petepunk

Shift 2: floats like a butterfly The evening rain pours down in sheer defiance of the British Summer Time soon to be upon us, gathered as we are for Shift 2 - an event of growing stature in the Aberdeen arts calendar. While many in the city are attending tonight's Tsunami charity gig elsewhere, the Castlegate is buzzing with those seeking out something just a little bit different - and we are not disappointed. A spacious marquee has been erected to protect us from the elements, and with seven bands plus a wide range of moving images in the line-up, this free event is on an upward curve. Although I can only make the last couple of hours owing to prior arrangements, the atmosphere is crackling when I do arrive. I'm greeted by a lively set of chunk funk courtesy of Sound Development Agency, eminently danceable stuff that does nothing to abate the prevailing air of affability - a joie de vivre no doubt aided by the cheapness of refreshments - and the band eventually leaves the stage to rousing applause. As the rain drums down on the canopy above us, the screens flicker into life with some vintage footage of the city's once great fishing industry. Local artist/filmmaker Monika Dutta has taken two archive films from the Maritime Museum - a grainy sea trip from the 1930s and a washed out shipbuilding epic shot in the Fifties - cut and pasted them into cohesion and overlaid the whole with the same impressionistic deftness that brought a major national award her way last year. Though originally silent, sound is ably provided for tonight's showing by Pavlov, performing live publicly for the first time. Pavlov are Mark Lawton and Dave Mutch, mavericks of hullabaloo who shape and sculpt a huge variety of sounds through a bank of electronics. The resulting maelstrom of noise, everything from twisted, slowed-down sea shanties to seagull cries cranked through the gates of sonic hell, somehow coalesces into a soundtrack not just highly entertaining but infinitely relevant to the images before us. Pavlov's uninhibited soundscapes ebb and flow freely around us before finally subsiding into a song of plaintive, unaccompanied Doric, an end no more melancholy than the passing of the life the film portrays. The crowd, however, is anything but lugubrious and expresses its appreciation with some gusto - I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot more of Pavlov in future. Headliners tonight are 65 Days of Static - ever heard of them? Me neither. From Sheffield, they march onstage looking like any ten-a-penny guitar band but appearances prove deceptive. With guitars slung somewhere around their knees and a maniac behind the drums, these guys take a hatful of influences - from Radiohead to Godspeed with a serious twist of techno thrown in - add a very large dash of insanity and come up with something both graceful and compelling. With no vocals anywhere it would be tempting to pass this band off as merely instrumental, but with a wall of sound reminiscent of the late, lamented Ride, hard-edged orchestral terrorists might be a more appropriate description. Whatever they are, 65 Days of Static are going to be huge: catch them at The Tunnels on April 20 - or forever hold your peace! 2005 Peter Thomson

Nope - missed 'em!

Sometimes it takes a little more than the weight of the world on my shoulders to dim the sparkle in my eye, but when I'm working like a dog and no one's throwing any bones my way, well, I can get to feeling a bit sorry for myself. With the last four gigs I'd been to ranging from mediocre to dire and a broken romance whistling tunelessly in my ear, I make my way to the Lemon Tree with only a faint hope The Rezillos can do anything to dispel the black cloud hanging over me. That's how much I know. From the minute they march onstage to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries I know I'm in the right place and, just to prove it, The Rezillos launch their trash aesthetic immediately skywards with the Dave Clark Five 60s classic Glad All Over. There's hardly time to draw breath but the band flies into My Baby Does (Good Sculptures) and they don't mind taking the audience along for the ride. They're in shimmering form, Fay Fife and Eugene Reynolds gleefully dropkicking the past 25 years so high over the bar you'd think they'd never happened. Fife is in PVC and kinky boots tonight, Reynolds cool as ever in cowboy shirt and wraparounds, the electricity between them mindful of Thurman and Travolta in Pulp Fiction and this is central to the band's character. They shake and shimmy their way through a wicked Flying Saucer Attack before Eugene straps on a guitar and lets rip. Rhythm section Angel Paterson and Johnny Terminator add their own Technicolor goofiness to proceedings while providing the backbone on which The Rezillos hang all their best duds, be they sub-couture classics like Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight or fancy 21st century threads like Pressure Cooker, a newie causing mayhem on the dance floor. I'm jammed hard up to the crash barrier by the delighted scrum, but with Fay Fife looking straight into my eyes and singing "you set my world in motion," well, for a moment there I could almost believe. Unlike the second-rate twangings produced by the vast majority of their contemporaries these days, new Rezillo material is soaked in substance and credibility, perhaps because the one thing this band was never guilty of is taking itself too seriously. There's a tremendous energy pouring out onstage and this time it's for Top Of The Pops, a self-mocking pop anthem that charted a quarter of a century ago and still goes for the jugular today. As Fife jumps on to the monitor screaming, "I AM UNCOOL," my only answer to that is: "You must be f*cking joking!" Psychotic Reaction is next up and the King and Queen of Day-Glo romp through it in classic style before bursting into the perfect pop of Can't Stand My Baby, a piece-de-resistance but only one of many these days. With Jo Callis burning up the notes on his Telecaster in time-honoured fashion and Reynolds and Fife as up for it as ever, who knows which frontiers the band are heading for now? The show thunders on with Destination Venus and suddenly Callis and Fife are rolling about on the floor fighting over the guitar. Fife wins and saws a few horrific chords from it before handing it back, even playing it with her shapely ass - much to the delight of the audience - then suddenly it's all over and the crowd goes mental. The aforementioned Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight opens the first set of encores, followed by a dynamic duo of new songs. The second of these is dedicated by Fife to Jeanette Krankie (who's fallen off a beanstalk somewhere) with the words: "this song is another tragic tale - please try not to cry!" The band leaves the stage to another bout of prolonged applause but troops back on heroically reminding us that "we had to drive through Dundee to get here!" Callis begins riffing out on Smoke On The Water to the derision of his colleagues, Fife telling him in no uncertain terms to "Stop that!" Ignoring Reynolds' shout that he "put that thing (his guitar) back in its box," Callis leads the band through a frantic Bad Guy Reaction before bowing out with an incendiary reprise of Can't Stand My Baby. Thanking us profusely for the strength of our response - to what I'd say is one of the best gigs this year - the band leaves the stage exhorting us to "keep the Northern Lights shining!" We can only try, Eugene - but thanks for lighting them.

Fair play to Mick Jones for giving it another go, but if Alan McGhee thinks this bunch sound like "The Stones jamming with laptops," maybe it's time he retired! Call me disrespectful if you like, but the set had "Pub Rock" written all over it and that's as good as it got.