I almost wasn't gonna go to this, but in the end I cruised round to k5k's, went and got some beers and then sculled a couple before heading up. It was closing night of the inaugural Version festival, and k5k had managed to score the closing slot. We seemed to arrive around the time of the Mental Illness set, just a DJ set of music released by k5k's arch-rivals data:bass.
It was background though, as I was suddenly confronted with a certain goth rapist bastard who I'd heard of but never met before. I was kinda drunk, and had to fight the urge to bottle him. He even came and sat at our table, and prattled on for hours. He's really the most pretentious wanker I've ever met,,, well, he didn't meet me, but I know what he looks like now,,,, k5k got me more beer, hoping it would calm me down.
Mental Illness ended, and then it seemed we were waiting for the drummer of the next act to show up. This went on for over an hour, while someone called DJ Cyg seemed to be playing tunes,,,, shocking organisation,, but k5k's father turned up and bought us more beer, so it was all good.
I think that act got scrapped eventually, and then it was Marzuk.improv.nz,,, which seemed to involve a bass player, a drummer and two guitarists, and Matt B controlling a computer programme on the big screen that showed them what style to play in, how fast, what time signature, and who should play,,,, it was,,, predictable really, as you saw what was going to happen before the musicians did,,,, the bass player was pretty good though.
Anyway, it was around midnight by the time it came for the main event, and the café was still pretty full. I took up position in front of the stage with my video camera, propping myself up on a table, and hit record. What followed was Matt B with a headset mike and a bunch of effects pedals triggering all sorts of machines as k5k twiddled knobs and stuff. It didn't sound too harsh compared to other noise sets that I've seen, but I did have my earplugs in, and maybe it was just a quieter sound system. Whatever, people actually stayed until the end [about half an hour later] and even clapped when it was finished. Considering how the shows k5k organises usually go, that's a big success,,,
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5 years ago
