Peyote
MothershipSpace Rock Spectacular- Town Hall, Drayton, UK 10/20/07
featuring Underground Zero, Assassins of Silence, Dr. Hasbeen, Peyote Mothership,
Xoo
From Aural Innovations #38 (Jan 2008)
I was really looking forward to this. I flew over to England to spend the weekend with Sue and have a nice drive out to the countryside to Drayton (Close to Oxford) for some space rock. We had a nice relaxed drive, only taking one wrong turn. We checked into the bed and breakfast (really just someone’s home we stayed in) and walked over to the venue and met Harvey Bainbridge and the guys from Peyote Mothership. We exchanged t-shirts and Craig gave me some music. We had a nice dinner and a beer at one of the local pubs before heading over to the venue. Some of the members of the bands were at the pub as well. Only 2 pubs in this town but we saw 3 churches!
Anyway, Xoo started like 10 mins after 19 and we heard all of their set, although I only recorded the last song (Moonglum) with Huw Lloyd Langton sitting in. He was really not playing well.. Xoo are a new Xenon Codex era Hawkwind inspired band with bass, drums, guitar and synth (female). Melodic and quite ok but the sound was not really that good and only like 20 people in the hall.
Peyote
Mothership
A quick change over and Peyote Mothership were up. I really love their EP and they also were quite excellent. Someone said a Jefferson Airplane for the 21st century… They only played for 28 mins and the guitars were far too low for the first half of their set but I liked the energy they had. Next up was Assassins of Silence and their set was fun but pretty much a sound disaster. Synths way to high, Huw playing absolutely ghastly guitar that had nothing to do with what the others were playing and his guitar way too high to start and the other guy (who played in Xoo), way too low. Anyway, they played Uncle Sams on Mars (pretty cool until Huw started playing), The Golden Void (totally trashed by Huw and sung by Bridget Wishart), Psi Power, Reefer Madness, Back in the Box, Damnation Alley and finally Master of the Universe. Harvey Bainbridge played the whole set and Bridget most of the set. Fun.. Great laser and lights but a bit dark.
Assassins of Silence
(See Huw in the back)
Another quick change and Dr. Hasbeen was up. This was a very young band and
it showed. They also had a lot of sound problems and total chaos factor throw
into their set. They started with two original tracks Kosavo and Hippy Trip.
The leader and guitar player had his amp go out at the end of The golden void
jam and there was a strange synth piece played and then a guy did some not very
cleaver spoken word piece before a blanga version of Needle Gun. They played
about 40 minutes. Time was ticking away as the whole event had to be over and
everyone and all the gear out by 24. Underground Zero started about 5 min to
23 and played a great 50 min set. This was going to be their last show ever
with the original line up. They were not sure they would play again. They had
pretty decent sound, one of the few bands and I quite liked most of their fast
paced space rock tracks. Cool band.. Their set list was: Seven Light Years,
Forlorn and Lethal, Between Worlds, Genocide, Never Reach the Stars
Dr.Hasbeen
Underground
Zero
Anyway.. it was a fun night and I met some cool people like Kosmik Ken and
Si from the Psychobabblers, Tom Burns, Harvey, the guys in Peyote Mothership..
I later found out that Ian Abrahams was there and I missed him. Damn…
Reviewed by Scott Heller