Review: Last Hyena, Crofters Rights

This was looking like my last gig of the year, most certainly the last before Christmas, I then hide away for the best part of the week and trudge my way through countless tins of Celebrations and attempt to recover from the sensory overload that saw a triple threat of bands ruin my eardrums. Trust me, in the best way possible. Local promoters POLYGAZE ensured that the crowd would leave wanting more.

Tahini Dream was midway through his set as I arrived, a one man show which consisted of intense looping, a lot of shift pitching and swirling effects, all accumulating to make for an atmospheric wall of sound. Pink lights oozed onto the stage, I imagined Tahini Dream’s music would work well in an environment such as The Crypt, swirling synths reverbing from the arches and exposed brickwork.

Sin Amor were the penultimate band for the evening, their sound was misty and moody, woozy electronica which had airs of Suzanne Kraft and Bristol’s own Harvey Causon. Their intricate melodies and chord progressions were a jazzy and had a commercial twist. I couldn’t help but feel that the electronic drum pads were a little lost in the mix, Sin Amor are on my radar and I look forward to their future endeavours.

“Testing, one, two, we are a band with no vocals” were the first words drummer Rory uttered into the mic. Headlining the night was post-math-rock outfit Last Hyena and I can guarantee you this won’t be the last time I’ll be catching them live. Their stage set-up was unlike anything I’d seen before, guitarist Josh and bassist Max had set their pedalboards up so that they were facing one another. It looked as though they were about to have a hefty standoff. The importance of this was twofold; due to the nature of their music, things such as gestures, eye contact and generally feeding off one another’s energy really shone through – it also looked aesthetically cool to have a symmetrical stage set-up. At several points throughout the night, Max and Josh were mirroring one another whilst Rory was in the middle, watching all the carnage unfold.

Throughout the night Last Hyena laid the foundations, building atmospherically dense songs with metallic guitar flourishes and inherently groovy bass lines; they then completely obliterated all preconceptions I had. Crashing, stopping and starting, all which had me laughing at how ridiculous this all was.

As it was the hyenas’ last show of the year, they celebrated by throwing out gifts into the crowd, “this is a plus 18 event so if anyone is bad at catching then you must’ve been shit at P.E” Rory announced to which we all laughed, he compèred the evening and added anecdotal musings that were delivered dryly.

Their animated set was exhausting to witness, the highlight being ‘Yeah You’ which involved some audience participation. Everyone screamed “yeah you!”, in response the trio hurtled into a disgusting time signature and almost deafened me. Many punters went home with gifts the band had thrown to them – granted if you were any good at  P.E to catch any of them.Others meanwhile, went home stunned and in a daze from Last Hyenas enigmatic set.

All images from Alex O’Dowd