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Julie’s Haircut – District, Friday
One of the few criticisms levelled at Liverpool Psych Fest concerns the overuse of reverb-heavy, guitar drone – not this year. District on Friday was anything but, and amid a ten act billing (plus green baize legend Steve ‘never boring’ Davis) of quite remarkable musical variety were Italian quintet Julie’s Haircut. Mixing melodic prog, extreme noise, rocket-fuelled disco and hook-laden pop, here was a band which typifies the festival’s ethos – a truly magical international interstellar band many of those in attendance had yet to hear, but were left nothing short of astounded. What worked best was their mix of subtlety and ambience as they applied layer upon layer of nuance and atmospherics to their sound before breaking out into thunderous saxophone-assisted piledrivers. Much of the set was taken from their 2017 album Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin – including the swaggering shamanistic brew of Orpheus Rising and the tribal pounder The Fire Sermon. It’s no exaggeration to say this wasn’t just the set of Psych Fest of 2017 – but would easily register into the top five sets the festival’s ever hosted. Remarkable stuff. – Peter Guy
Gnod – District, Friday
Gnod are the sonic equivalent of a traffic accident involving a monster truck, an AT-AT Walker and a rhinoceros. Yet their monstrous visceral power is all consuming and enduring. The industrial headfuck is part of the pleasure. Unlike their last Liverpool show at Buyers Club, their Psych Fest performance includes parka-sporting, perma-twitching Neil Francis and it’s his inclusion which lends a somewhat poppier, more inviting edge to proceedings as he rasps amid the breeze-block sonic velocity as once again District’s black box walls are seemingly paint-stripped before our very eyes. By the conclusion it feels like your internal organs have been twanged to pieces. Top marks once again to Rocket Recordings who’s roster, including Julie’s Haircut, was top of the class at PZYK 2017. – Peter Guy
Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs – District, Saturday
Matt Baty is unstoppable. For 45 minutes, Baty climbs speaker stacks, swallows his microphone, sweats out his own body weight, drinks a bottle of Buckfast, tootles about in a pink glittery cowboy hat and wraps himself up in cables – all the while projecting his vocals with such force he looks likely to pass out any moment. Amid this half naked wildman’s onstage lunacy his band Pigs x7 detonate a raging rock and roll leviathan. It’s pure riffs. So many riffs. All the riffs. More riffs than Jimmy Page could digest for breakfast. More riffs than Lemmy had Jack Daniels. By the close bass player, John-Michael Hedley is laughing his head off at the preposterous chaos of it all while guitarist Adam Ian Sykes is dishing out his guitar to the front row inviting them to get involved. Wild. – Peter Guy
Read their full round up here: GIT
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