Chloroform - RUST, København 9/23/05
From Aural Innovations #32 (November 2005)
There was nothing to do and this strange Norwegian band, Colorform, was coming close by so I met up with Tom and Anders and we checked it out. I last saw Cloroform at the Roskilde Festival in 2003 and they had a different bass player and the singer had a shaved head. Now the singer had grown his hair back and they had a new bass player with a shaved head. I was told that he was a quite famous bass player from the free jazz scene. He was damn good. The show was advertised at 21:00 and a DJ to start at 23:00, so we got there early only to be quite annoyed to sit around and drink the over priced RUST beers and the band not to start until 22:45!
By the time the band came on you could hear a lot of Norwegian being spoken and the place was filling up with beautiful girls and freaks… who else would come out for this strange band. How does on describe chloroform?? They are a three piece band with a drummer who also sings mostly back up but also some lead vocals, a killer bass player who more than half the time plays a stand up bass and a crazy lead singer who uses vocal effects and plays three different keyboards that he stands between and these have multiple effects on them so they sound quite strange, sometimes harsh, sometimes not. The vocals are delivered in a wild Butthole Surfers meets David Byrne type style and are quite strange (the lyrics). The music is frantic, almost punk like at times and strange Primus like rhythms. It is hard to describe but they are great fun to watch and hear. The people were into it as well. The band gave its all and was very sweaty and played about 75 minutes or so. Cool show.
Reviewed by Scott Heller