Aereogramme

Breath deeply. Visualise. You’re no longer sat reading this, you’re with me in the Barfly. The Barfly is not a good place to breath deeply because it smells a bit. Taste the air there. Now, six people fill the stage. There are two bass players, sometimes two guitarists, sometimes just one, there’s also a drummer, a cello player, a guy on moogs+sampler+keys and occasionally another on a keyboard too. Yes the stage is full – even tho the strings and brass sections are not here this evenin'. Yes it looks like it could be very pretentious, licking ones rectum type stuff. But YES! YES! YES! They do certainly ROCK! Sorry… this is The Rock of Travolta you may have seen them on such stages as Radiohead’s Oxford tent party or at some smelly back rooms in Camden – much like where you are now.

This band are all about ‘mood’ but not the kind of foot stamping, door slamming moods that 12 year old girls get, more like unconscious spiritual moods which pass from day to day as we frolic as Gods. Take another deep breath. Inhale the room, this building, this town, the earth, the moon and stars. Re-stabilise your focus. You’re sat on a hilltop, your ying’n’yang are in balance with nature. In the distance, there are trees. Overhead, clouds are flying past you like racing cars. Music starts to pump into your veins and takes you to the edge of a stream. Everything progressively speeds up as Spinal Tap style pointing begins onstage. The bassline becomes bubbles as the water begins to boil. Dead fish float to the surface. You’re no longer in a tranquil place, you’re beneath lumps of fallen sky. You’re buried deep into the earth’s core and it’s getting hotter. Your sweat falls in time with the music. The music has slowed somewhat and a single guitar is playing, which then drives into by everything else, but none of this ever seems to collide or knock anything over. The sampler is making noises that you cannot understand, they could be phone tones or the fuzzy sounds of the rescue teams walkie-talkies. They’re not…. Eyes open! Wide-awake! You’re back in the Barfly. The band is leaving the stage and you have no idea who you are, what just happened or how long this lasted. You are me. We are flying. We are the words that are missing from this paradoxically natural’n’unnatural, organic’n’digital, instru-mental set. I am the pretentious one. Probably.

While you think it may now be safe to lie on the lager-splattered floor and sleep, it is not. Three bearded guys who resemble truckies put some stuff on the stage. They are Aereogramme. Then they begin playing and the band who’s ’White Paw EP’ gives me tingles show a roomfull of other people. Sounding something like the best bits of Snowpatrol and Spiritualized, melding death metal for the shear joy of cohesion and expression is not an easy task but these 3-Scots make it seem effortless. The biggest twist is the to stylistic assumption possible just by looking at them and I feel strange - comparable to a style fascist - just thinking about it. The music of Aereogramme one minute is gentle, smooth, sincere and the next it’s stabbing itself through your head, scratching at your heart and exorcising itself inside of you. So yeah, maybe the latter is characteristic of an AC/DC or Motorhead influenced band, which the bassist at least looks, like he’d be in. But the soft and fait moments are beautiful I expected to see a boy who’s voice hasn’t broken.

Tonight, ’Post-tour, Pre-Judgement’ is like an egg. On the one hand the song is smooth and calculable. Then in the other hand it’s thrown in your face, rattling into your intestines pulling at them til the trail out of entrails looks consequently divine. Yes you need a sick mind for it to be good but this band are plugging into the minds of all in the room this evening, fondling something different in the eclectic mix of age groups and stereotypes hearts. And if it is our hearts they’re after, it is our whole pack of playing cards they have won. As ’Zionist Timing’ pours open, I look around to see a room full of smiles where smoke stained teeth and bloodshot eyes suddenly seem like wonderful works of art that poetry can not fathom. Even as Craig B stands on the drum kit, screaming into his mike before running into the crowd laughing like a loon, not a single thought of his sanity crosses my mind.

I admit it, I was totally lost halfway through this set but by the time it had ended I had found something that I’m not going to shut up about. Aereogramme are that little something-something. If nu-metal and nu-acoustic are all the rage, Aereogramme manage to cover both trendy spheres within a song and strut, taking them to a brave nu world, it would seem. This world is a free world. A world where people are no longer free to be bought and sold, just a world where people are free to create. Honestly, burn all your CD’s which suit different moods and let them into your world for just one evening, and you’ll not want them to ever leave, I promise.