Scalping w/ Fever 103
Bad Vibrations is delighted to welcome audio-visual EBM group SCALPING to Peckham Audio on 5th March 2020, where they’ll no doubt push that incredible sound rig to the limit. Renowned for their mind-blowing live shows which combine muscular, cerebral techno drawing from punk, post-rock and industrial music with projected live animations loaded with grotesque, sci-fi imagery.
Special guests to be announced.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:
This show is now sold out.
Please do not buy second hand tickets outside of the Dice waiting list or See tickets exchange system. This is to protect you from scam and ensure tickets are legally yours.
"Amongst Bristol’s vital avant-garde scene there is a current impulse to reconcile aspects of the city’s soundsystem culture with the theatrical, performed nature of live guitar music."
- Line of Best Fit
"The golden era of Bristol label Howling Owl’s events had a massive impact on us, being subjected to so many incredibly varied experimental artists fuelled our desire to be part of the scene in the city. Seeing Giant Swan was one of the first times we’d seen dance music performed with the energy of a live band, and it was revolutionary."
- Scalping to M Magazine
Loud and Quiet chat to Scalping
Alastair Shuttleworth interviews Scalping.
Playing to a click in Jones’ ear, SCALPING perform entirely live and without breaks, to a gradually increasing tempo. Initially requiring a laptop to play tracks, this was quickly removed by Hill in favour of a more hands-on electronic setup. He says his desire to “create on the fly” was partially spurred by his research into post-war experimental music, consolidated in his remarkable record Ces Expériences. “Having stuff at your fingertips makes it a lot more reactive and chaotic live,” he says.
The sets have duly become increasingly improvisational. Having played 22 festivals this summer (with no time for dedicated practices), this has emerged from simply trying things out at shows; Rushforth describes the unwitting development of a “rota of sounds” amongst them, organically taking turns to push their individual elements.
The ultimate goal of SCALPING as an instrumental project, they claim, is total escapism. Thomas points to his favourite band Sunn O))) as an example of this, “where you lose yourself in something meditative, or chaotic”.
Where conventional bands might rely on lyrics to imbue the music with subject-matter, in SCALPING this role is fulfilled by Baker’s staggering visuals. These make their way into the sets based on how strong a reaction they elicit from the members, and point to an eccentric sense of humour: a recurring figure is a gelatinous, technicoloured humanoid, who is variously shown dancing obscenely, changing shape, dropping from the sky and vomiting entrails. “You can have grotesque stuff,” Baker says, “but if you light it with bright primary colours there’s an immediate juxtaposition there.”
“We always joke that it’s like watching fireworks,” Hill says, claiming the visuals help engage people who might not immediately appreciate “banging live techno”.
Full feature here