The candlelit, murmuring atmosphere inside Dalston’s Vortex Jazz Club belies its often dexterous, wildcard event programming. Tonight is a case in point, with an extremely rare performance from manic noiseniks Blectum from Blechdom. First up though, are the equally intense Maria & The Mirrors: a Mexican stand-off specialising in chthonic call and response. Twin female drummers face each other and bash out frenzied, tribal polyrhythms pierced with banshee battle cries. At the back, a male machine-wrangler unleashes a dense industrial tirade as a flimsy camisole slips down his torso. This is a muscular, garish din, reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle with added death sex.
Next, Kevin Blechdom takes to the stage alone, and unravels a straight-faced, cartoonish cacophony. The William Tell Overture becomes a 1990s quiz show theme tune in warp speed, while other, tip-of-the-tongue music fragments are squelched and glitched into sarcasm before chance of identification. There is no space to think, and this is intensified as she steps aside from her laptop and moves to the grand piano. A honky-tonk, seizured medley of tortured torch songs follows; sledge-hammered, crude pain aided by a demonic, primal scream vocoder. Occasionally, she lets her voice waver above the microphone into snapshot pathos. It doesn’t last long; a violently hip-thrusting and catchy rap on the merits of foetus-f*cking takes centre stage. To call it overwhelming is an understatement. The audience are transfixed. A man at the front does his best to dance interpretively, and unironically. This is key to note here: there is nothing knowing about what we’re experiencing. There are funny moments, but there is no in-joke being bounced back and forth between Blechdom and the audience. It is what it is: an emotional breezeblock pummelling our senses. The audience clap enthusiastically.
Things are taken down several notches by Blevin Blectum. She presents a more nuanced and less frenzied multimedia collage. Glitchy loops punctuated by voodoo ritual beats keep firing in response to a fragmented, shadow puppet fable playing out on the screen behind. The broken narrative and sprawling sound, anchored every so often by huge swathes of bass, creates a heady atmosphere that conjures up images of faraway mythical kingdoms. It has an organic, spidery quality which envelopes the audience and heightens our sense of being somewhere otherworldly.
For the Blectum from Blechdom finale, imagine an acid-drenched boot stamping on a human face – forever. Sound and vision clash into a neon nightmare of derangement – vaginas, penises and chainsaws joust relentlessly in a pinball fashion while stuttered, breakneck anti-grooves are spat out at ear-splitting levels. Occasionally, clipart business people pop up among the bloodied body parts to add to the confusion. The bad taste barrage is relentless, and strangely hypnotic in its abrasiveness. But there is a sadness, a weight, underlying the absurdity. This is eternal return, funhouse style. We can only hope they come back soon.
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