Last night I found shelter from a torrential Edinburgh downpour in the Cowgate cave that is Sneaky Pete’s. £10 for a roof over my head for the next three hours felt a bit steep (I briefly considered a bus shelter) but what ensued, took my £10 note and set it alight. However, whether it is now in heaven or hell I cannot be sure.
A local folk duo by the name of Wounded Knee warmed the crowd from the stormy weather outside. They had, jokes, smiles and seemed to well understand the plight of the regular Edinburger, asking to save Leith Waterworld, and telling Donald Trump to piss off, both in the context of songs. The combination of a walking cello and a resonant chamber of folk vocals, was surprisingly intimate yet not altogether normal. Hypnotically following the plod of the cello, we all began to wonder what form was to follow such personal local music.
And it was Horrible. The man is derelict, tattoos crawl up his body to attack his beaten face, like spiders transplanted beneath his skin. One’s journey was successful, taking the form of a tear from the eye, symbolic of a life of angst, alcohol, displacement and drugs. The life of a musician.
The first two tracks he played solitary from within his enclave of pedals and amps, supported by his laptop. It was horrible. Ten minutes of cacophony and discord, to eerify some woman’s pretentious poetry. Blasted through the PA at us, we could only find solace in a few flanged twangs of Carlson’s guitar. He is the opposite of the virtuoso, grappling to find his way past the chords he plays, and tentatively hammering the ‘wrong’ notes in his melodic lines. It is minimal in its delivery yet it throbs like a leashed hound.
We had been broken in, aurally assaulted to the point where nothing was now unusual, making what followed substantially immense. The lute solo adapted for guitar was a heavenly respite from the previous evils and welcomed the percussionist for the rest of the show, who with a snare, three bells, a pair of brushes and a couple other nonsensical bits and bobs managed to direct and enhance Carlson’s playing.
The gig starts when the dead beauty takes her presence on the stage, shrouded in black, hair wrestled in front of her handsome face. Her royalty has been raped from her by her demons, yet she owns us, we want to know everything. She is Carlson’s fairy, a channel for his twisted ideas.
The rest of the gig is a beautiful nightmare, we watch this girl rip her soul out and spit it at us, whilst Carlson sits throbbing us into an introspective daze. I leave feeling dirty and euphoric, wanting to know more.
I discover Dylan Carlson is guitarist of drone doom band Earth, and was a roommate and friend of Kurt Cobain once upon a time. He is now embarking on a solo project focused on all that is mystical and magical and metal. He is to move onto Glasgow this evening and then Aberdeen on Sunday. It was a dark and demonic evening. The devil of Dylan Carlson is at serious play.