and miss nothing could.  And having offered a number of early bird tickets for just £40, a lucky few with their radar’s tuned in, had it at an incredible price.

It’s hard to imagine a sweeter old school spot that would work for a festival of this intimate size in London.  Split between two venues to give a change in scale and ambience, The Dome and The Boston Music Rooms, are joined by a court yard, giving an easy and contained route between the two, plus a glimpse of daylight between bands, and a space to smoke, eat, lurch into random conversations, and be treated to watch tripped out performance by a medieval knight, or Nordic warrior in cardboard, gently welding hacked instruments and accompanied by an automated foil fox, aka drum machine.

The super nice door staff and security were happy to give you local tips, pointing out the stores with free cash machines etc, and due to the labyrinthine and cavernous vibe of the Dome with bathrooms around every turn in the three days I never queued to pee = ace!

The merch stand grew from a few tapes, pins and t-shirts to a fully-fledged record store by the end of Sunday.   And a single food stall managed to offer a range of meat and a range of veggie options, to sustain the masses, from the ubiquitous pulled pork and burgers to spicy beans and haloumi. A fiver being the maximum price, as the solo foodie outlet in the place (there wouldn’t have been space for two) they were sometimes a little overwhelmed but doing a great job.  Added to this was a craft beer pop up bar stocking Beavertown in the courtyard and a regular long bar in both venues.  The set up insured you had options and never really waiting for anything.

Now to the sounds of Raw Power

Graham Dunning’s been busy in London the past few months bring his studio experiment to a live context. Mechanical Techno is a playful and precarious method of music making that slips between a sort of constructivist buckaroo and sonic assemblage tied together with a heavy beat, the solo soloist of the festival gave a great opening, delighting a growing crowd ready to dance.
 
The mighty prog outfit Teeth Of The Sea followed, and on mass, like a mini Mexican wave, the crowd put in their earplugs.  Ten years playing together has formed a band psyched out and unrepentant, dysfunctional and seemingly limitless in sounds they swooped in and thrashed around in influences from Marconi to the goblins, with tribal drums, screaming vocals, brass and synths, and a dark dark soul, Teeth Of The Sea could have played for aeons.
 
Friday’s headliners Test Dept: Redux completed the night, and played a mind blowing and blistering set that not only showed Baba Yaga’s programming to be super smart and conceptually tight, but also more importantly and sonically that the roots of industrial music and noise are vermently political. Test Dept: Redux formed in 1981 from the crumbling industrial sites of south London.  Playing today with stunning visuals: from flotillas of refugees, Greek and roman statues, to crumbling war torn cities abroad and the demolition of social housing at home.  Test Dept: Redux brought their sonic protest bang up to date.  Projected and oscillating at strobe like speed upon an elaborate scrap metal set-up, where jump leads were hooked up to springs attached in turn attached to saw-like planes of metal to be struck with metal bars, or curved and played with a bow, and enormous lacerated disks that in turn became gongs.  With two constant drummers, two or more tables of electronics and vocals that criticized current global politics they were as loud and as relevant as ever; urgent, demanding, intoxicating, and right on.    

The openings days demography, of a certain age and old punk aesthetic, suggested they'd come specifically for Test Dept: Redux, and the following days crowd confirmed it. Still, of all three nights headliners they were the stand out personal favourite, and I left on Friday ready to come straight back for more.

 
Returning on Saturday walking into The Dome and the beginnings of Sly & the Family Drone, the focus had shifted entirely from the stage to the centre of the room. The crowd turned inwards to an unfolding of heavy weirdness in ritualized riotous fashion.  Semi-nude The Family lurched round a central alter of drums and cymbals, wires, oscillators and effects-peddles litter the floor.  At play and highly performative the band constantly draw the crowd into their world through acts of initiation, binding them with cling film and their own heads with tape.  Any eager shoulder rubbing member of the audience will find themselves with drum sticks, smashing the s(*&t of something.  Yes, some cymbals may have died that night, as the band played on and out in a sweat-drenched whirl, and the main man (Sly?) finally disrobed to climb a speaker mountain in his pants.  The message was messy, we are one, we have fun, welcome to the drum.
 
Pikacyu-Makoto, the intriguing dalliance between Afrirampo’s Pickacyu and Acid Mothers Temple’s Kawabata Amoco, was another approach to the drum drenched in gorgeous techicolour visuals, at one point Pikacyu takes the tom aloft semi cart wheeling to center stage to run circles around it singing and drumming, she’s manic, in voice and on drums, her irrepressible energy layered and looped in a kind of myriad of chanting, in loving contrast with Makoto’s steady attack on the guitar, his noise is a presence, like a dark cloud.

I tried with Slabdragger but the name summed them up for me, generic and not so exciting I couldn't commit to 30 minutes, and with a band on next I'd only heard the buzz about, I go for semi-sun / day light and sustenance in the courtyard, to power up for Selvhenter.
 
Seven years playing together has produced a new genre defying sound from this Danish group, together creating a rigorous conceptual free jazz that alternatively floated and thundered on stage like whale song between four women sculpting the air with sound.   Producing gigantically loud harmonious drones from a violin, alto saxophone, trombone and drums there was a undercurrent of high brow socialist classicalism to them, and in coming forward to bow on stage as the crown erupted in blissed out awe and gratitude you know there from a special kind of underground scene, with clear cut egalitarian fault lines that allow genre defying sounds to be sophisticated in the extreme.

Again a point of recognition to the smartness of the Baba Yaga’s Hut programmers post Selvhenter, as I sat for a rare moment and teetered on the edge of a drone coma, along came Orchestra of Spheres, to enliven The Boston Music Rooms with a dressing up box whirling dervish caravan of dance moves and psychedelic abandon.  Clap Clap, yes they can and how we danced.
 
Finishing the 2nd night of Raw Power was Melt-Banana's only UK show in a thirty-day tour.  A Japanese duo that play super fast, she, waving some kind of glowing tablet as she shouts out pop-based lyrics like a machine gun whilst he wears a mask and tears away at the guitar.  Firmly on the scary side of sweet like a stage full of deathly candy, the crowd lapped up and thrashed around to their grindcore hedonism.

Getting to Raw Power for Lower Slaughter, the band on the line up I was most excited to see after catching them at Super Normal in 2014, I was treated to a new ensemble.  A female singer now fronts the band, and gives all the power, hexing out with sinister and beautiful lyrical moments, her deep scream riding on the bands throbbing waves of darkness.  

Side note for other lovers of Lower Slaughter circa2014, the lead singer of old now focuses on his solo project: King of Cats.
 
Housewives, south London’s experimental guitar-based unit, were the next band I caught and they were very very very nice.  Shoegaze sludge distortion with screwdrivers under guitar strings, drum beats popping like exploding light bulbs on stage and vocals that give a sense of Manchester in the 80’s – in the darkness something seemed incredible about the lead singers white shirt, and as it glowed out so did their songs, building up rhythms with an air of controlled anger, Housewives were surly and hypnotic.
 
Sex Swing, urgent sexy dark guys you’d be scared to hang out with – already a who’s who of noise makers as the band is made up from members of Part Chimp, Mugstar, Dethscalator, Dead Neanderthals & Earth – were pretty awesome; brooding and unsetting seated psychedlia.

 
Follakzoid, hail from Chile, and seemed to come from another planet, of softer hair and shimmering blue lights, creating a trance-like wonder at repetitive beats and guitar patterns that aim for altered states, leading psychedelic circular journey’s into everywhere and nowhere.
 
After this it was all heavy noise from old sludgy UK noise outfits, Mugstar from Liverpool, Part Chimp, and finally Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs (or Pigs x 7) from Newcastle and Glasgow, each played out to a mass of committed moshing and unrelentless crowd surfing – they were loved riotously and wildly.

Raw Power was exactly what it set out to be, bringing raw and powerful experimental music from a sea of noisemakers.  The three days brought so many approached to the drum and the drone, so much intention and intensity, sonic dreams and nightmarish screams of reality, and showed Baba Yaga’s Hut to be smart as hell, and doing a fantastic job at keeping the experimental scene present in a city in the throws of financial rigor mortis.  Committed to the experimental edge of noise and with constant stream of enticing gigs on the horizon, and another all dayer on the 20th of August, it wont be long until I’ll be back for more.

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