January 25, 2006
The Maze has been one of Nottinghams underground venues for a long time now and folk and indie fans will be very aware of it but in the last few months it has started a make over, with new promoters, styles and genres now involved.
Tonight we have travelled down to The Maze to check out Death Bed Blues and Neon Set, two bands who we have seen before but not for awhile so it should be interesting to see how they are progressing.
Death Bed Blues are first on the bill and from the moment thier melodic guitar riffs and building drum and bass dynamics kick in, we are reminded what a great sound this band have especially for a 4 piece. The guitar riffs overlap and interlock to produce a barrage of sound. With the simple drumming and bass breaking down and changing the tempos of the songs, they have a huge sound and a great movement in their music. The long psycedelic instrumentals are broken down by some subtle moments of deep bluesy vocals, which contain some potent lyric lines. Whenever the riffs start to get repeatative, Death Bed Blues seem to have a nack of changing the tempos or dynamic so the audience never gets bored. Even though they have a lack of movement on stage, Death Bed Blues let their immense song structures and dynamics do the talking and with a relaxed presense, they have a chilled out and emotional edge to their music. Death Bed Blues are a band who can mix their styles, easierly going from Blues to Indie and with a hard rock edge coming over at times too and they should appeal to rockers and indie kids a like. The other great strength of this band is that even though they are experimental and unpredictable they still have a consistent flow to their music and produce beautiful songs. Even their new song which only lasted about 2 minutes had an epic feel and left a great impression. It is very refreshing to see a band who seem to have no real egos and just care about making quality music.
Next to the stage are Neon Set who as their 6 piece line up take to the small stage, it looks like they won’t have much room to move about. With the 2 guitarist’s mixing and overlapping huge effects and trippy riffs whilst the bass and drums build up the melodies softly and the sax player and vocalist who adds some very random thermine, add a mass of experimentation to the sound. With all the hectic husle on stage, Neon Set’s sound gets quite messy at times and is very unpredicatable. Without stopping for breath for the whole half hour set, they manage to build up some very interesting sounds and at times seem to just be jamming with the noises they can make. This experimental instrumental side is given more stablity and structure by some extremely poetic vocals, that use unpredicatable patterns in a Jim Morrison style. The guitars subside at times into feedback and soft effects and let the bass, drums and saxophone have acid jazz moments before building back into more conventional rock moments. The way they mix the trace like chilled out moments and the catchy rock is very impressive and considing how messy and random their sound can be it is amazing how damn tight they are. This is more art than music at times and is really trying to be different and I would certainly say it acheived that. The use of the thermine was interesting and also another talking point even though I wasn’t sure how well rehearsed this was as at times it seemed it wasn’t used to the best of its potential and was over used, making the music messier rather than adding anything. Even though neon Set have some brilliant dynamics and change the feel and volume of their sound alot it seemed to stay at a regualr place to often and a few faster moments might have given them more energy. Neon Set’s sound lies somewhere between The Doors, Cooper Temple Cause and The Flaming Lips and even though it isn’t always easy to get down to, it is musical clever and very interesting and impressive to watch. Neon Set are one of those bands that it is very hard to sum up as they really do have a different sound and are very clever with the way they craft their artwork, I would suggest you check them out and try to explain this mess yourself! Review – Gaz Photos – Smat
Written By Gaz
Photos ~ Smat
