Infest
2014:
VNV Nation/Haujobb/Juno Reactor/Ashbury Heights/Legend/Solar
Fake/Architect/Cyanotic+Rabbit Junk/DJ? Acucrack/Xenturion
Prime/E.S.A./Mr
Kitty/Be My
Enemy/Dreams Divide/The Ladder/Syd.31
Bradford
University, West Yorkshire
- 22-24 August 2014
"Glorious moments,
frozen in time"
Infest 2013 saw
this legendary (and longest-running) UK festival reaching its 15th
Anniversary milestone. However, before last year's event, the infamous
Alt-Fest was announced. A wildly ambitious attempt to bring a 50,000
audience alternative festival to the UK - which would have made it the
biggest of its kind in the world. The gravitational pull of a festival
with that potential size had, by the time of Infest 2013, already
sucked in a good number of bands that would have been perfect for
Infest 2014. Clearly, the Infest organisers saw a major problem with
putting on another alternative festival, in the same month, to a niche
audience. There was even the possibility that Infest
2013 was going to be the last ever. They'd achieved pretty much
everything they'd could have dreamed of, let alone set out to
accomplish with the first event in a distant, Goth origins in 1998.
But an end-of-festival questionnaire last year convinced the organisers
to have another, possibly last, stab at it for 2014.
But it was as if the (sadly unsurprising) collapse and cancellation
of Alt-Fest in the run up to Infest (Alt-Fest was due to happen between
15th and 18th of August) somehow infected the scene with bad juju and
even having been no-more, still impacted on
Infest's plans. First up, original headliners Project Pitchfork pulled
out due to illness. Then Ambassador21
had
to cancel. Then, the day before the festival was due to start,
promising-sounding noise merchant Le Moderniste had to pull out on the
advice of his doctor after receiving what he descibed as a major back
injury. The solutions to these problems were
all rapidly in place, with the immensely popular VNV Nation replacing
Pitchfork. This was especially appropriate as VNV were one of the
dozens of bands scheduled to play Alt-Fest. So there was certainly a
sense of universal karma at play when they stepped into the breach
to assist the organisers here. Architect replaced Ambassador 21, whilst
UK ear bashers E.S.A. stepped up with little more than 48 hours
notice to fill
in the gap
left by Le Moderniste. Christ knows what it must have been like behnd
the scenes, but from the front of house it all still looked promising
enough.
Friday
22nd
English synth-pop male/female duo Dreams
Divide I've always had a soft spot for after hearing their
first, self-released, debut album back in the summer of 2011. I saw
them supporting Covenant live
a couple of months later and that
experience only consolidated my first, favourable impressions. Now
signed to Juggernaut, performing material from their imminent second
album, poetically entitled Tears From The Night Sky, of the six song set four were taken from the new album.
The writing has developed nicely
and just
as I might have hoped. There's a weightier, slightly more 'serious'
side which is appealing. It might be a bit tricky for them
to strike a balance live between their familiar exuberant
performances of their energised synthpop and this more reflective side.
But then VNV Nation seem to have mastered that trick quite well - which
perhaps bodes well for these two. For some inexplicable reason, the
female half, Gem Davidson, is relegated to the back of the stage.
Frontman David is a perfectly nice fella, but it falls entirely to him
to carry the 'performance' which, given the qualities of Gem's voice in
particular, seems frankly daft. They need to get Gem into the limelight
a little more. She (and the audience) deserve it, and the show would be
all the better for it.
Dreams Divide setlist: Creation,
Faces, Trashed, Filth, Puppet Love, Heaven Comes To Get You
Photos [L-R]: Dreams Divide, DJ? Acucrack, Rabbit Junk, Haujobb
Jason Novack's DJ? Acucrack
is the present form of what was
once Acumen Nation. Not that I had any expectation baggage from
that era - as
they were unbeknownst to me. I just took this for what it was, which
was
part DJ set/part live show, joined on stage by Cyanotic's Sean Payne,
as other regular member Jamie Duffy was absent. This was his UK debut.
It was a deft
mash up of original material,
samples of classic era electro - Nitzer Ebb, Meat Beat Manifesto et al
were worked in very nicely and to impressive effect. Their own material
was rich and consistently shifting. A cover of Depeche Mode's A Question Of Time was well-executed and
received. The first act this year to require post-festival homework. ;-)
The
description on the Infest website of Cyanotic
being 'cyber metal warriors' would
have been hard pushed to have use any other three word combination that
could have appealed to me less. So it was out of a sense of
little more than curiosity to see a band I'd never seen before
that got me in
front of them. It was only on
arrival that I noticed that Cyanotic had
multiplied to become Cyanotic+Rabbit
Junk.
Consistent with Infest's
tradition of booking acts not everyone is likely to be familiar with,
I'd never heard of the latter but a peek on Facebook implied
that many others thought their appearance
was a thing of much celebration. Sadly, and after such a build up, I'm
afraid I cannot shed any further light on them. For I only saw the
first twenty minutes or so of Cyanotic. Whilst I often sympathise with
the message behind their songs, the metallically heavy style of
delivery often leaves me cold.
Cyanotic setlist: Frequency
[recycled], Alt.Machine, Resurgence, Transhuman 2.0, F@5h1on V1k+um5,
Disconnect Me, Deface, (Paranoid) Disbelief, Order Out of Chaos,
Sensory Deprivation
Rabbit Junk setlist: Break Shins To
This, Demons, IDONTGIVEAFUCK, Crutch, What Doesn't Kill You Will Make
You A Killer
Anyone well-read on this website will know I have much admiration for
Daniel Myer and his numerous musical projects. Haujobb,
for me, is his most defining act, it is certainly his longest-running, and the first one I discovered back in the mid-90s
on the Off Beat label. Like most of Myer's projects, Haujobb (a
partnership for some years with Dejan Samardzic) has never stood still,
its style evolving down the decades, taking in electro-industrial, IDM,
ambient, industrial, electro and other variations. Their most recent
stuff hasn't quite spoken to me as much as some of the seminal early
work (1996's Solutions For A
Small Planet
gets my vote as one of the finest electronic music albums of all time),
but Haujobb, indeed any Myer project, live performances are richly
rewarding experiences for the partial. As it turned out, today's set
included some choice early cuts - most memorably Eye Over You and World Window.
Never, ever, sitting on the laurels of his recorded achievements, Myer
consistently pushes the creative boundaries so that no two live
performances are ever quite the same. Impressively, he develops and
evolves
his works for a live setting; the result being that much-loved songs
familiar in their beautiful detail sound different, not as anticipated,
but as good as ever, even enhanced. Tonight was no exception. The
rendition of Anti/Matter
(from the aforementioned Solutions...)
alone was truly stunning. One of my favourite
recording artists is also one of my favourite live artists. In a word -
quality.
Haujobb setlist: Machine Drum,
Anti/Matter, Renegades Of Noize, Let's Drop Bombs, Crossfire, Eye Over
You, Little World, Dream Aid, World Window, The Noise Institute, Dead
Market
Saturday
23rd
In my pre-festival research (aka watching announced bands on YouTube) I
may have confused The Ladder
with Legend. When you get to my age, with the music-addled braincells I
have, if two six-letter band names begin
with 'L' there's a reasonable chance I'm gonna get confused. Point
being that
I was down down the front with time to spare and it wasn't long after
they started that I realised what I was hearing wasn't what I thought I
would hear. Still, if Infest is about anything it's
about discovering new music you might just already be attuned to.
Problem
for The Ladder, and the audience, was that technical issues
caused by thier setup were plaguing their
attempts, seemingly stopping them from hitting their stride.
Their lengthy instrumental intro using an extended sample from Adrian
Lyne's
Jacob's Ladder was tantalising
but what followed didn't live up to VNV Nation's well-known (albeit
much briefer) use of the same
sample in their classic track Forsaken. Yet there was still
something
about their approach that tweaked my interest beyond the surface and I
went away vowing to check out their studio work.
The
Ladder setlist: Charade, Disconnect,
Requital, Until The End Of The World, Down, Enabler
Photos [L-R]: The Ladder, Be My Enemy, Xenturion Prime
Be My Enemy though relatively low
down on the bill were generating a lot
of pre-festival buzz - given this is the new project from Cubanate's Phil
Barry. I was never
particularly taken by Cubanate's version of the crossover style but
many were, and if the comments heard after their set today were
anything to go by, there's clearly a lot of love still out there for
anyone associated with the band. A four-piece on stage, half of which
was made up of members of fellow dance floor stompers System:FX, with
scene regular Keef Baker providing the rare opportunity to watch an
electric double bass in action.
I was very partial to the tracks that sounded
like they could have been included in a new version of Wipeout like opener Break Your Body. The more
thrashing, guitar heavy songs held me less. But 'twas ever thus. Their
second album, The Enemy Within,
recently appeared as a self-release, and with that Cubanate pedigree
and growing reputation for nailing the live shows, ought to do well for
them.
Be My Enemy setlist: Break Your
Body, Party Monster, Insomniac, Ghost In The Machine, Oxyacetalene (Cubanate
cover),
Kill Your Television, To Protect and Serve, Helter-Skelter
Continuing the 'we used to be in a more famous band' theme,
Scandanavian powersynthers Xenturion Prime
rose from the ashes of synthpopers Code 64, who I never fell in love
with but then I
never actually got around to listening to very much. XP are Hasse
Mattsson and Bjørn Marrius Borg, and continue very much in the synthpop
vein, meaning
former Code 64 fans are likely to have been well sated by their forty
minute set. Whilst they reminded me that there's no shame in liking a good thumping
synthpop tune they were unable to garner any more interest from me than their previous incarnation.
Xenturion
Prime setlist: Mecha, Rise,
Transmission, Second Nature, Ignition/Power Up, Voyagers, Elite, Beyond
Infinity, Leaving Earth (Code 64), Power Run (Laser Dance cover)
If the
purpose of Icelandic duo Legend
by
creating a logo that split the name into two equal halves of three
letters each, then placing them on top of each other so that their name
could quite easily be mis-read as "Leg End", was to generate
inordinate amounts of conversation among festival goers as to whether
or not this was the intention or a wise move, then they succeeded
admirably. There's always a dark horse at Infest; the one band that
either in the run-up, or at the festival once it has started, are the
act that a very large number of people are excitedly tipping as the hot
'discovery' band of the event. Legend emerged that dark horse.
After a solid performance of lengthy tracks (just six songs filled
a forty-five minute set), positive debate about the band continued,
meaning that whoever on the bill was anyone's personal favourite, Legend certainly claimed
the most discussed
act of the entire weekend and probably went away having generated the
most new followers. This was tight, polished and delivered with
guts, but more familiarity with their recorded work in advance would
have prepared me better.
Legend setlist: Amazon War, Virgin,
Sister, City, Runaway Train, Benjamite Bloodline
Originally scheduled to appear were Belarus outfit Ambassador21.
However, once they become one of the dropouts in the run-up, the
organisers
quite understandably turned to the multifaceted scene stalwart Daniel
Myer, already booked to perform with Haujobb, to see if he could bring
more of his bountiful talents to bare. He could. Architect made their UK debut at Infest in 2006. Back then, it was
predominantly a noise project (indeed, the
album many rate as a defining one for the project is entitled I Went Out Shopping To Get Some Noise).
A genre that's very hit and miss for me.
The most recent album Mine
however shows a significant
change of direction
being far more measured and melodic. With the addition of sweeping
female vocals in the form of Emese Arvai-Illes, at once more accessible
and,
potentially to fans of the early work, alienating. What may have
displeased others delighted me as it meant here was another Myer
project that was closer to my tastes. Whichever project he happens to
be working on, Myer does have a restless tendency to evolve and develop
its sound over time, and this can be off putting to some. Myer
performing live percussion on a couple of floor toms during the
set added to the live and visual presentation, but it will likely be
Arvai-Illes' impressively expressive voice that will stay with most.
Architect setlist: Neverending,
Set My World On Fire, The Mountain Top, Immaterial, Unhuman, Closer,
Hummingbird, For You, The Sun
Photos [L-R]: Legend, Architect, Juno Reactor
Trance/world music mixmaster and contributor to the soundtracks to The Matrix films Juno Reactor have been consistently
avoiding me for many years. I was pissed off when they played in London
a few years back on a double-header with Laibach. I knew nothing of it
in advance - despite being on both
the (then clearly useless) Juno Reactor and
Laibach emailing lists! A couple of years back, I was in Japan when they were
playing in Osaka, only twenty minutes away by train, but only discovered that
reading a magazine on the flight back
to England.
Juno Reactor play to massive audiences globally on the dance scene.
However, for the organisers of Infest, this must have felt like
something of a punt as to how they would play with the Infest crowd.
They needn't have fretted. Infest has always
attracted a following that
straddles a young crowd, who tend to like their club inspired/dance
floor-driving
acts, and the 40+ goers who hope each year to catch one or two of the
more cerebral legends from the 80s. In Juno Reactor the orgnisers got
the best of both worlds. This year's lineup was noticeably lighter on
the 'mature legends' than in recent years, but Juno's Ben Watkins has a
long pedigree, so Juno
Reactor being on the bill was probably satisfying some of those who
like their school a bit older.
Although not as large as some of their stage shows, particularly in
terms of numbers of musicians on stage, this was still a spectacle. The
pre-festival promotion mentioning that Budgie, of Siouxie and The
Banshees fame, would be providing the live drums definitely intensified
the advance buzz, and his (what must have been) exhausting efforts on
the
night more than lived up to the hype. I only have one Juno Reactor album - Shango from 2000, largely on
account of it containing for me their pinnacle in Masters Of The Universe. Sadly,
that didn't appear tonight but Pistolero
from the same album did. The better-known God Is God was a high point, and Navras probably the epic nirvana.
Also present was Mona Lisa
Overdrive used in The Matrix
soundtrack,
complete with backdrop of cascading green symbols.
Although short of perfect (live keyboards an odd exclusion for a trance act),
nevertheless, for the uninitiated Juno Reactor were the
revelation for many at this year's event.
Juno
Reactor setlist: Conquistador I,
Conquistador II,
Biot Messiah,
Invisible,
Navras,
Zombie,
Conga Fury,
God Is God,
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Encore:
Pistolero,
Final Frontier
Sunday
24th
Dubbed by some as 'synthpop Sunday' on account of a generally more...
err... synth and pop-orientated lineup,
culminating with VNV Nation, (and it being a Sunday) the final day of Infest 2014 had a couple
of nuggets that helped sealed the deal for me at least this year - Mr.
Kitty and Ashbury
Heights - both of which did happen to fall into that category. Others,
however, certainly did not.
The unenviable challenge of kick-starting Sunday afternoon (after two
days of fans indulging late into the early hours) fell to Syd.31. On paper these looked like every
band I would give a very wide berth to. Described as Rob Zombie vs Europop with banging tunes and crust punk vocals,
I rarely take to any band that appears to be in it mainly for laughs.
Infest is well-known for never taking itself, or the scene, too
seriously, so it isn't uncommon for them to serve up the odd curve ball
like this. In the past this has been either painfully unpleasant (cf. The Gothsicles in 2007) or a revelation (cf. Coreline in 2008). Which would this be - I wondered? Hearing they cited
The Vengaboys as an inspiration and their set
usually included a cover of Culturebeat's Mr. Vain, it really didn't bode
well.
Nevertheless, I like to think of myself as being generally very
open-minded when it comes to hearing new stuff, and today that approach
paid off in spades. For as much as Syd.31 is out to have
and provide a good time, he underpins it all with something serious to
say. Calling your debut album Start
A War
is a good place to start. Like the original punks thirty years before,
he realises that there should be more to life on this planet than
what surrounds us. He's also acutely aware that we're all too easily
subliminally conditioned to be as passive as possible. The single
biggest surprise of the entire weekend. I want to hear that album in
full.
Syd.31 setlist: Start A War, Power!,
Dieter Rams Is Dead, Future Ska 2.0, Monsters, One Night, Mr. Vain
(Culturebeat cover)
Although not fawning at his feet like some were clearly happy to, I was already taken by some of Mr. Kitty's (aka Forrest Carney) work to date, so the chance
to see
this young American in the UK was one I was looking forward to. And,
for me, this delivered precisely what I hoped it might. Sounding very
much like some of the witchhouse I'm quite partial to, belying his
youth, Kitty-chan describes what he does as 'self-destructive synthpop'.
Hopefully, he won't feel the compulsion to top himself too soon, as his fourth album Time and today's set present an impressive take on the
genre. One imagines Carney might have a shrine to Donnie Darko (and its soundtrack)
in his bedroom in his parent's house, to which he regularly makes an
offering, perhaps with
the slightly wistful hope that some of that film's charming tales of
troubled youth will be reflected in his writing.
Whatever he's bringing into play, there's enough already to suggest
there's plenty of staying power here. I've had Insects on heavy rotation ever
since I stumbled across it online, and its early appearance in today's
set remained the best example, I've heard so far, of the alchemy possible when he
gets the delicate balance of components bang on. The remainder of the
set held my
attention too, meaning this was one of the performances this year
that I stayed in the photo pit for the duration.
Mr. Kitty setlist: XIII, Insects,
Destroy Me, Unstable, Haunts, If You Were Here (Jennifer cover), Pathogen, Neglect, Amnesia, Child Of The
Earth (Encore:) London
Photos [L-R]: Syd.31, Mr. Kitty, E.S.A.
It
was thanks to Infest that I discovered E.S.A.
(Electronic Substance Abuse) in 2007. Back
then I was quite taken by
their considered take on the audio exploration of the darker side of
the human psyche. So hearing that they were the final, last minute
replacement for the back injured Le Moderniste, I made sure to
get down the front before they took to the stage. But,
oddly, this time around it failed to either engage or engulf me. I had
no idea why this should be and hung on for the first twenty minutes or
so, but eventually walked away - somewhat confused and disappointed.
E.S.A. Setlist: The Heart Is Marked,
Breathing Through You, Blood Is Merged, The Shape of Hate to Come,
Paradise Inside Punishment Defined, Wretch, Bliss, All You Brought To
Me Was Fucking Nothing
Solar Fake
I first saw live when they were last in the UK, also supporting VNV Nation at Koko in London. They do that the Berlin-based, two-piece
electro thing perfectly and, in many respects, are the ideal
Infest act. Their club-friendly beats, drops and whoosing synth pads
are tailor-made for a festival atmosphere and many arms were indeed
waved in response. But like many similar acts on the German scene, as
much as one can admire their slick delivery, it quickly all sounds too familiar, short on distictive qualities.
After the lull that was Solar Fake, I was really looking forward to
seeing Andreas Hagström's Ashbury Heights
live again. The first and only time before was back
in 2007
- and I loved it. Since then, Hagstrom has replaced the other female
half of the band twice, released two albums, had a very public falling
out with former label Out Of Line, a nervous breakdown, and announced
he was quitting the music scene for good. Thankfully, all that trauma
seems to be well behind him. It might even have helped fuel the songwriting.
I still really like the first, John Fryer produced album Three
Cheers For The Newlydeads, and merely like the second double LP Take
Cair Paramour.
Work on a third album, with third female partner Tea, is well underway,
so it was with a slightly unsettling mixture of anxiousness and
excitement that I waited to hear the new material.
Thankfully, I really liked what I heard. Mostly because what they aired
here avoided some of the 'obvious' appeal of their older, more pop-song
based writing, and firmly demonstrated a more ambitious, if less 'immediate' sound and vision. Calling one of your tracks If You're Shooting With Your Left Hand It
Means
The Right Side Is Working takes some balls and only works if
you deliver the goods - which it did. Probably the lowest BPM song in the set and one of the best.
Their time on stage was hampered slightly by flaky microphone connections, but
I expect this was more than counterbalanced by the attractive
appearance of the two members. Hagström
- a dapper if slightly detached dandy. Meanwhile, Tea, who also
earns a living as a fetish clothing model, clearly enjoyed coaxing
wolf-whistles from the crowd with her flattering rubber dress and
frequent pouting. At times, it did feel as if she was slipping into
photo-pose mode at the expense of performing her vocal duties, but it's
clear that this is still a work in progress and should be
more refined after a few more gigs. But it is in Hagström's passion
for his work where the strength of Ashbury Heights really lies. He's
obviously very serious about what he does. His focused and impassioned delivery is admirable but can come across as lacking
connection with his audience. I don't much mind this as their music
carries it for me, but between the two of them it can come across as a
touch too stilted. Nevertheless, based on what I heard here, they will be on my must-do list whenever they play the UK, and
I'm now looking forward to the new album with even more anticipation.
Ashbury Heights setlist: Crescendo,
Glow, Waste of Love, If You're Shooting With Your Left Hand It Means
The Right Side Is Working, Headlights, Anti-Ordinary, Phantasmagoria,
Heart Of Darkness, Spiders
Photos [L-R]: Solar Fake, Ashbury
Heights, VNV Nation
I've
fallen in and out of love with VNV Nation down the years since their first album Advance and Follow back in 1995. Most everything up to Futureperfect is worth having in one's collection. Then came a few dodgy years, with the false step that was Matter + Form and the forced attempts at re-creating the earlier magic with a couple of too formulaic albums in Judgement and Of Faith, Power and Glory. 2011's Automatic though was a defnite return to form. However, Transnational,
their ninth and current album, again falls back into inspiration-free
territory. Nevertheless, I've been to VNV gigs in recent times and
there
have been some glorious evenings among them.
Sadly, tonight's set relied heavily on Transnational
meaning the past magic failed to materialise. Whilst all the usual and
familiar buttons were pressed, this did little to thrill; with some of
Ronan's delivery, particularly his vocals, feeling almost laboured at
times. Having said that, it was clear that booking VNV, who should have
appeared at the recently demised Alt-Fest, was appreciated. The
audience on the Sunday noticably swelled by a couple of hundred who'd
clearly purchased day tickets on account of VNV headlining.
This year, only Haujobb blew me away. Several others appealed a lot (Ashbury Heights, Mr. Kitty, Syd.31, Dreams Divide, Juno Reactor), but
musically speaking, for me at least, I was left wanting more. As a social experience it was
the best year ever; possibly due in part to so many people coming
together at an event they love and which a year ago they thought they'd
lost forever.
I
think Infest might exist in a parallel universe. One where time
passes more quickly than it does in the one in which we Infesters
occupy during the rest of our lives. I consistently found myself saying
"Oh, gotta go, the next band are
due on...". I wanted more time to watch bands
and more time to explore the markets and talk with fellow Infesters.
Just where exactly was all
that time going? I'm not one for wishing my life away; I like to
slowly savour the moment. The perplexing thing about time in the Infest
universe is that not only does it simultaneously pass quicker than usual, but it also stops. Fleetingly offering glorious moments, frozen in time. Created by the
passion of those on the stage, those behind it, and those standing in
front of it. 8/10
Review: Rob Dyer
Photos: © Simon @ Disturbing
Official Infest website: InfestUK.com
See also:
Infest 2013
Infest 2012
Infest 2010
Infest 2008
Infest 2007
Infest 2006
Infest 2003
Infest 2001
InFest 2000
InFest '99
InFest '98