Sunday, June 12, 2011

Exquisite noise

Uploading a couple of clips from local post rock noise practitioners Jakob, because I went to their gig in Wellington last night. And it was excellent. I quite like music like this; not having a lead singer, or usually any vocals at all means more focus on the music speaking for itself rather than conforming to an image or expectation. Apart from thanking the crowd and support acts, about the only thing anyone said on stage was "Hi, we're Jakob from Napier."

And what music. A lot of their tracks build from quiet melodies up to layered walls of sound full of intensity and atmosphere, often slowly and steadily to the point where you suddenly notice it has gotten very loud. Some might just call it noise but I like it. A more musically learned friend of mine pointed out once when discussing radio edits of songs that some people just don't handle instrumentals; a song must have lyrics before they can relate to it. Their loss.

Nice day for an earthquake. An older track, but a great video. Honestly, who hasn't wanted to do this to a TV at least once? Sorry about the quality, but it is the only one I found that was embeddable.

I got to violently destroy a TV once; it involved boots (the old screens are surprisingly hard to kick in), metal chair legs, bricks and a half round fence post and was very cathartic.

Safety in Numbers. Should be obvious why I like this one :) It is a really nice match of sound and visual though.


My favourite track of theirs is the low-key (by their standards) I Was Hidden. I'm not even sure why I like this track so much: I just do.

2 comments:

Wildology said...

I really like "I was hidden" too. Brooding yet hopeful:)

Off-Black said...

Interesting you should say brooding yet hopeful. It was used as the backing track for Breast Cancer awareness campaign a year or two ago so it looks like you're not the only one who thinks that:)