| |
Livereviews
Roadburn Festival
013, Tilburg, Holland, April 20-21st, 2007
AMAZING!
No other word is needed to describe this event. The venue,
the music, the people and the love of music all come together
under one roof for 2 days of nearly 10 hrs straight on 3 stages
of killer bands. One after another, each offering a unique
and amazing experience. Wow... so this is what happened with
the group of us from Denmark who went to Roadburn… again…
The day started very early with us meeting at the airport
at 5:30 in the morning to catch the 7:00 plane to Amsterdam.
No one was fresh, but everyone was excited. Those who went
and saw Acid King the night before with Blutch and Black Cobra
got only a few hours sleep. All goes well and everyone sleeps
on the plane. We spend a couple of hours in Amsterdam in the
cool area and go to an amazing coffeeshop called Bluebird.
Great stuff…(Lavender, Budda's Sister, Northern Lights)
11:15, we hit the train to Tilburg… arrives 3 min to
late and we miss the connection.. Damn.. Luckily, quite a
few others do as well and we follow them and are delayed only
30 mins. Most everyone is drinking some beers now. Finally,
we arrive at the hotel and check in. We are staying in a small
town 10km south of Tilburg and it is full of Roadburn people,
from England, Germany, Estonia and now Denmark! The bus schedule
is all fucked up and hard to figure out what is going on but
after some delays we do get to Tilburg around 15:00. Doors
will open at 16:00 and the Sword will open the event at 16:30
in the Green (Medium sized room). We eat quite a big meal
(Steak, fries, and salad) and beers and are into see the Sword.
My friends Santtu and Cosmik Ken are DJ's in this room and
play awesome music throughout the whole festival! Anyway,
the SWORD opens with a new song and sound really great. These
guys are really developing into the band of killer doom and
metal related riffing rock. Very powerful stuff and we are
flying high and rocking out. Very impressed… We only
see 30 mins, as we will see this band again soon with Clutch
in Copenhagen. Off to see the Dutch, Blue Cheer inspired,
Orange Sunshine on the main stage. Wow.. Looks killer again.
Orange Sunshine are really fucking good and trip you with
their totally heavy tuned down old school rock jamming and
showing parts of the film Apocalypse Now in the background
on the gigantic screen. Pharaoh Overlord from Finland (featuring
members of Circle) are next in the Green room and no one knows
that to expect. These guys totally blew us away and were the
best band so far. 3 guitars, bass, drums and a small synth.
They started out very slowly and quiet and the music just
got more and more and more intense until was full blown monster
riffs. Totally hypnotic and spaced out. Wow.. Did not catch
the last track as we went up to the balcony to see Clutch.,
but first saw one song by On Trial (in the Bat Cave), our
friends here in Denmark. Room is packed..
 The
last two Clutch records are some of my favourites in the past
2 years so I am excited to see them. They are totally amazing
and really focus on the material from the new record opening
up with Progress, Powerplay, Devil and Me, and White's Ferry.
After Cubandara, the singer from Five Horse Johnson comes
out and plays some harmonica on Shiny Cadiallacness also from
the new record. They are really jamming now Clutch and we
are totally hooked into their unique groove that their music
has. Killer stuff.. He stays on with them for Electric Worry.
JWE, Rapture of Riddley Walker and Child of the City are rocked
as well. The set ends with Wino joining the band for Red Horse,
a song he played with them in the studio some years back.
It was a surprise that no songs from Robot Hive were played
in this set, a real showcase of the new record, which I loved.
They were awesome but played too short a set, only 50 minutes.
Magnus and I loose the others and head over to catch the only
real space rock band at the festival, the Earthling Society.
They were really really excellent and play cool spacey set
with some excellent grooves and synths and guitars. I would
like to see them do a full concert. They played at least one
new song and stuff from their last CD. We leave before the
end to see what Blue Cheer is about. We hear Parchment Farm
and one other song and it sounds awful.. Just no life in it…
a really dead stoned sound.. Next is Sundial.
Sundial is quite a surprise. They opened up with a couple
of quite heavy rockers before playing familiar songs. The
line up is just a 3 piece. Gary still lays down some really
cool guitar and plays some of the songs they always do like
All over Now, Exploding in your Mind, Rollercoaster. Their
set went by fast.. Wow.. I liked it a lot.. . We now catch
the last half of the Siena Root set and the crowd is totally
into it but the room is not overly packed. They sound great
and the crowd is really loud for them. They are playing a
shorter version of the set we just saw them play but are so
professional and great a band, they amaze… Back to the
Green Room in time to catch Guru Guru, the old Kraut rock
band who started in 1969! The band leader (the drummer, Mani)
tells us they have not played in Holland in 29 years! Anyway,
they start with a short space jam and then into We Dare and
Space Baby. They are quite cool. Great drummer and bass player.
The two guitar players are good but not like the rest. They
then played some Rastafari track that was quite strange and
cool. The drummer is a real character doing strange and funny
things. Der LSD March, from the 1st LP is played. Pow Wow
and some bizarre stuff and then a 3 part track from the Kanguru
record closes their set. We saw the whole thing. Cool stuff
and very different from anything else we have seen today..
We completely missed Big Business and the Melvins (except
I popped and took a couple of pictures when I went to pee)
but people said they were amazing and quite cool. I lost the
others and watch what I could of Josiah. The room was not
that full and they rocked out but for some reason, this is
a band that just does not grab me live. I seem to like their
records much better. To end the night you have the choice
of Rotor in the Bat Cave or Causa Sui in the Green room. We
went for Causa Sui and we were pretty much all together again
and everyone was super high and having beers. Causa Sui totally
blew the place apart. Amazing.. These guys really are becoming
the Jimi Hendrix experience of the stoner rock scene with
amazing guitar driven jams. People were pretty blown away.
I dashed out, having seen them a few weeks ago to catch a
couple of songs by Rotor. Room was packed and they sounded
quite cool. The songs I heard were really hard…
Anyway, that was the end of Day 1. Volt was playing after
Causa Sui but we were all really tired having got to the airport
at 5:30 on this morning and it was now around 1:30. After
the cab ride back to the hotel, some hang out in the bar for
one last beer….
IT was great to meet up with some many people that I know
from around the world (Chris from Phased), Rocksanne from
420 Train Wreck, Walter (of course), Jussi from Circle, Santtu,
Jon Jarrett, Marco (Custard Pie), Mühler and Gerard,
and many others..
 DAY
2
We arrive in town and get some food and hang out in the great
weather before going in and catching ACID KING on the big
stage. I am hanging out with Nils, Jon A, Lasse… Acid
king are all about the monster doom riff and not much else.
You are either into or you are not. IF you are into it, they
are the kings.. if not, then you get a little bored as their
sound is quite limited but they are awesome at what they do
and on this huge stage the sound in a monster to behold…
I watch 30 of the 45 min set and they have these cool biker
movies mixed with satanic 60's films.. I get into the room
for Monkey 3 (Bat Cave) in time to get up near the front by
the guitarist and hang out with two Swedish guys who I met
in Stockholm when my band, the Øresund Space Collective
played there. Anyway, Monkey 3 focus mostly on tracks with
from the new CD, maybe only play 1 older song but the new
stuff translates really well to the live scene and they have
some really cool visuals on the screen behind them. Great
great band.. a cool mixture of some spacey synthesizers and
heavy guitars and the right groove. All instrumental. They
did not even have a microphone to say who they were or thanks
to the audience. Not a word.. Right after they finished it
was off to catch Circle. These guys have such a varied music
catalog you never know what they are going to play but today,
they played spaced out heavy metal rock and roll and hypnosis
stuff. A few new songs were also played. IT was very cool
and the singer, he does a lot of strange stuff like jogging
in place for like 7 mins straight, arm wrestling with the
bass player, etc.. Good entertainment and quite heavy at times,
some more strange rock and roll and kraut rock like trance
music. I caught the first two tracks of Red Sparrows and they
play this quite beautiful floating drifting post rock movie
music and they have great visuals. Quite cool and totally
different. Went outside to get some food and air and hung
out with the Causa Sui guys for a bit. Got distracted and
had to rush back in as Orthodox were playing. Not that crowded.
They are all dressed in monks' robes with black hoods on and
play some sort of cool doom. Simple at times and other times
quite jazz like with intense manic drumming, intense bass
and guitar. We saw the last two songs. Cool stuff. Off to
see OM… Nils is so excited he can hardly stand it. We
are up on the top balcony.. People are getting really high
now. They are having a lot of trouble with getting his bass
rig right, which includes two big ampeg cabinets and two Marshall
Stacks. The bass sound is so incredibly massive and it just
reverberates and trances you out. This is very far out music
but the stoned ones are really sucked into it. We called it
some kind of heroin terror drone. Really too much for Magnus
and I but Nils and Jens said this was the best thing yet….
Magnus and I get to Pelican 5 minutes before they start which
is good as the place became the most packed of any band that
played in the green room. Pelican are brutally heavy to start
the show and the opening number is awesome. The set is mixed
up with tracks where they play these dreamy melodic parts
that are a lot like the Motorpsycho and then the go into these
monster riffs like the SWORD. It works quite well but a lot
of the songs are quite similar in that way. A fucking excellent
live band though.. We saw the last two songs of Stinking Lizaveta
and that was strange, kind of cool stuff.
We meet up with the others who are still in a zone from OM
and had their minds blown… Neurosis is up next and I
have no idea what they will be like. I saw them a couple of
times in 1988 and the last time I saw them was in 1989! Anyway,
they create totally different music now which is all about
generating a bizarre emotional state. I think the material
is very heavy when mixed with the visual films they show,
mostly in black and white. They mix these extremely beautiful
music passages (most every song started the same way) and
then go into the brutally heavy riffs and angry, tormented
vocals (at times). It is very intense stuff. I think we saw
about 1hr of their show. It was heavy duty.. It makes you
not feel that good after a while.. Emotionally charged stuff..
Colour Haze are ready to go and are recording on 24 tracks
for a double live record so this should be killer. Philip
is just sitting in front of his gear for the last 20 mins
chilling out. Walter will do the visual show mixing some of
his own stuff with some film stuff that Jacob from Causa Sui
made as well. Anyway, the place is pretty packed and the vibe
good and Colour kick it in! They sound amazing as the always
do and the crowd is really sucked into their Kyuss riff inspired
groove. They play a lot of the ones they always play (I can't
wait for them to give up this set completely and play all
their other great songs) like Roses, Zen, Outside, Peace Brothers
and Sisters, Love, Tempel, Sundazed and the monster encore
of Inside>Hey Jude>American Woman>Into the Sun..
Stefan played some really awesome guitar and Mani, is always
on.. Killer bass and drum section. Maybe the best band from
today… Great way to close down the Roadburn festival..
And what can I say… very draining but amazing.. and
guess what, we will be back next year and it will not be two
days but it will be 4 days!!!!!!! Yes, 4 days…. Only
the main stage with the larger named acts on the Thursday
and the Sunday and two days like the past two years. The Space
Rock stage will be back next year…. When tickets go on
sale in December, buy immediately.. Don't think about it.
You have 4 months to find the money to get to Holland and
if they have the camping area (which I heard was really cool),
it is only 25€ for the two days including bus transport
to and from the festival. Amazing experience… Walter
is the MAN::::::::::::::::::
http://www.roadburn.com
Scott
|
|
