Victoria and Jacob, The Cathode Ray Syndrome* – Portland Arms, Cambridge, 2 August 2008

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The Portland Arms in Cambridge is something of a local institution. This pub-with-a-back-room venue has been the scene of many a great evening of live music over the years, and with the recent demise of the short-lived Barfly just across the road, has once again become pretty much the main port of call for the discerning Cambridge gig-goer.

Last Saturday saw a four-band lineup celebrating local promoter (and friend of TLOBF) Green Mind‘s birthday. Two of the four bands playing – The Cougars and Operahouse – produced workmanlike but not terribly exciting variations on your standard guitar-based modern indie, so need not really detain us any further now; whilst the other two were both, in differing ways, much more interesting.

Victoria and Jacob are a boy / girl duo who combine electro glitches with a certain added folk music aesthetic. They use a wide range of instruments: some standard (acoustic guitar, keyboard, glockenspiel), some less so (voice-distorting toy megaphones, kiddie keyboards, a weird green plastic thing that made a cool rattling sound) but do judiciously so that you never feel that it is simply “for effect”.

Victoria’s vocal at times reminded me of Thomas Tantrum’s Megan Thomas (slightly less “mannered”, perhaps), and hers is an animated stage presence. They also have a nice line in narrative and melody, and overall are a charming electro-folk-pop band who deserve to be more widely heard.

Headliners The Cathode Ray Syndrome* are a tricky proposition to review, specialising as they do in intense, expertly coordinated but totally instrumental (bar a few excerpts of pre-recorded film dialogue, and screamed counting from the drummer on ‘Mexicanism’) post-rock goodness. This is music to lose yourself in, rather than focusing on specifics; with multiple and continuous variations in time-signature, pace and dynamics which had the Cambridge audience grinning and nodding along (which, for a Cambridge crowd, is probably about as animated as you are likely to get….). Its power lies as much in the breaks and pauses – always perfectly judged – as in the waves of music that surround them.

Leaving aside the obligatory “it’s post-rock so I must throw in at least one Mogwai reference” comments, you can hear bits of Dianogah in the lead guitar sound (as on ‘Warninglid’(, and on the corking ‘New Theory / Robots’ I spotted a definite echo of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ rhythms. It’s all held together by the lead guitarist, who paces the stage like a roving post-rock conductor, keeping everyone in line. The bass and keyboard player stops everything feeling a little too serious, and lends some character to the band by striking some great rock poses while generating his dark, dissonant basslines.

Towards the end, their (no joke) dirty minor-key rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ merges into the beautiful cacophony of ‘Solutions for Solved Problems’: like rainfall pelting down but in, um, musical form: one of the few tracks that you could almost imagine a vocal on. Twinkling keyboard noises alternate with really chunky bass on this, or it could be closing track ‘Off The Beaten Sidetrack’, supported by extremely able drum-battering.

A night of contrasts, then, but one which left me with ringing ears, and (plug alert) very much looking forward to the TLOBF/Green Mind-hosted gig this October (the lineup for which includes Victoria and Jacob). The Cathode Ray Syndrome* are based in Cambridge and Brighton, and if you like your music intense, noisy and intelligent then you should definitely seek them out too.

Links
Victoria and Jacob [myspace]
The Cathode Ray Syndrome* [myspace]