Monday 21 July 2008

Nurse With Wound - Hackney Lido 19/07/08

It is an odd thing to go to a gig and have all these people you recognise from countless other gigs suddenly rock up in their shorts and bikinis, all milky white and over furry. Reality bellyflops.

The set is a perfectly slow and eerie soundscape. Faint but crisp whispers over fades of tuning forks, dissipating through the blue water as I weave around the listeners' legs suspended below the surface, the hairy roots of pale fleshy trunks. Diving deeper, looking up, the overhanging trees complement the rhythmic creaking almost too perfectly as they sway in the setting sun, and when a grey cloud looms over the lido to the sound of Andrew Liles biting a balloon everything hits a peculiar space between creepy and serene. I spend the end of the set sitting at the bottom of the deep end, staring at these perfect curves in a red bikini treading water above me while a soft french looping vocal swirls down my earholes and off into nothing. Me the creep, the situation serene.

And after it's all over Steve Stapleton asks us all what it sounded like and thanks us for being his guinea pigs and it's good but I'm freezing and I'm shaking and my ears are full of water and I just want to go to bed. I buy a pizza I don't eat and fall asleep watching Ghostbusters.

It's a classic.

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