...of waltzes and Waldheim...(2 - Culture)

There are things you simply have to do when you visit Vienna, and I didn't do any of them. You must take a ride around the city in a horse and trap (there are hundreds to choose from, most of them driven by unhappy-looking men in bowler hats, and pulled by poor nags that stamp neurotically and repetitively at the cobbles beneath their hooves, while waiting for their next heavy load of strudel-stuffed customers. No thanks.). You must go to the opera (shrieking reminders of the ghastly three years when the house next door was occupied by a professional soprano who practiced her scales for up to six hours a day just might provoke a Manchurian Candidate response in me, so not worth the risk, or the money.). You must go to the Spanish Riding School (not comfortable with training animals to pose and trot unnaturally for entertainment, thanks, though I did get great fun from putting a wig on my dog years ago.). Oh, and you must eat cake at least once an hour (as mentioned in the previous post, my sweet tooth departed long since, but hey don't let me stop you. Tuck in.).

Instead, I did what I always do when I visit a new city; I walked the length and breadth of it by day and night, stopping to try new food whenever possible, I watched people like a hawk and came to unjustified and unprovable conclusions about them and their internal lives, and I went to as many galleries as I could bear. Vienna is relatively small as cities go, but is packed with such variety and riches that I left with a third of it barely explored, and a further third of it not seen at all. You can't rush a place like this. There are a hundred museums alone,  and not all of them in the Museum Quarter though this area makes a good place to start. First on my list and highly recommended as a building alone is Mumok, the Museum of Modern Art, which houses all the off-the-wall art wackiness you could possibly need, stuffed to the rafters with the likes of Klee, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Picasso, Duchamp, and (inevitably) a huge helping of shocking and confrontational/juvenile and childish (depending on your own personality) masterpieces by the Viennese Actionists, who seemed to be rebelling against most elements of Austria's past using anything they could lay their hands on (including each other's bodily fluids, genitals, leftovers from supper etc - you probably get the idea.). I spent almost three hours wandering around enjoying myself, and cast sly glances at the home-grown visitors sporting sharp geometric black outfits and expensively treated geometric hair as they peered coolly at the artwork. So many looked like extras from a European language film about the highly-repressed collective neuroses of the over-cultured affluent Mittel-european intelligentsia. So don't go there if you hate this sort of thing, that's my advice. I had a great time though.

The main feature at several of the other large museums at the moment (and for the rest of 2012) is the work of Gustav Klimt, those dreamlike, erotic, pagan, neo-Byzantine images of ecstatic women cradling severed heads, or lovers embracing awkwardly under a golden cloak (just me I imagine, but I always thought the Kiss looks like he's got her in a head lock. Don't read too much into my interpretation.). The main exhibition is sited at the beautiful Belvedere palace, which is worth a visit in its own right, a stunning baroque iced cake of a mansion built specifically as an proud statement of obscene wealth by Prince Eugene in the early 1700s. It was busy on the day I went, but not packed and there was plenty of time and space to get a long look at the paintings, which pack far more of a punch in real life than I was expecting. I'd always been a bit dismissive of Klimt as an 'early 20s artist', which is my snotty way of saying I saw his work as the sort of thing you send postcards of to friends when you're about 23 and keen to demonstrate that you are now mature enough to admit to a taste for beauty and romantic pan-European imagery (but you're way above all that heavy, over-literal Pre-Rapaelite nonsense like 'Flaming June' with her great big thighs and coarse hair.). Seen in real life, the canvasses are stunning, mesmerising things that you want to take time over and appreciate slowly, to notice every tiny curlicue and detail and fleck of light. I took the Belvedere exhibition very slowly, and later on lingered in the beautiful Secession building over the crazy Beethoven Frieze, noting how much the redhead who is supposed to portray 'lasciviousness' reminds me of Farah Fawcett in the famous 'red swimsuit with nipples' pinup from the Seventies. Someone had obviously been taking notes about the enduring power of certain depictions of female pulchritude.

Less endearing but equally interesting was the vast collection of Klimt's pencil drawings and sketches in the Vien Museum at Karlsplatz (not to mention his actual death mask and post-mortem sketches by his enfant terrible chum Egon Schiele.). One huge wall is given to a spread - in all senses of the word - of 'intimate studies' of his female models, a sort of pen and paper equivalent of a giant 'see everything' jazz mag.  When you read more, and discover that sex with Herr Klimt was one of the 'privileges' of getting to model for him ( and he was known for being fairly forceful in his conquests, which were legion), and consider the fact that several of his subjects were young girls of fifteen or so, a whole other raft of questions emerges about his attitude towards women. Of course the art eclipses it all... doesn't it? I'm not so sure. But in any case his work deserves to be viewed thoughtfully, and not just through the dazzling veil of his delicately applied gold leaf. There are far darker layers beneath. And take it from me, you won't want to see The Kiss again for a while once you leave Vienna as it is emblazoned absolutely everywhere in the city, from umbrellas to teacups to duvet covers. You can overdose on anything, but there's far more to this commemorative Klimt beanfeast than that one canvas so if you're passing through you'd be daft to ignore the show.

Outside of the official galleries Vienna is one great show in itself, a city whose eighteenth-century redevelopment was born of a blatant effort to rival and beat Haussman's 'new' Paris. It's hard to judge who won overall. The best I can offer is that Paris, through it's pale stone and open, light boulevards, retained a femininity in its aesthetic whereas the centre of Vienna is indubitably, robustly, stockily, masculine. This led to a well-documented 'action and reaction' sequence in the progress of its architecture, with the beautiful, delicate Art Nouveau blocks which emerged by the Nachtsmarkt in the late nineteenth centrury, in turn succeeded in turn by the clean lines of the  Secessionists, Deco and Modernism after that. This all means that just walking around the city and looking up every so often (or down, as I did at one point to see a small brass tribute inlaid in the pavement, to several residents of the district I was in who were taken off to the camps by the Nazis.) is an education in itself. There are nooks and crannies everywhere that will lure you off your chosen route - just let yourself be lured.

If it's shopping you're after, too, the place is teeming with small, independent retailers offering to reset your avarice levels to 'critical'. Freihaus and Spittelberg are the best to explore on foot; take your time and restrain yourself if you can. My big regret was that there was no time to get to the railway arches along the Gurtel, which is apparently the cosmic centre of Euopean electronica, and packed with live venues, clubs and bars. But there's got to be something to go back for, has there not?

Anyway, I've gone on far too long as usual. No wonder I couldn't get on with Twitter. After this, Vienna Part 3 - The People. May or may not contain Midge Ure.

...And out again

When Brighton's notoriously sticky and sweaty Free Butt finally closed its battered doors after many many years of hosting some of the finest and most frenzied gigs I've ever attended (take a bow, Man or Astroman), I thought live music as I know and love it (small gigs by up-and-coming/down-and-dropping bands attended by people who care about music and haven't had any cocaine and so won't talk inanely and loudly to their mates over the music) was over in this town. And it did tail off a little for a while, until the Green Door Store opened eighteen months ago and revived us all. It's another comforting dive of a venue, located in a disused railway shed round the back of the train station, with a brick floor, peeling paintwork, and a sweatbox of a live music room at the back that has surprisingly good acoustics. No visit to this preening ponce of a town would be complete without a visit (they don't have a 'no hipsters' door policy as such, but they're definitely in a minority here.). It'll make you like the place more.

I went along twice this week, on consecutive nights (my hedonism apparently knows no bounds) to take in shows by two definite survivors from earlier eras, who, had they met (and they may be chums for all I know) would certainly have had some fascinating conversations. On Tuesday night, former Can front man and legendary head Damo Suzuki was in town. Damo is on a never-ending tour, a bit like Bob Dylan but without the ghastly noise and awful songs. Wherever he pitches up, he is joined by a fresh group of local musicians, and with minimal preparation they get together and knock out a new and unique version of his repertoire each time. This means every gig is a completely fresh and original musical experience, and as I've seen a few of these now I can say (with a great deal of love in my heart) that some ensembles have proved more successful than others. Which is, of course, inevitable.

What is undeniable is Damo's enthusiasm and passion for what he does; his tiny frame tense as wire and his face squeezed into a simian grimace of concentration as he pours forth his unintelligible lyrics in what could be English, German, Japanese, or a fusion of all three. I made out a few words, which were 'why can't you' in one song and 'boogie woogie' in another, but quickly forgot about straining to listen and just let it all happen on the stage. He was ably backed by a tight trio of electro-droogs, with very deft use of a theramin and melotron adding to the spaced-out vibe, speeding and slowing as his voice veered between monastic whispers and what often sounded like credible Louis Armstrong impressions (trust me, this was way better than I'm making it sound.). The audience were captivated, as witnessed by the almost total absence of inane chatter during the songs, and Damo appeared to notice us all for more or less the first time as we burst into an explosion of cheers at the end, opening his eyes and beaming in happy surprise. On the way out I noticed several people who'd been at Moon Duo the previous week, which made perfect sense. All of us getting back to prog roots that we never knew we had (and which I'd have scornfully derided in my teens.). Anyway, if Damo's coming to your town, do pitch up and give him your support. If you bring your flugelhorn you might end up getting a gig with him, whether you've ever had a flugelhorn lesson or not.

Things got much more confusing the following night when I turned up for Lene Lovich. Lene was a heroine of mine back in the day; she arrived in my life via the slightly more trendy kids TV programme 'Magpie', which ran on British TV once a week as a rival to the hugely popular but far more priggish BBC front runner 'Blue Peter'. Blue Peter's version of youth culture would have been a feature on the Cardigans of Roger Whittaker; Magpie was much more down and dirty, had presenters who wore jeans and had hair like Brian May, and had its nicotine-stained finger much closer to the youth pulse. Thus there was Lene Lovich, in her massive black lace headdress and layers of rags, swinging her thick knee-length plaits and rolling her wide eyes while making the most amazing vocal noises on 'Lucky Number', her novelty hit of 1978. Sexy but not sexual, strong but not aggressive, she was a great role model who proved capable of so much more than that one hit, duetting superbly with Nina Hagen as well as penning some more fine songs of her own before vanishing from public life to raise her family and run an antique shop in Norfolk.

I was thrilled to discover she was performing again, only I made the mistake of not reading the small print in my excitement, and so found myself seeing Lene as part of an ensemble show themed around Kurt Weill (ok in small doses as far as I'm concerned) and free jazz (a problem area for me.).  Lene arrived looking splendid in her Edwardian bonnet and black lace, and proved that her voice is as strong as ever by belting out a creditable 'Alabama Song' with a male singer whose voice was painfully flat and a good semitone out of tune with hers. She was as lively and charismatic as I remember, still wide-eyed and quite beautiful at 62, and I was ready for more when she left the stage and the free jazz ensemble got going. From the rapturous reception of most of the audience (some, who had been lounging on the floor at the front pretending to be Greenwich Village cats from 1961, merely adjusted their facial expressions) this was clearly a hugely respected and talented group of men, and I could tell that great skill was required to make some of those trumpet noises sound like more than just a duck being drowned in a bath of hot soup, but...it was the ten minute drum solo ( done mainly with beaters and brushes) which segued into an eight minute double-bass solo, after which I just knew that there would be an equivalent length discordant keyboard solo, which finished me off. I had to high-tail it. I'd given them twenty minutes and they were just getting into their stride; I couldn't handle any more, man. I am simply not mature enough to embrace free-form jazz. And this wasn't the first time I'd tried; I just can't do it. And yet, I mused later, I have no problem with stoner prog-noodling of the kind I'd lapped up last week with Moon Duo, the previous night with Damo, and will be lapping up again in a week - in Hamburg, folks! - with the wonderful Wooden Shjips. What interpretations is my brain making when it hears an atonal trumpet solo, and I have to leave the room?

We're strange cats, us humans. Have a good weekend, man. Here's Damo in his heyday to give you some inspiration.

Far Out

There's been a lot of noise around this week, most of it bizarre and most of it high quality. What you can see here is a photo of a man called Robert Curgenven noodling around at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and coaxing a series of atmospheric pops and drones from five decks on which various (presumably related) discs were spinning. He was second on the bill at the 'We Can Elude Control' festival of experimental electronica which ran last weekend, and which is the sort of crowd-dividing venture that often evokes quite violently strong positive or negative reactions in the listener.

As I was completely in the mood for a bit of barmy old postmodernism, I was more than happy to stand there and look serious to what others might have described as the amplified hum of a dozen domestic appliances overlaid with a rhythm track from an electricity transformer station sited on a busy roundabout. Less successful was the woman whose soundscape comprised a 'live broadcast' from a microphone placed at the top of Beachy Head five miles away; the sound of crashing waves and shrieking gulls, whilst possibly a technical marvel to obtain, really just sounded like exactly what we could all see going on outside the window - ie, crashing waves and shrieking gulls. The Sussex coastline just doesn't change that radically in five miles, I'm afraid. The second session in the middle gallery below was far more mellow and hypnotic, with the 'artists' twiddling their bits in front of a largely supine audience lolling among the huge Cerith Wyn Evans SUPERSTRUCTURE light and heat installation. The radiating warmth and mesmerising illumination of the artworks infused the crowd with a kind of collective atrophy, and four big jolly pensioner ladies who had wandered unaware into the De La Warr simply couldn't understand (or bear) what they were seeing or hearing. "They're all just lying there nodding like they're in a bloody trance!" one of them bellowed, heading for the exit with her hands over her ears. I've tried to add a sound file from a section I recorded on my phone but I can't do it, so you'll just have to trust me that she was wrong. Partly.

We had something else on in the evening back in Brighton so had to leave before the high point, which was to be Cosi Fanni Tutti from Throbbing Gristle in a rare live appearance, but my guess is it would have been more of the same, which is to say I haven't a clue what it would have been like. Still, what we saw was great fun if you're in the mood, or the worst excesses of self-indulgent art wankery if you're not. I had a great time (and how nice it was to see old punk war veteran Kirk Brandon among the audience, looking quite meltingly handsome. I was a bit hurt that he didn't recognise me from that time he danced with me at the Zap Club, but I guess it was eleven years ago.). And all for free!

More upbeat but just as bizarre were San Francisco's Moon Duo who entertained me hugely on Tuesday night at Brighton's Green Door Store. Immensely hairy dude Ripley Johnson is Chief Head with the absolutely far-out drone combo Wooden Shjips, and lissom keyboard minx Sanae Yamada is his lady (he's done well, I'm telling you.). Together they grab you and smash your ear against their wall of cosmic sound, all deep fuzz guitar and repetitive driven riffs, with Mr Hairy's sinister vocals buried helplessly a long way down in the mix. She puts on a bit of a show from behind her bank of effects boxes, a bit like she's  the little sister of Stacia from Hawkwind but without the massive distracting knockers (Stacia without the massive distracting knockers, I hear you cry, what would be the point of that?). Anyway, it's a bit like Suicide getting together with Neu! and coming up with a rock operetta about Jeffrey Dahmer. All very dark, all very unsettling, and all making for a fine night's entertainment. The crowd - mostly over 35s but with a pleasant sprinkling of well-pleased twentysomethings - were very happy indeed, if a little tinnitused, by the end.

If you'd like a little taste of the gig, turn all the lights off and turn this up as loud as you can. But I won't be hurt if you hate it. This stuff is not for everyone...

The Great British Bank Holiday

My observation that this damp island has just endured a solid month of almost parodically awful weather will surprise few readers. Those of us born and bred here now have another soggy, pewter-tinged memory to file away under 'Crap Bank Holiday Weekends' with all the others we've endured since childhood. There's something stoical and almost perverse about the British at play on such weekends; on a spin along the country roads you will pass clutches of shivering, kagoul-toting 'Action Families', usually led by a Dad whose secret yearnings to lead a troupe to the North Pole were only thwarted by his wife's greater determination to tame his Scottian spirit, but now they've got kids of their own he's damn well having his moment and forcing them up the muddiest most exposed slope of Mount Caburn in a Force 9 gale. And all over the country communities spend months almost wilfully blind to the oft-repeated climactic lessons, and plan parades and charades and more parades involving the construction of ten-foot paper dragons which melt on contact with the relentless rain, or face paint which the next downpour will coax disturbingly down many a stubbly chin.

So it was in Hastings over the weekend; the annual Jack in the Green jamboree was certainly not going to be halted by a little rain (or even emasculated away into an indoor version.). Despite the glowering rolling clouds heaving their way across the English Channel towards the town. The people of Hastings are made of stern stuff, whatever the Normans would have you believe, and as the visitors (like us) ran back to our cars to grab another layer or pair of socks, the black-faced troupes (nothing to do with minstrels; do NOT ask these folk to sing 'Way Down Upon the Swanee River'; they're smugglers and wreckers (for the day) and general purpose wrong 'uns.) made their increasingly excitable and inebriated way around the steep winding twittens of the (very) Old Town, carousing as though the weather was nothing more than another challenge. You can see a picture of one of them above, on the way to find his troupe. When they all get moving, it's an impressive and highly weird sight.

 I love going to Hastings as it's so determined not to be Brighton; despite its community of artists and its clutch of knowingly-appointed 'vintage' shops (I got a great Fifties blouse)it's not hip or cool or falling over itself to impress you. It's a little isolated, at the end of a long, lonely train line and a grim road across the protected marshlands, and its inaccessibility keeps it trapped within itself, to the evident satisfaction of some but to the economic disadvantage of many more, as its social problems and unemployment continue to demonstrate. We stopped at the new controversial Jerwood Gallery - recently opened to highly vocal opposition from the fishermen whose fleet is moored on the shingle just outside the new, tastefully tiled and sympathetically designed cultural interloper. It's a perfect symbol of the opposing forces tussling over the future of this historical, troubled little town; those who see its survival as dependent on receiving a good shot of the 'St Ives Effect', and those who resent or are suspicious of the enforced gentrification and further social division that may result. Or those who just hate the sort of Shoreditch Ponces that tend to go to galleries. Either way, the Jerwood is really quite a subtle, gentle structure that doesn't seem to trumpet its bourgeois presence and for my money looks a damn sight better than the coach park it replaced. Go along and see for yourself, if you're on the South Coast, and then stuff your face with the best fish and chips from any of the traditional family restaurants across the road. And buy a pint of brown shrimps from the fishmongers - they'll have been caught the same morning. Just watch out for the troupes of shouting blackfaced revellers in the pubs - those lads are tough.

 If time and rain allow, you could also do worse than head from the town centre about a mile West along the coast, to Bulverhythe where if you're very VERY lucky, you can get a look at the wreck of The Amsterdam, which sank into the mud in 1749 while packed with bullion and plague-raddled sailors and has been there ever since. When tides are very low, the poor old ship pokes through like a pleading skeleton, and the form of the vessel is eerily visible until the tide rolls in and claims it once again. It's an amazing, haunting sight and best of all, hardly anyone knows it's there. Bear in mind also, as you squelch across the flat sucking ground on your way out to the dead ship, that the strange rotted-looking substance you keep coming across that looks like masses and masses of soaked and buried wood, is in fact just that. You're standing on a 4,000 year old forest that the sea took back long before there were Normans or Germans or anything else threatening the South Coast, and huge decomposing trunks and logs are trapped down there along with the Amsterdam and its doomed sailors (who apparently met their end at the hands of the ancestors of the face-painted Hastings revellers, always on the lookout for a wreck full of silver and viewing the crew in the same way as the Nostromo gang were classified in 'Alien'.).

On reflection, it really was a rather fine Bank Holiday Weekend.

Spotted

Here are a few things I've done recently that you might also like to try, and one that you won't be able to, so hard cheese.

If you find yourself in London you might like to idle a few hours away on the South Bank. Start with David Shrigley's "Brain Activity" exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which runs for another couple of weeks. This collection of oddball, spiky line-drawings ("killed for wearing shorts!" is the caption under a scrawling of one stick figure decapitating another), bizarre looped animations (see  how long you can last in the 'Headless Drummer' room), and unsettling installations ("I'm dead", reads the sign held aloft by a stuffed Jack Russell pup) all add up to a playful, irreverent, silly and sometimes savage exhibition, and one of a handful I've been to punctuated by regular outbursts of spontaneous, helpless laughter as one or other of Shrigley's sly little observations strikes a particular chord with one or other of its visitors. I've never met David Shrigley but I imagine everyone has a mate a little bit like him; the one you're really fond of but are never quite sure about inviting to a party, because "he doesn't half come out with some weird stuff sometimes". Being surrounded by so many other attendees who were giggling like naughty kids at his questionable taste and twisted wit was a huge tonic, and I came out smiling like a fool.

I also had a slightly half-hearted whizz around the accompanying exhibition, Jeremy Deller's Joy in People, but found it harder to engage with. Deller's doesn't draw or sculpt, so if multimedia installations are your particular kick there may be much to detain you here, but personally I found the reconstruction of his teenage bedroom and the mockup of a local greasy spoon cafe (where smart London gallery-goers could actually sit, and actually drink a mug of actual tea) a bit trite. A man of his time (the 80s and 90s), he's  famous for having staged a reconstruction of the Battle of Orgreave, where striking miners clashed violently with the police (deployed by the government of the day* in a particularly quasi-militaristic fashion.). The film of the reconstruction was included as part of the exhibition, and what I hadn't realised about it was that some of the original Orgreave strikers and coppers took part, effectively 'playing' their younger selves. Their inclusion, voluntary though it was, made me quite uneasy as it added a troublingly voyeuristic element to the film - you couldn't help but wonder if taking part in a re-enactment would resurrect all the old memories, and re-ignite long-suppressed rage and resentment. Faced with a sighting of the 'old enemy', would they forget this was a mere re-eneactment and actually start laying into one another again like it was 1984, and all while Deller's cameras were running? It seemed opportunistic and exploitative, and I didn't want to be part of that so I headed off midway through the film. Call me a philistine if you like, I don't care.

I headed from there straight along to Tate Modern for the main act, Yayoi Kusama's exhibition. There is a lot to see here, as Kusama is now in her eighties and has been a prolific, driven artist since she was a child. It would be fair to say she's packed a lot in, even as a woman who has been living voluntarily in a psychiatric clinic for over twenty years. Born into a wealthy bourgeois Japanese family, she was expected to conform to the cultural stereotype, and put away her paints to concentrate on acquiring and pleasing a husband. Of course she did no such thing and ran away to New York, where she and the emerging avant-guarde 60s counterculture met one another head-on. Always psychologically fragile, her vast obsessively-worked 'Infinity Net' canvasses seem like some kind of visual attempt to impose order and self-soothe while she effectively emptied the contents of her head (fear/obsession with phalluses (her father was a serial shagger) visual/emotional disorientation, lysergic distortion of the physical) into her work. Some of her installations - a rowing boat packed with willies, a room bristling with more willies, a repeating loop of a filmed 60s orgy featuring, well, willies being tenderly daubed with paint by flower children) may grate after a while, but others are incredibly beautiful, disquieting, and striking. I could have stayed forever in the Infinity Room with its labyrinth of mirrors and shifting lights, although I could also see that for someone in a more fragile state (like Kusama herself), the visual distortions and disorientation could feel far more menacing. This is definitely a woman who has lived for her art, at some great personal cost. Do get down to Tate Modern if you can, and see for yourself.

So those are the things I've done that you could perhaps do too. I've also been to see Killing Joke again, and sadly their short tour is finished now so you won't be able to. However all is not lost as they seem to be around again here and there later in the summer - if you like a bit of reliable, perfectly delivered noise from four old geezers who've been dishing it out expertly for three decades, they won't let you down. I'm pleased to say it was the first gig for years I've attended where I've gone 'down the front'. It was just too good to stay at the back. My only slight sadness was the surprising omission of top anthem 'Follow the Leaders' from what was otherwise a blistering set - and it set me worrying that Big Paul, one of the best rock drummers EVER, might now struggle with the relentless demands of that particular song. Anyway, I wanted to give them an honourable mention, as I realised that the first time I saw them was in 1981, which really was over three decades ago. I wonder if I'm ever going to develop a taste for subtlety now?

*Thatcher




©KolleyKibber 2012

Let's start with a gig...

New blog, same schtick. I get to yammer on about what I've been doing, and you get to shrug indifferently. And let's see if this new identity has any discernible effect on what or how I write (maybe I'll come over all Ernest Hemingway and feel an overwhelming urge to write about wrestling bulls, or even all Catherine Cookson in which case an overwhelming urge to write about forbidden tubercular love up against a cotton loom*. We'll see.).

So first things first; Laibach at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall on Saturday night. What could be more perfect for this space than the industrial avant-garde outpourings of this intense bunch of Slovenian noise terrorists? I was terribly excited, despite my relatively limited knowledge of Laibach's back catalogue. Their unique cover of Sympathy for the Devil (they thoughtfully made eight versions, all  of which will upset your ears) played relentlessly at a party I once attended, caused me some disquiet, as did their playful German-language take on Queen's One Vision ('Gebert einer Nation', which takes on some pointedly sinister undertones when transformed into a bombastic marching tune.). They've been rumbling away sepulchrally about the state of Europe for thirty-odd years now, seemingly as unimpressed by its conversion to capitalist democracy as by its previous Warsaw pact monotony. The Turbine Hall - a former industrial space become bourgeois pleasure temple - could not have been a more appropriately symbolic location for Laibach to express their disdain for modern life.

The gig seemed to have begun early with our bonus spotting of basso-profundo voiced vocalist Milan Fras, striding manfully across the Millennium Bridge towards the venue and looking for all the world like the advance party for a conquering army with his leather coat flapping in the cold spring breeze. Assorted middle-aged goths and nu-metalers nudged one another and made a respectful path for him as he marched, all but saluting. So far, so good.

However, Tate Modern hasn't done many of these sorts of gigs - as far as I know this may even have been the very first - and on the night, the organisational skills required to ensure that everyone ended up inside the building at the right time were not in evidence. A massive queue of disgruntled, pierced and heavily costumed punters built up, snaking round the corridors to the Turbine Hall (good to spot Daniel Miller among them, though. Daniel Miller!!), and there it (we) remained for nearly an hour while terrified-looking gallery staff checked wristbands and squeaked among themselves.

The gig began half an hour late, and as the first thirty minutes comprised Laibach noodling quietly over a backwards-projection of a 1960s documentary on the history of Yugoslavia (not uninteresting, but the point that anyone born in the Balkans during the first half of the Twentieth Century is likely to have had a terrible life, was quickly made and then remade, and remade). The audience became subdued and withdrawn, and it wasn't until a good 40 minutes into the gig that the pace began to pick up a bit and Fras started to roar rather than grumble. From my vantage point by the mixing desk the whole thing felt terribly restrained, and I kept feeling the urge to shout "Onetwothreefour!"in a Ramones-stylee, just to get them to let rip a bit. Of course, by the time they began to do that, it was time to sprint back to London Bridge station to get the last train home. I felt very short-changed and very disgruntled.

There's a wafer-thin chance that anyone might read this who was able to stay for the whole thing, but should a miracle happen and such a reader pass by, please let me know what the second half of the gig was like. I'm pretty sure I missed out on all the excitement, but I'm not too proud to grab a little bit vicariously. Grrr.

*I have no experience whatsoever of either