•
Rating: I am in Italy. Isis are in Italy. Cribbio, I can't miss them! And indeed, I didn't miss them. What follows is intended to be a small account of the show held at the excellent Officina Estragon in Bologna on Friday, May 20, 2005.
Let's start from the beginning. I arrive at 9:00 PM outside the venue and find there, give or take, 50 people. Christ, do you think no one is checking out Isis? That would have been a crime! Fortunately, people do arrive. Who knows, maybe everyone wanted to avoid Tim Hecker's performance.
Tim Hecker... ahahahahahahahah!!!! Excuse me, I couldn't help it. He gets on stage dressed like the goofy brother of Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four, limps, perhaps to create unease, but that beer he's holding kind of ruins the atmosphere. Twenty minutes (perhaps, I didn't have a watch) of some sort of white noise with very few variations. Yawn. Honestly, any fool with a PC and a mixer could do something like that. No talent needed, nor musical ear, nothing. Oh well. I hope Aaron brought him along for friendship...
When the stage is finally cleared, Justin Broadrick gets on stage along with another guy whom, mea culpa, I don’t know... On record, it's Ted Parsons who plays, but he's a drummer while this guy plays the bass... oh well.
Anyway, the concert. Being run over by a steamroller must give the same sensations. It's a pity Justin's Mac is acting up, and the first piece (if I'm not mistaken, "Walk On Water") suffers a bit, also due to Broadrick's microphone not working too well. For some reason, they play without a real drummer but with a recorded track... Oh well. The second piece, the wonderful "Friends Are Evil," sets everything back in order, this time with "the other Aaron" from Isis behind the drumkit. For the following piece, even "the famous Aaron" from Isis gets on stage to further destroy our poor eardrums. A somewhat short set but rather good.
Finally, they arrive, the ones for whom, I think, 99% of the people were there. The first thing that strikes me is Aaron Turner... I didn't imagine him so skinny, Christ, his shoulders are smaller than mine, and he seems like he could collapse at any moment... how does he manage to scream like that...
The show opens with "In Fiction," and everything else fades into the background... the band is completely enthralled by their music and lets themselves be carried away by the sound waves they generate, swaying like trees in the grip of a storm. And we can't do otherwise, powerless in the face of so much fury. But it's constructive fury from Isis, not destructive, and in the end, you're tired and exhausted, but happy. And they are too. Worthy of note, among all the tracks from the last two albums, is the devastating "Celestial" (The Tower).
Everything unfortunately has an end, and when they return to the stage, it's only to dismantle the instruments. Turner pockets all the CDs the kids hand him (who knows how many hope to end up on Hydra Head) and everyone else shakes hands and signs autographs. I stock up on the CDs I was missing (at 12 euros each, cribbio, even the double remix of Oceanic that I paid 23 for...) and finally head home, with less money in my pocket but so much more in my soul. And a silly grin that still hasn't left my face.
Loading comments slowly
