Bong | Nought | Horacio Pollard | Alex Ward - Bardens Boudoir, London, 7 March 2010

A man takes the stage. Shirt tucked into dark jeans. Perhaps's he here to talk about library indexing systems. Instead Alex Ward plays guitar alongside drum machine beats. Math-metal fret dexterity. Like some Jap noise stuff that I can't remember.

A table is dragged out with Horacio Pollard's gear on. There's a low end rumble with high pitched bursts of static, like a modem making a connection. He plays a guitar which has been given some kind of vocoder effect. The set loses it's way. Nothing seems to change.

The guitarist in Nought looks familiar. Before they play he contorts his wrist and fingers into hideous torture positions. I guess he's just limbering up. They then deliver a set of prog rock excelsis. Superbly unnecessary comlex time changes.

The lights are turned off, shrouding the stage in darkness for Bong's set. Out of the ominous bass thrum emerges sitar murk. The guitarist holds the ceiling as if it's threatened with collapse. Bong's singer, a bearded giant of a man, intones Druid incantations into the microphone. The band crawl along at a funereal tempo. Bong are an emersive experience. They don't deliver catchy hooks, just slow motion pyrotechnics as they gaze into the psychedelic nebula of cosmic infinity. Sinewy sitar runs attempt transcendental lift-off whilst anchored to the bass drone - a single universal truth of culture, dimension and time. Revelation is bestowed on me. I am eternity.

Anyway, work tomorrow.

US Girls | Time | Heatsick - Cafe Oto, 1 March 2010

On a long low table lies a solitary record. This is the worst merch stand I have ever seen.

Heatsick is one half of Birds of Delay. There is a table with the usual array of wires, keyboards and nameless devices. Given how frequently I see them deployed I really should find out what they are called. He plays scraping sound-scapes. Soundscrapes maybe. There’s a snatch of strings. Some plinking guitar, sawing violin and boring rock moves. Utterly unexceptional.

Why would you call yourself Time? You’re inviting trouble by laying claim to a moniker which implies such conceptual significance. They play as a duo. One plays guitar whilst the other pointlessly flits between violin, bass, piano, maybe another instrument. Time, literally and figuratively, has made me forget. They seem to be trying for a half-formed sketch type vibe, but succeed only in being half-formed attempt at being half-formed. Dire.

I do wonder why I came tonight. I bought US Girls first record and I wasn’t that keen on it. I saw her play live a year ago and didn’t enjoy it. No-one could accuse me of living for pleasure. High-pitched vocals, chanted school playground style over crude electro-beats and pulse. It’s like listening to something down a drain pipe. There’s a strange moment where Sam Cooke’s ‘A change is going to come’ floats out of a static howl. Underwhelming.