Friday night in Glasgow and Blanck Mass (the musical alias of one half of the Fuck Buttons, Benjamin John Power) at the CCA is up against (in the ABC across the road) Hue and Cry.
Not much audience crossover maybe and in a pre-gig chat with BM, Mr Mass himself admitted he had “never heard of them”. Shock horror, and the Kane brothers would not be chuffed…
First up, playing to a slightly bigger audience than her support slot for Factory Floor at SWG3, was Iona Fortune. Her instrumental keyboard/laptop pieces were bass-heavy at times, twinkling with notes and odd flourishes at other times. Ambient mainly although this time there was a bit more in the way of electronic percussion. There is a lot of potential there, and some of these tracks would work really well as soundtracks. Atmospheric and original – a good opener for what was to follow.
The CCA is not known for raucous rock events and the signs around the venue said “Loud music – earplugs available on the door” – well we hope it would be loud, would expect nothing less from Scotland’s dark overlord of electronic noise. The gig was sold out and the crowd amassed looking pretty enthusiastic. When Blanck Mass came on around 9pm he proceed to unleash around an hour 20 minutes of pure OTT aural assault, playing familiar tracks (starting with the mighty ‘Rat’ with some real sound-mangling as well. The dancing started almost immediately (Betty was involved!) and by the last coupla tracks we had at least one “taps aff” situation (at first at the CCA?) – sweaty it certainly was.
The damage to the ears was accompanied by a visual imagery which at times bordered on subliminal video, fitting in well was the music. Blanck Mass toys and tangles with noise, at times going quite four to the floor rave/techno but at other times dark and muddy. Sample kick off left right and centre, the percussion is thundering and the man himself (in between slurping beer) prods and paws at his array of equipment, a mass of buttons and cables on a large table top.
Several times he uses a distorted mike to shout at the walls, the audience and anything else taking his fancy and he also stands in front, goading the audience. Best tracks tonight were probably from recent album ‘World Eater’, the monstrous ‘Rhesus Negative’ and ‘Please’, which got big reaction from the audience, some of whom were going a bit mental, BM included. ‘Dead Format’ from previous album ‘Dumb Flesh’ was also majestic and eerie in equal measure, the distorted vocals making it, like many of his tracks, sound like they are accompanying some extreme horror movie.
There was one encore but he pretty much beat the audience into submission, exiting afterwards leaving the sound still blaring away as the dazed audience filed out. A night to remember and go good to see him in action at close quarters – BM loves BM!