Saturday 22 January 2011

Introducing... Lady North

They’ve only just started pummelling local punters with their pneumatic math-rock, but in 2011 Lady North’s noggin-crunching sonics will stretch way beyond the central belt. It’s been too long since an Auld Reekie outfit has crafted such a ferocious entanglement of guitar, bass and drum, but the wait, which has dragged on through myriad drab alt-folk combos, has been worth it.

Think Don Caballero gyrating against Foals’ triangular, floor-filling rhythms like a hyper-sexed teenager and you’re only half way there. It’s more than that. Much, much more.

So far, a trickling of online cuts has only hinted at the band’s muscle. But live, well, Lady North is a seething, stomach acid-frothing ogre of sound that rams its fist into your face again, and again, and again.

Riding on the kind of apoplectic percussion that signatures Battles’ more barbarian efforts, swathes of matadorial guitar expulse with such brutal urgency it induces lashings of cold, stinking sweat: part in fear, part in utter exhilaration. Believe me, no matter who you are, you need this band in 2011.

Photo: Su Anderson

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