24/08/2016
It's an evening taut with late-August heat, and as people begin to gather on the street outside Café OTO a release of rain falls from the bruised sky. There is a palpable feeling of tense anticipation among the collective, the sense that everyone knows they are about to experience something equally bruising.
Housewives are a South London 4-piece who have amassed something of a cult following due to their formidable live performances. They released their debut album 'Work' in October 2015, recorded on a farm in the remote French countryside, and have so far maintained an online profile that is refreshingly low (there are, for instance, barely any photographs of the band).
This air of mystique is only enhanced when the band arrive, dressed in disarmingly bohemian clothes - natty cardigan, suit blazers, black beret. It all adds up to an impression that this is a band carefully cultivating their own image, aware that people will find out about them but strictly on their own terms.
They start by whipping up a whirlwind of droning loops - from a didgeridoo of all things - before launching into as dense and abrasive a half-hour set as I have seen in a long time.
There's an industrial chaos that harks back to Einsturzende Neubauten, while having the propulsive rhythms and ferocious intensity, not to mention the barked vocal stylings, that can only remind you of early-Swans.
Indeed, with sweat dripping from noses, it's hard not to be reminded of the legendary Swans gigs in which the band would order the venue's air-conditioning to be switched off, so subjecting the audience to a sweltering onslaught.
The detuned guitars and percussive precision is at its best on 'Tele', which swiftly descends into the sound of a diseased church bell's death throes.
Thinking politically, there's something about 'Autarky', in which the mantra "Work harder! Hard worker!" is yelled to the approximate sounds of a collapsing factory, that makes this just about the most perfect sonic response to six years of Tory austerity and 'anti-scrounger' rhetoric.
By the end of the set, it is impossible not to conclude that this is a band that must be experienced in a live setting, simply because there's likely very few new bands in the country who sound quite so scathingly appropriate for these tense and chaotic times as Housewives.
Check out their Bandcamp page here - http://housewivesband.bandcamp.com/music
Massicot are a Geneva-based 4-piece who tread much the same musical terrain as Housewives, but eschew the same droning chaos in favour of tightly syncopated rhythms and jagged guitar work that fit together like falling pieces of Tetris.
The songs are built up around the spinal drum work, which shifts from motorik to funk to cowbell-inflected calypso, and back again. Around this is an exoskeleton of sparse guitar and bass - in this case a curious red mini-bass - weaving repetitive discordant riffs that, in same way as Housewives, you can't help but be swept up in.
Add into the mix a John Cale-esque electric violin sweeping and scratching its way across the taut structures and you have a band that display an impressive array of experimentation and potential. Check them out.
Check out their Bandcamp page here - http://massicot.bandcamp.com/
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