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Trans Am + Fucking Champs, Fucking Am Enigma Bar, Sun 27 March  Easter
weekend is a dodgy time for a gig in Adelaide. It seems like half
the city decamps to the Murray, Kangaroo Island, or 'Yorkes'. City
streets become windswept silent canyons and gig promoters shuffle
nervously. However the Indian summer warmth and surprisingly big crowds
on Hindley Street filled me with some hope that this special event
would be well attended. Alas the turnout was small, but ended up redeeming
their lack of numbers with the intensity of their fannish adoration.San Francisco three piece Fucking Champs played a complimentary set of military precision, vocal-free melodic grind/hardcore that would have pleased Henry Rollins and The Mark of Cain. They certainly pleased me. Trans Am are a 'difficult' band. It's all too easy to lump them into the 'post-rock' box along with some of their other Thrill Jockey stablemates and leave it at that. Except I don't know what 'post-rock' actually is, and the band themselves have shown over a ten year recording career that they don't either. Tonight however, the mighty vocoder ruled. Trans Am - with Sebastian Thomson's rather impressive torso flailing away with sadistic precision behind the drum kit and with the other two members (maniacally swapping keyboards, bass and guitar) looking like escapees from a Kraftwork video - utilised vocoderised vocals brilliantly to amp up their metronomic rhythms and New Order-ish keyboards to a Dalek intensity. Out came a gleaming Motr, a crunching Carboforce, Infinite Wavelength and a good deal of stuff from last year's superb 'Liberation' (June, the sublime Total Information Awareness). All in all, Trans Am rocked surprisingly hard, but never in a grungy way - the mix was brilliantly clear, crunchy yet spacious - with keyboards and guitars counterpointing each other and Thomson's drumming a real revelation. Then, after fifty super-intense but all too short minutes, it was over. I was feeling a little cheated (were they tired? pissed off at the smallish crowd?) when the Fucking Am - Trans Am and Fucking Champs together - took to the stage and belted out several more numbers (including if I'm not mistaken, a track from the aforementioned 'Futureworld') with redoubled intensity and volume. This wasn't the first time Trans Am had come to town and I hope it won't be the last. They strike me as the kind of band who are so versatile that they might be troubling our auditory bulbs for years to come. This is good. Whatever you do, don't be at Yorkes next time.  |
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