It took until the fourth song of their set for Suuns to take off. Lurching into “PVC”, the Montréal quartet gelled. Monolithic drums, pounding, relentless bass guitar and slabs of sheet-metal guitar rolled off the stage. Harnessing the power of heavy metal, they’d achieved escape velocity. More powerful than on album, the unassuming-looking Suuns made a compelling case for their stripped-down, post-Krautrock rock.
Before that, the stage belonged to Gyratory System, the vehicle of Andrew Blick. Recent instrumental album New Harmony was a hypnotic marriage of bloopy early acid house and motorik – the handle Gyratory System nods towards Kraftwerk's “Autobahn” and the album title’s harmony tacitly acknowledges Krautrock legends Harmonia – with detours into free jazz textures, thanks to reeds played by Blick’s father Robin.
Live though, Gyratory System were jazzier and way more exotic than New Harmony. Blick senior played a soprano saxophone while Blick junior (pictured right) played trumpet, sometimes through a wah-wah pedal. Bass guitar and keyboards were handled by James Weaver. The clash between the sax and trumpet evoked both Sketches of Spain and Africa Brass. The Blicks layered this exotica over the electronic bed. The electro pulsed and the fusion brought to mind nothing else going on right now. Gyratory System’s acid-house jazz – not acid jazz – wasn’t best at home in a south-London railway arch, but it was compelling.
Jazz also lurks in the Suuns – pronounced soons. Max Henry (bass/keyboards), Liam O'Neill (drums) and Ben Shemie (vocals/guitar) met while studying jazz. The band were formed by Shemie and Joe Yarmush (guitar/bass) in 2006. Originally known as Zeroes, they changed their name after becoming aware of the long-running California punk band of the same name. Album title Zeroes QC (the QC from Quebec) pays tribute to that old name.
But Suuns aren’t a jazz band, or even a fusion outfit. They’ve got the chops, but they’re not Return to Forever or the Mahuvishnu Orchestra. No 10-minute solos either. Debut album Zeroes QC showcases a music that’s more about rigorously sticking to a rhythm and defining texture than musical acrobatics. The band have acknowledged that producer Jace Lasek, of fellow Montréal band the Besnard Lakes, had a hand in shaping their sound at his Breakglass Studio, but seen live it’s obvious they’re a unit fully in charge of their destiny and certainly not in the shadow of fellow Montréal band Arcade Fire.
A touchstone is “Mother Sky” by Can, but Suuns play in a rigid, drilled fashion that’s the inverse to Can’s snappiness. It didn’t start convincingly, with the rotating synth arpeggios of “Arena” evoking Vangelis. Was this going to be the prog-rock Section 25? Thankfully, during the third song - a new one, possibly called “Sky” - it came together. Once they found themselves, Suuns revealed their fondness for sludge metal in a take of album cut “Gaze” that was driven by O'Neill’s incredibly powerful drumming. At times, he was a match for Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley. The set closed with a locked-tight, intense take of “Sweet Nothing” where the Gang of Four-type guitar on the album was replaced by a terrific wall of scree. It wasn’t all so convincing, the more fractured moments felt formless when compared to such power.
Last night wasn’t a jazz concert, but that’s the flavour it was coloured with. Gyratory System unexpectedly reset a Sixties style while the members of Suuns used their jazz-derived musicianship to focus on creating power. Both bands were reconstructing music.
Watch the video for Suuns' "Up Past the Nursery"
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