Fuzz Club Records, the London based purveyors of psych and garage music have held a festival on and off since 2018 in Eindhoven at the rather ace purpose built venue Effenaar. It hosts bars, a main stage of over a thousand capacity and a smaller 400 capacity room. During the festival it got rammed.
The first band I catch is Black Doldrums. This is the first time I’ve seen them with their bass player having until a few years ago been a drums and guitar duo. They deliver the same echoing fuzzed up storm of dark psych that hits on everywhere from Jesus and Mary Chain to My Bloody Valentine – the shoegaze is large with the Doldrums. The bass gives it a huge extra kick and solid tribal drums with floaty almost washed out vocals give an other worldly feel to their sound. Its more direct than I’ve seen previously, the guitars is allowed to shine through more and melodies are more to the fore.
Sonic Boom sits alone surrounded by keyboards and in front of a huge ever changing backdrop of lights on the massive main stage at Effenaar. He doesn’t appear intimidated by the largeness and the isolation but slowly and deliberately hits up his somber and slow solo material. The songs build on layers of simple keyboards that create a larger than life sound. Its delivered at a measured pace and requires listening to get drawn in. Immersive and as distinct as ever.
Errorr deliver a different take on the usual Motorik based Psych, they have angles and changes in direction mid song as well as layers of sonics and rigid pulsing drums. They are quite capable of filling the room with layers of noise and waves of melody and then stripping it out and moving left of field with some different sounds and inventive song writing. To describe them as noise rock would not give full credit to the variety of sounds they can produce and a post punk epithet seems limiting. Dark and angular and very interesting.
Los Bitchos hit the large stage with the fading notes of Shania Twains ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman’ ringing out. The fun and the funk starts. As well as a whirl of repetitive rhythms and wah infused guitars there’s a huge psychedelic funkiness going on here and feet are tapping quickly before large sections of the audience start to dance along. The surf rock sounds still underpin things but the funkiness is hard to ignore, elements of disco are interwoven with world music sounds and surf/psych and ultimately a gorgeous grooviness that keeps it all flowing along.
SMOTE begin with a simple bass riff and some light drums .By the time they end its a full on cacophony of brutal yet beautiful noise with a whirlwind of guitars and drums (and other sounds). For me, one of the stand out bands of the festival. Seemingly simple musical ideas are mangled and warped out of shape and into other shapes, the rhythms pound in your ears and I’m not even sure how long they played for as time seemed to stand still, one minute they had started and seemingly in the same moment it was over and some feedback faded away and they were gone. Simply mesmerising.
A gentler take on things was Black Market Karma melodic almost beat music driven sound with large swathes of 60s garage rock n pop in there as well as lots of Psychedelic sounds. Accomplished and with a certain element of The Stairs as they plough a similar furrow – though with different results. There’s echoing guitars that seem to be in a different room, fuzzed up bass that cleans up suddenly to deliver 60s grooves and an overall melody driven by some of the best trippy inventive precise drums I’ve heard in a long time.
A floaty medieval folky intro track prepares the way for GOAT and they file onto the main stage. Resplendent in full costumes that would look in keeping in everything from a doom bands to World Music Outfit and serve. to keep their anonymity. Then they just hit it up and from the off its full blast full groove and maxed out everything. The world music and Afro beats are to the fore and the backing instruments vary from out and out funkiness to more than a hint of Sabbathy doom rock.
There’s not a part of this performance I don’t like and they easily take the full auditorium on a long musical journey were dancing is required. Its a musical and visual explosion, incredible musicianship and melodies that catch the ear and that groove that keeps on going. I left the festival with them ringing happily in my ears.
WORDS AND PHOTO CREDIT – RICHIE YATES
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