Deerhunter/HEALTH
KOKO, London
24/08/2009

Tonight’s show features the best in leftfield experimenters; the ear-shattering screeches of L.A. noisemongers HEALTH and Atlanta’s ambient soundscape masters Deerhunter at London’s KOKO.

HEALTH enter the stage for their incessant set of apocalyptic sounds, wildly flinging their skinny bodies across the stage as if they’re being controlled by some deranged puppet master above the stage at KOKO. When they’re not thrashing around the stage with guitars Jake Duzsik, John Famiglietti and Jupiter Keyes collapse to the floor in synchronicity to tweak their plethora of buttons before bouncing back onto their feet to join the unrelenting drum rolls of the machine-like Benjamin Jared Miller. Tonight’s set is a menacing slaughtering of sounds, driven by pixelated electronics and wailing, crunching guitars, songs like ‘Die Slow’ are instantly thunderous and decipherable, with its booming dance beats and expansive guitars. The first half of the set is undeniably invigorating, but soon the ceaseless screeching stops being invasive and starts becoming slightly contrived, the beats and factory like loops start sounding like something from the Industrial Zone of the Crystal Maze, and vocally the droning murmurs become hackneyed. Thankfully, before the end of the set HEALTH inject a more shoegazey tinge to their sound, the vocals become more prominent and hauntingly beautiful and the crunching guitars are exchanged in favour of eerie, sinister affects. It’s an interesting experience, but tiptoeing on the edge of self-indulgence.

Atlanta’s Deerhunter headline tonight’s show, but the set ignites slowly, especially in contrast to the instantaneous appeals of HEALTH. This four-piece start off seeming flat and lacklustre, nonchalantly strumming out songs from their last album ‘Microcastle’. However, mid way through the set Deerhunter seem to ease into their sound, vocally creating a gorgeous, melancholic haze and scuzzy reverb drenched guitars. When their ambience ceases, songs like ‘Never Stops’ form a brilliant, slacker rock and shoegaze fusion, cementing their ability to create classic indie melodies. Although the set isn’t entirely fluent with stops and starts, the emaciated Bradford James Cox plays the spaced out yet slightly obnoxious frontman in the interludes, when the sound stops mid intro he mumbles, ‘Alright it’s time for me to rap with the people’ before knocking out an impromptu funk jam and exclaiming ‘Hey we sound like Ariel Pink!’ Whilst roadies frantically run around plugging wires back into amps Cox drowsily utters in the silence in-between, ‘Ok the meaning of life…is to pursue what you truly really like without hurting others – I learnt that from the lord Jesus Christ’ – at this point two people stood near The Fly decide it’s time to leave. Deerhunter play a slightly messy show tonight, but it has that genuine originality and finesse that makes them so unique, especially in contrast to the detached, clinical nature of their support act. When things do fuck up before the encore, they instantly snap into an amazingly huge sound and end with ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ and ‘Cavalry Scars’ which possess an excellent gig outro, full of fuzzy, lo-fi warmth and expansive beautiful psychedelic sounds.

Harriet Gibsone