So, I stroll into the Arts Centre and what do I see? Straddling the stage is The Captain, the subject of one of my earlier reviews! However, on this occasion he is part of a larger outfit called Fun! Yeah!, complete with a keyboardist, bassist and a drummer who isn’t made out of wires. They personify their name on stage - and the good thing is people are having fun watching them have fun, which cements a feelgood atmosphere for the evening. Fun! Yeah! Fun! Yeah!’s songs are primarily instrumental and the occasional vocals are more of a rhythmic tool than anything else, with the guitarist and drummer swapping screamadelic stabs at their microphones. The whole set sustains this stabbing theme, as the guitars and drums lead a stop-start presentation of alternative pop songs, while the keyboardist plays melodies and additions to bring a smile to your face. Piney Gir Next up is Piney Gir, who apologises because her band has failed to turn up, but this only adds to her school girl-like innocence. It wasn't a good night for Piney, as the contact mic falls off her accordion and she has trouble working her new keyboard. To an outsider this may seem like a doomed set, but the exposed bare bones of the songs she played were perfectly formed. It had the aurora of an acoustic set by your favourite band, where you're delighted to find the stripped down versions display the genius of the produced songs. Howlback Hum While all this was going on, different incarnations of Howlback Hum were playing in the bar, which I am still wondering about – are they a label, an organisation, a collective, or a band?  | | Howlback Hum's acoustic offering |
Either way, their acoustic work in the bar is a complimentary dish to the amplified event in the main hall. Kaito If you have a buried fear that you will never see Le Tigre live, go to see Kaito. Kaito have listened to Le Tigre, maybe some Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the guitarist has lived in the dreams of Sonic Youth. This is their sound. The outcome is one of a Riot Grrl-induced punk that isn't to my taste, but I can see how others would like it. The powerful rhythm of the guitars and drums is held together by the bass while singer Niki Colk shouts Huggy Bear-esque vocals over the music. The guitarist creates some interesting sounds with his pedal combinations and configurations, but these can only last for so many bars per song. By the end of their set, I feel exhausted by the way they milk a few ideas into whole tracks. Ex-Models I’m not sure how to approach Ex-Models in terms of writing. In my mind, I had an image of a band sounding something like Distophia, or local band Giant Robots And The City Of Tokyo. Something Pavement-esque, with a melody buried beneath static and distortion. How wrong I was. But this wasn’t disappointing. The two guitarists started with a kind of dual solo, playing off each other's subtle chord changes. I remember thinking that it would be great if they kept doing this, but I was waiting for them to launch into some kind of big chorus-verse-chorus. And then they didn’t. And it carried on and on and on. It soon became apparent that Ex-Models were closer to Lightning Bolt or Whitehouse than Pavement or Urusei Yatsura and the crowd reacted in a polarising way. Half of them walked off, while half tried to move as close to the stage as possible. The realm of noise music has a strong resemblance to the world of free jazz: it can either be enthralling or seem pretentiously self-absorbed. Ex-Models were the former. One looking like an ex-model, one looking like an ex-convict, the duo pulsed and stormed through a set of intense aural saturation before unleashing their energy on a battered snare drum and cymbal. With driving, throbbing rhythms backing layers of delay loops and feedback climaxing at the point of the human ear's frequency endurance, the remaining crowd was either gazing on in amazement, or entranced, with closed eyes and convoluting limbs. This was one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a long time. I will soon be living in Norwich and, if this kind of event can happen more often, I will have a blissful time. Fun! Yeah!, Piney Gir, Kaito and Ex-Models played at the Wombat Wombat night at Norwich Arts Centre on Friday 16 September 2005. | 
