Neutrinos and Sargassos, Norwich Arts Centre

At a loose end. Caught Neutrinos at NAC. Got wet.

Sunday 26th September 2010

As Neutrino Karen says, it's like being at sea out there. I've been lashed from all sides.  Now with hair and feet still wet from the rain, it's time for the most up-to-the-minute content you're likely to read on Nosher for a little while.

Wandering back through Benedicts', a few hours ago, hoping for diversion - getting only soaking, so sober and off course am I. Arts Centre then, and for what, I know not. No drinking, tonight, which is strange, and so coffee, alone, from a paper cup. I'm all ears and attention, and seeking distraction - missed out on the openers (Girl In A Thunderbolt), although hearing good things from snatched words, smokers, half-in, half-out of the back door, talking.

The Sargasso Trio – on record, slick, contrived and inventive. Tonight, shining, full and explosive. A stage, littered with drums and equipment, crammed with new sound upon layered new sound. Each member takes turns at the various toys, throwing colour over colour on the canvas of songs. Combining vocal dexterity, percussion and electronics with eclectic rhythms and timbres, their efforts result in a baffling mix of stimuli; still, they maintain a freedom that is relentlessly engaging. They are at turns ethereal, crisp, and specific; then wild, untamed and spontaneous. To witness The Drum, scooped from the 2008 Burnin' Burnin' Burnin' record and hammered into the primal, double-drummed warhorse it is in the flesh is a visceral assault in the most welcome of ways. Despite occasional technical failures, the (now four?) members of the Sargasso Trio pack a beautiful punch.

Where the Sargassos envelope, the Neutrinos pierce. A bottleneck beginning, their black-eye birth is twisted into sharpened focus, congealing into crystalline, spiteful treble and growling, Panzer-tank bass through their opener – smoke, in the nearly pitch-darkness. Here is an outfit of acute contradiction – a sash on a shoulder, blood red, is an open wound; pencilled, elastic and lithe, front-woman Karen is feline and spike-like. Her vocals are subtle, yet spat, with each syllable punctuated with sharp, feathered twitches. Now gut-string guitar that, at first, had been probing, now scratches the air and is torn with effects. From a muted inception, each track edges further, with pin-point precision that soon will be gone.

An instant, I think, though it could have been shadowed – the hard-edged theatrics are shattered. An eruption occurs, somewhere lodged between a tongue-in-cheek tribute to German experimentalism, changing guitars and a broken-down amp.

Out of nowhere, I'm trying to fathom how what began as a Teutonic, music-hall Troupe Of The Night became thrashing, savage, hyper-drive art-punks, whose sound is now that of a back-alley wildcat tearing its teeth in a ten-to-one brawl.

Love Is In The Bullet is brash and unflinching, a lights-out, repetitive attack - glorious, triumphant, repugnant, defiant. Build Him 'Til He Breaks is an exhibition of same.

By the time it is over, affairs are not at all in order. The band has become an image of its name – each member, a neutrino particle, combined to become the single most powerful sonic force to hit the Arts Centre stage in aeons. It is a stunning return for an outfit that must be witnessed as they are here – so vitally live – if they are to be given the full attention they deserve.

Members of both support acts are pulled back on stage to help deliver the Neutrino encores. A pleasing chaos ensues. This is worth uncertainty.

Now, out to brave the rain again.     

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