Photography: Ned Raggett

Terrastock 6 - Providence, Rhode Island

Anyone in the UK who has attended Bowlie or ATP may be forgiven for wondering why we’re all breathless over here whenever a new Terrastock is announced, as if it is somehow unique. Then again, things happen a bit later over here in the States sometimes. Only after the European summer festival circuit had long been established did Perry Farrell decide that something called Lollapalooza might go over well, followed by now-regular events like Coachella.

Terrastock’s own late arrival in 1997, plus the fact that it’s neither set in the same place each time, nor is anything close to being annual, keeps it feeling fresh in people’s minds. Even with the new crop of festivals bearing a Terrastock stamp – such as Arthur magazine’s ArthurFest and brainwashed.com’s upcoming Brainwaves fest – Terrastock still has a certain cachet. Bands plan tours and releases around it, record sellers are ensured of a perfect audience and participants now are used to many familiar faces in the crowd if they’ve been lucky enough to attend in the past. Indeed, it’s that sense of community which is key. And, while catching every set is almost impossible anyway (the schedule allows for it but it’s still pretty tiring), I freely admit to skipping some sets here and there just so I can catch up with friends. Like Bowlie or ATP, it’s more than just the music.

Terrastock’s venues have ranged from the hastily last-minute (a dockside warehouse/rehearsal space in San Francisco) to the well-entrenched (Seattle’s Showbox, with two separate stages in close proximity). Here, the combination of AS220, a recently renovated club-size performance space, and the huge, vaulted scope of the Pell Chafee Performance Center was an inspired choice, with record sellers and bands in a small theatre space between the two. You couldn’t take alcohol onto the street while migrating between the two stages, but the laconic advice from the organisers (“Chug”) was perfectly apt.

I knew beforehand that Kinski’s set on Friday would be a winner. I first saw them at Terrastock 4 in Seattle, the band’s hometown. The past six years have seen them taking their initial drone-cranked-to-11 impulses to an absolutely maniacal new pitch – biker rock for the 22nd Century, Neu! supercharged by Steve Reich’s minimalism. Equally striking is when they aim for something quiet and calm - without being totally ambient, thanks to a never-quenched emphasis on rhythm (with or without drums), they feel like a dark, moody crawl through fog-bound wastes. They are one of those bands that release records as souvenirs because they have to be seen live, watching all four of them seem less like they’re performing their instruments and more like they’re being attacked and possessed by them, jerking back and forth as if buffeted by invisible forces. At their best, fully in sync, they tap into a white line fever at 200 mph. Right down to the flute solo!

Sanity similarly goes out the window for Major Stars, but in a different way even if at the same volume. Well known for an ‘everything louder than everything else’ approach that might have made even Lemmy nervous, they’re anchored by Wayne Rogers and Kate Village, the not-really-mad-but-it’s-fun-to-think-they-might-be geniuses behind the legendary Twisted Village record store. Their newest ace is a lead singer by the name of Sandra Barrett. She charged into the audience, microphone in hand, singing at the top of her lungs while the band transformed proto-hard rock riffs and rhythms into the stomping of Godzilla.

Bardo Pond’s trademark sound was the only thing that could have outdone the other high-volume acts that day – huge, slow, enveloping, a constantly evolving blast that is the aural equivalent of being engulfed by the Blob (despite its seeming lack of direction, the band knows exactly what it wants to do). Isobel Sollenberger’s singing and occasional flute provides an anchor at points, though often she sounds like she’s swooning with the music, cascading along with it, being taken and absorbed. Background images provided by local artists flashed up some mushrooms, and, though I’ve never indulged, I got a pretty clear sense of what it might feel like.

On Saturday, Cul de Sac performed in shadow, the quartet sticking to their generally favored approach of instrumental space rock. They were the closest the weekend got to a classic jazz quartet, playing selections from an upcoming score to the classic silent film Faust and reworkings from their soon to be re-released debut Ecim. Like a number of the best bands on the bill, there’s not really a visual aspect to their live performance – they perform in an almost studious fashion, and one could be forgiven for simply wanting to enjoy their show in recumbent position, eyes closed. But they matched the mood of the day, a slow, easy start in darkness.

Similarly understated on the stage are Connecticut quintet Landing, who present a delightful image on stage – friendly, low-key and slightly dressed-down folks creating serene, lush collages of E-bowed guitars, keyboard tones, a gentle aspirational rise heavenwards. It’s as if sources of inspiration in shoegazing or the Cocteau Twins have been transmuted into a personal soundtrack. Many of us there seemed to watch as if drifting off into a gentle dream, letting the small touches of the band’s performance – Adrienne Snow’s soft addition of bells, Dick Baldwin’s gentle-giant posture near the front of the stage – be the chief memories.

Avarus are one of many Finnish bands who in recent years have given the country a reputation much like Japan had in the Nineties for inventive, seemingly unearthly groups. Their two-song set on the Saturday included everything from the drummer’s free-form voice-as-instrument interjections to huge, throbbing riffs that pretty well did everyone’s head in. In response to calls for more, the drummer said something like “All the songs sound the same.”

Australia’s Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood are a somewhat open-ended collective led by the dreadlocked Michael Connolly. The resulting performance resembled what I imagine it would have been like to attend an Amon Düül (as opposed to Amon Düül II) recording session, with free-flowing double-drum attacks, effects laden upon everything, obscured vocals flowing in and out of hearing, a stage crowded with instruments and lights.

Cul de Sac member Glenn Jones’ stripped-down solo set focused on acoustic guitar compositions in the vein of John Fahey, who was referenced a couple of times in the set, both via a cover version and with Jones telling the story of a song he was working on when he learned of Fahey’s death. But the gift of the many who have followed in Fahey’s footsteps lies in hearing what they do with that key source of inspiration, and Jones himself cuts a distinct figure with his own work, delicate and intricate. One can tell just by watching the play of his fingers just how much time he puts into practice, and the semi-smile on his face as he performs suggests a finding of grace in his favoured means of expression.

Michigan’s Windy and Carl, meanwhile, were entrancing. Their lush, melancholic but always soothing blend of guitars and effects is as all-surrounding as Bardo Pond’s. Yet it seeks not to crush, but to enfold and to weave through a listener, and, live, that’s even more readily achieved thanks to all the amplifiers. Some of the images projected behind them, again from local artists rather than the musicians, were a bit distracting – and, in a couple of cases, rather bizarrely inappropriate, all things considered, given that cartoon breakfast characters from the Thirties don’t automatically put me in mind of overwhelming blissout – but all one had to do was close one’s eyes to let everything flow.

Taking the ‘loud as hell and will rock you to the ground’ pole position that evening was Sweden’s inspired collective the Spacious Mind, who delivered one long set of electrified commune rock that ranged from gentle keyboard-led flows to full-on attack, with the initial help of Abunai!/the Lothars’ Kris Thompson on theremin. They turned in such a powerful show that one of my Canadian hotelmates practically charged me to say, “What the heck are you doing sitting down? STAND UP!” (I fully sympathised but I was getting pretty exhausted by that point!)

I skipped Lightning Bolt’s house party, which I was urged to attend by some compatriots “for the sake of good journalism”, in order to rest up so I could enjoy the final – and in the end, easily the best – day. This turned out to be a good thing, as I hadn’t initially intended to go see Sunday’s opener, the Kitchen Cynics, the one-man project of Aberdonian Alan Davidson. The low-key attendance for his show bespoke the fact that many others had definitely gone to the party and were only just waking up. A pity for them. Alan’s approach, spiked with his own admitted case of slight stage nerves, is agreeably personal – by his own admission, many if not all of his songs are inspired by either his everyday life or the history of Aberdeen, turning his experiences not into diaries but sources for new ways of telling a story, such as of a tragic but decades-old and nearly forgotten ferry accident, but focusing in on a single person’s experience rather than simply detailing the event. He favours an acoustic guitar with rich reverb and it was just the way to start a Sunday morning.

Providence’s own Black Forest/Black Sea were on later and, given both Miriam Goldberg’s guest work here and there as well as Jeffrey Alexander’s near running himself ragged helping to oversee and coordinate the festival, it was a treat to finally see them ‘be themselves’. Though there was one moment when Jeffrey apparently fell asleep on stage where he was crouching to toy with some effects, and had to be gently prodded awake by Miriam! But it was done with much understanding and warm applause from the audience for a job well done on his part throughout the weekend, and the band’s hushed, stripped-down, almost fractured-by-intent performance – a version of mystic acid folk that felt more like a haunting primal benediction – was none the worse for it.

Charalambides are one of the best things ever to come from Texas – and given all the good groups that have come from there, I don’t say this lightly. The core duo of Tom and Christina Carter put on what, in terms of stagecraft, is one of the calmest shows around, with the two simply sitting on chairs, playing electric guitars and, in Christina’s case, singing. But what makes them compelling is how they have staked out their own distinct sphere, fierce and/or spindly open-ended riffs and shadings matched with Christina’s near alien, wordless vocals, a keening that suggests a forlorn, lost ghost. It’s powerful stuff at its best and a further aptitude for improvisation (though songs can be familiar, exactly how they are performed will always differ) is what makes them compelling on stage. By blending both old and new songs – to the delight of longtime fans, they played two selections from their excellent early landmark Market Square – they effortlessly showed both where they’ve been and where they will yet go in pursuing a strange, unique muse.

Larkin Grimm tackles folk with exuberance, humour and a warm sense of involvement. Far from being hushed and reflective, her singing is open, strong, as striking as the detailed, Native American-inspired makeup on her face and that of her many collaborators onstage. This was a collaborative effort, with new musical partner Lara Polangco adding much on vocals and autoharp, plus a backing chorus of friends and family, including Larkin’s younger sister, whose look of sheer delight at singing with big sis was a treat. Add to that everything from lines about hipster boys from New York to a wolf-howl chorus that everyone was joining in on by the end of that song – not to mention Larkin and Lara singing the crowd along to the next set by Spires That In the Sunset Rise, walking down the sidewalk with instruments in hand – and frankly I think they just about stole the show from everyone. It was a total treat and a half.

Paik almost didn’t happen. A key distortion pedal that guitarist Rob uses decided to die, and things were looking dicey. Happily an audience member volunteered the use of their own pedal, things were quickly hooked up, the first power chord caused a lot of happiness and devil signs to be thrown, and then I don’t remember the next 45 minutes much. Their volume, focus and power sent me somewhere else, helped by background images of planets in space and the like. There aren’t any bands that quite yet send me away as totally and completely as My Bloody Valentine did all those years ago but, because Rob knows his way around tremolo arm abuse more than most, the similarities are clearer here. Yet there’s a lack of candy-coating ease in their instrumental work – it’s the vicious knife on the cover of ‘You Made Me Realize’, in a context derived from the band’s hometown of Detroit (the Afros would have made the MC5 proud). I was always glad to be wearing earplugs throughout the weekend and, for this set, I was especially glad.

Hometown gods Lightning Bolt sent a lot of people to a similar space, though as one friend who has seen them millions of times before put it, not snottily but simply casually, “I’ve seen them better.” And I understand where they’re coming from, since their hyperintense, obsessive workouts – rock reduced to metal reduced to slamming reduced to trance reduced to sheer power and then reencapsulating all that and then some in an explosion outward – seem like they should just keep going, somehow, somewhere, at all times, not be cut off by festival set demands after 45 minutes. But it was kinda nice just to see an actual pit at a Terrastock show, for whatever reason (I was enlisted to help protect the glasses of one participant), and by sticking to their preferred way of playing on the floor rather than on the stage, it seemed just right for them all around.

Ghost, led by the slightly imperious but deservedly so Masaki Batoh, were the reason a lot of people were there – though it’s still unclear, the band had dropped a number of hints that this would be their final show in the US. A quick announcement at the end left it still not quite sure, but if it was – what a way to go. Batoh and his various bandmates, most notably brilliant guitarist Michio Kurihara, whose understated stage presence belied his astonishing, all over the place performances, simply owned that stage and the crowd, responding with rapturous cheers after every song. Ranging from the most delicate of acoustic guitar compositions to blistering, multipercussive arrangements, Ghost encapsulated the spirit of the weekend and Terrastock as a whole. The final song of the main set saw Batoh singing in cyclical rapture as the band seemed to find greater and greater heights in every bar they performed. I was so glad to be there.