Thee Alcoholics | Polevaulter | Rubbish Pail Youngsters

The Limitless Hum, Shipley

twenty third September 2023

The Limitless Hum brings Thee Alcoholics, Polevaulter and Rubbish Pail Youngsters to Shipley. Andy Brown shares his ideas for Louder Than Battle.

Organised by a collective of music promoters and like-minded creatives, The Limitless Hum is an ongoing collection of specifically curated gigs nestled away within the small market city of Shipley in West Yorkshire. With their normal abode of the Kirkgate Centre below renovation, the night time has briefly relocated up the highway, to the cosy confines of the Beehive. Whereas the Kirkgate Centre has a 100-person capability, the Beehive is an much more intimate venue. Make no mistake, we’re about to get very up shut and private with tonight’s three acts. Arriving on the pub, we’re directed down some stone stairs right into a basement-come-underground tavern. Move the bar, push the Limitless Hum flag to at least one facet and also you’ll enter a mini-Narnia. Albeit, one with extra of a concentrate on DIY bands and fewer on speaking lions and magical wardrobes. A Narnia for individuals who like experimental, underground music.

We’re lowered into the night time with a set from Leeds-based duo, Rubbish Pail Youngsters. Comprised of Yakkida! and Territorial Gobbing, the pair of experimentally-minded musicians carry out utilizing a tableful of lights, wires, synths, cassettes and different tools. It’s like a low-key musical TARDIS created from foraged musical miscellanea. A free-flowing and defiantly avant-garde sound that comes throughout like disturbed child’s music. Trumpton gone fallacious, if you’ll. The sound of a synth falling down the steps and hitting each setting because it goes. A plethora of dials and units are used to create loops and a barely unnerving but knowingly ridiculous sound collage. Mr Gobbing sometimes sings unintelligible ravings into the microphone in helium-pitched tones. Gibby Haynes would most definitely approve.

Yakkida!, aka Hilary from LS6 stalwarts Cowtown, presents up a calmer but no much less conventional vocal as she harmonises to the bewildering, improvised soundscapes. It’s a ritual of kinds, primarily based on enjoyable, spontaneity and a wholesome disregard for sanity. At one level, they try and summon some Lovecraftian cat god by ringing a tiny bell. As an alternative, we simply get the return of Gobbing’s more and more erratic helium demon. He gleefully smashes keys at random earlier than the music finally morphs into one thing ambient and unexpectedly beautiful (for some time, not less than). The duo appear like they’re having an absolute blast and I truthfully haven’t smiled this a lot throughout a efficiency in ages. This wouldn’t be everybody’s thought of a superb Saturday night time however I really feel proper at residence. Avant-garde hijinks and surrealist silliness of the very best order.

Selection is most definitely the spice of life and tonight’s second act takes issues in a a lot louder, extra abrasive path. Polevaulter is a Northern noise duo from Leeds that employs a seething combine of business electronics, bludgeoning bass and eye-poppingly offended vocals. The brilliantly named Pissed In The Baths units the tone with a easy, but brutally efficient beat accompanied by some deeply aggravated discuss/rant-style vocals. A pleasingly ominous and heavy sound, every monitor lunges and lurches as heads nod alongside in time. Vocalist Jon is wrapped within the microphone cable and divides his time between his synth and getting eyeball-to-eyeball with the group. Dan’s thuggish bass strains bombard our fragile frames as Jon yells like a person who’s simply discovered a parking ticket clipped to his windscreen wiper.

After a couple of songs, the smoke machine kicks in, both that or somebody is vaping themselves into oblivion. What begins as a little bit of atmospheric smoke quickly turns right into a thick, billowing shroud that consumes the room. Bathed in pink gentle and obscured by clouds, Jon yells his approach by way of the monstrous Tony’s Home. “I make the principles on this home” he yells as hell closes in. It’s a uncooked and brilliantly delivered set. A cathartic expertise for the band and crowd alike. It’s nice to see one thing like this in such an intimate setting, the entire night time appears like a home get together with experimental bands rather than the standard Spotify playlist on shuffle. A home get together the place everybody’s actually into the music and nobody’s throwing up within the backyard.

Subsequent up, it’s time for London-based noise rock acolytes, Thee Alcoholics. We’re greeted by the sluggish, ominous crawl of Brainwash Field from final 12 months’s Mistaken Pace Information seven-inch. The excitement of suggestions and an awesome sense of menace fills the area. There’s no escape now. We’re huddled into the small basement room and on the mercy of the band. They observe this up with the pounding, doom-laden and tightly wound Energy. These songs are risky and brimful of pressure, making the explosive moments all of the extra cathartic. Oh my, these songs are explosive. The five-piece hits the small but devoted crowd with a wall of sound and fury. Two guitars, synths and drums create nightmarish, no-wave loops of nasty, extremely efficient noise.

They don’t say all that a lot between songs, this isn’t about on-stage banter and disarming anecdotes. It’s about embracing the sound. The vocals stay low within the combine, threats and warnings sung by way of gritted enamel. The songs are stripped of any pointless accompaniments, no center eight or huge, singalong refrain right here. What stays is filthy, uncooked and impressively intense. When the band locks right into a groove, it’s devastating in one of the best ways doable. We’re solely two songs in when one of many guitarists is worried that he’s damaged his guitar however a snapped string or two isn’t going to cease a band like Thee Alcoholics. Politicians consumes us in a sea of pulsing, malevolent noise whereas the propulsive She’s The Man finds everybody nodding their heads alongside in time to the sonic assault. We’re all properly and actually hypnotised.

Noise rock? No wave? Finally, it’s rock’n’roll performed with an unwavering dedication to repetition and unyielding depth. It’s not possible to not get pulled into the set once they all lock right into a bludgeoning, two-note riff. Thee Alcoholics take you to a spot the place solely the riff issues. The relentless, hypnotic and all-consuming riff. My god, it’s satisfying to be caught up within the bombardment. Think about The Stooges songbook performed by Drunk In Hell or the Osees in the event that they’d been saved in a basement, starved of sunshine and grown darkish and considerably vicious. The set ends and I want they may simply begin the entire thing over again. It’s official, The Limitless Hum have placed on one other absolute belter.

Purchase a ticket for the subsequent Limitless Hum HERE.

Discover Rubbish Pail Youngsters on Bandcamp.

Polevaulter may be discovered on Fb, Instagram, X and Bandcamp.

Thee Alcoholics are on Instagram, X and Bandcamp.

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All pictures by Jim Mumby.

All phrases by Andy Brown. You may go to his writer profile and browse extra of his critiques for Louder Than Battle right here.