Story and pictures by Noah Barron

This year, 2008, may well turn out to be the year when noise reigns supreme. Nowhere was this more evident than at this weekend’s aptly named, Noise Pop Festival, in San Francisco, where hot bands took over small local venues for six days of tinnitus-inducing shows. I traveled up to see some old friends, pound the pavement looking for a journo job for after graduation and to see my two favorite bands of recent memory: A Place To Bury Strangers and Holy F*ck, playing together at Bottom of the Hill, at the er, bottom of Potrero Hill. My ears are still ringing.

Hundreds of people—98% dudes—were crammed into the tiny space. The opening act was a group I’d never heard of called Veil Veil Vanish, an SF-based shoegazy/gothy four-piece fronted by the talented (if a bit Robert Smith-derivative) vocalist/guitar player Keven Teacon. Their set was tight, obviously the product of extensive recent gigging, and featured Teacon’s Cure-esque vox over waves of distorted guitar work. No frills, but really quite solid. Extra points for cute girl on bass.

The next act, White Denim, really rubbed me the wrong way. It was one of those sets where you feel like you must be the only one not in on the joke. I’d heard really good things about these guys, but up close and large as life, the contraption didn’t really work. Weird facial expressions, a pre-pubescent-looking bassist, shoddy guitar looping, creepy ironic wah-wah and lo-fi blues shred and yowling.

‘Nuff said. Dunno. Emperor’s new clothes as usual, but I didn’t really get it and neither did the poor guy whose camera got inadvertently spat on by the mustachioed frontman.

(image via Noah Barron)

And then, just when I thought Bottom of the Hill couldn’t get any more crowded, even more skinny pants-clad dudes crammed in for the A Place to Bury Strangers set. They got their claustrophobic money’s worth. APTBS killed it, blowing the crowd’s collective mind with huge galloping lobes of noise crashing in inexorable detonations against us. Sharp jangle guitar melody punctured the thunderheads of feedback to trace patterns and then evaporated back into the maelstrom. So yeah basically, it was LOUD and it RULED. People make a lot out of the Jesus and Mary Chain influence and I see it, but there’s far more to the formula; there’s quite a bit of Ian Curtis in Oliver Ackermann’s haunting vocal delivery and sonically they owe as much to modern postrock bombast like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky as they do to shoegaze. Whatever. The lyrics don’t matter, they love their pedals and your ears will be smarting when the set is over. The record is excellent too, go get it.

Last up was Holy F*ck. I was surprised that they headlined and apparently so was the crowd—it dispersed a great deal after APTBS left the stage. Besides having like, the awesomest name ever, HF bring a sort of interesting ethos to their music making: they’re trying to do polyrhythmic techno using only the most primitive rock instrumentation…guitars, a drum kit, lots of effects and analog gear and a few cheesy drum machines. Synthesizer and sequencer free. They only half succeed at making a coherent thing, and in doing so, fail in cool, damaged ways.

This set wasn’t anywhere near as cohesive as the record (on “LP” you could confuse them for a real band)…but live the five members of Holy F*ck spent perhaps a bit too much time finding the groove and not enough time reveling in it, but it was clear they had a blast twisting knobs and banging on their jumble of noise machines.

One of my buddies said he “found it hard to believe it took five people to make those noises,” but honestly, I think they all just wanted to be onstage rocking out, even if only the keyboardist and the drummer were actually contributing anything significant. HF turned out to be a sort of hipster-safe jam band, with the players nuancing one another’s squelchy loops; playing live they’re sort of an analog techno version of the Dead or something, if Phil Lesh had been obsessed with Squarepusher and didn’t really know how to play. But anyway.

The set was B+, their record—“LP”—holy f*cking rules, go get it.

I look forward to the new noise from groups like A Place to Bury Strangers, Holy F*ck along with their contemporaries Battles and others. These guys are shattering eardrums and expectations. Or something.

Props from the weekend: Muni, Ethiopian food, A Place to Bury Strangers, Fielding Greaves

Slops from the weekend: The show selling out so my pals couldn’t get in, SF for being ultra cold, White Denim, Fielding Greaves