Gas Giant and Schtimm - Ungdomshuset, Københvn 5/10/03
From Aural Innovations #24 (July 2003)
What can I say, another Gas Giant show. I arrived around 4:30 to the club, which is on the same street that I live on, about 3 minutes on my bicycle. I meet some people from the club who are setting up the PA and the very nice people from Schtimm. It was a beautiful day and we sat out in the garden they have behind the club. Ungdomshuset is a club started in the early 80s and run by the punk rock community. It is a huge building with offices, art stuff, a nightclub, etc. Cheap beer and nice people. It had been years since I went to a punk club but it reminded me of the Gilman Street Club in Berkeley but much bigger. The guys show up with the gear around 5. Jepser and I go out for a Shawarma and come back. Everything takes forever and we sit around and drink beers and some smoke joints. We finally soundcheck but the club is already open. It is 10:30 by the time Schtimm finish their sound check. They don’t start playing until nearly 12. It is going to be a late night. People have been here for hours now and are getting high and drunk.
Schtimm are a complete opposite to our music. While Gas Giant is very heavy, they play a sort of low fi, lounge, jazz airy style music. Very quiet. This was the wrong time and place for them to play. Another heavy band from Sweden, Firestone, were suppose to play but they cancelled leaving us as the headliner. Anyway, the band opened with "Partytime". The band are a four piece of bass, drums, female vocals and keyboard and guitar. They have a very nice sound and with the candles and red themes of their dress and lights on the stage it was a nice setting but people could not be quiet so it was hard to enjoy what they were doing. They did not seem to be bothered by it. They played songs from all three of their releases as well as a few new songs. They only played 40 minutes but the people who were listening gave them great applause. Very nice.
Set List: Partytime, Somewheregone, Friday EMO, Leperman, Endore, I’M Dead, Mraklands, Suncoptic Drive
It takes about 25 minutes before we are ready to go and I start to make some space sounds before the band appears and we go into "There’s One". Now the heavy crowd are up front and ready to rock and roll. Next up is "Moonshake", a great song. We go straight into "All Creatures" and the crowd goes wild. We had a great groove on this one. "Dragon’s Cave" was next up and Jesper and I had just bought a set of Conga drums and Jesper plays them at the end of this song. Next up is "Not Aman" and this is dedicated to Stefan, the guitar player’s brother, Asker. He has wanted to see us play this song live and it just seems that we never do play it here in Denmark until tonight. This is jamming and I play the congas during the mid section. Now we try to go out into space with "Ride The Red Horse". The band are smiling and we are jamming now. A great vibe and Stefan is flying now. After Ride, we have a 5 minute break as Thomas is struggling with something in his bass rig. We get it solved and go into "Back On The Headless Track", our first real jam of the night. Pretty cool. We hit the crowd hard with "Firetripper" next and then slow things down with "Phantom Tanker". The crowd are yelling for "Too Stoned" now and we close the main set with that. I have to run and change the minidisk (at 71 minutes) and get back up on the stage and start the intro for "Storm Of My Enemies" and this is the absolute highlight of the show, with a 15 minute version and some incredible grooves and drumming and guitar solos.. The band are drained after this heavy jam but the crowd really want more. No one really wants to play more but they come up and play "Orange Fender". It was a bit rough. Nonetheless, a great show. I feel the band are really into a great live groove at the moment. This show featured more of the hard rocking numbers that we did not play in Helsinki. A great night of music and the first time my wife had ever seen us play live. We got home about 3:30.
SetList: Space Intro> Theres One, Moonshake, All Creatures, Dragons Cave, Not Aman, Ride the Red Horse, Back on the Headless Track, Firetripper, Phantom Tanker, Too Stoned Encore: Storm of My Enemies, Orange Fender
Reviewed by Scott Heller