Picture three guitarists, one also the vocalist and one playing the kind of 8-string more commonly associated with the downtuned technical metal of Meshuggah. Add in a bassist, a drummer, and a Brian-Eno type hunched over assorted electronic gizmos for those “overflowing washing machine” moments. The People Assembly are not struggling to fill the stage.
This ensemble, bafflingly dressed for the most part in sensible black trousers and dad-knitwear present a sculpted wall of noise, leaning towards slab-like math rock in places but with sinuous roots of melody coming from all sorts of different directions. At any one time the gizmo-ist, most of the guitarists and even the bassist were all throwing out melodic lines, with the drummer knitting them together somewhere between the rhythmic monotony of Can, the sloshing cymbals of Hawkwind and the lacy breakbeat details of Slipknot.
Their overwhelming sense of rhythm presented itself provocatively onstage too, with the five standing members often stiffly and metronomically scissoring up and down at the waist as if they were pumping bellows. This did contrast with a tendency to crash into each other when things leered towards the chaotic; this seemed all too familiar at times and almost like it was on cue (“passionate guitar attack? Quick, I’d better lose control of what I am doing and fall over!”).
Amongst that much aural activity it was hard to twig what the singer was singing about and though he did seem like a passionate fellow towards the end of each song nothing especially stood out lyrically.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t an enjoyable experience; the band gave us their all for over an hour and there were probably eight or nine long-form songs, each one presenting its own sonic and rhythmic assault and the crowd really did cry for more at the end as the players were trying to pack away (you can hear it for yourself; the promoters, Strummer Room Records, put most sets on Mixcloud).
This level of experimentation and creative bravado mixed with syncopated togetherness was a real treat for a small town on a Friday night. 30 years ago this was the sort of thing I read about happening at the Knitting Factory in NYC or the kind of places in Berlin where you needed to know the password to get in, and here it was in the beer garden of the easiest-going bar in North Oxfordshire. Assemble, people for The People Assembly!
