Live Music Review //
Conor Perreault
Ambigere
Nursing Death
FiFac
June 25th, 2023
at Never Ending Books, New Haven CT
Additional photos can be found here :::
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1273415910055294&type=3
We found ourselves back at where we started the weekend: Never Ending Books. Originally, this show only had the two touring artists- Ambigere and Nursing Death- listed but the additions of FiFac and Conor Perreault made it even more of a priority for us to see. This show also had us going from one side of music to another, as this was perhaps our harshest show of the weekend, foreshadowed by Compactor the night before.
This Sunday was probably the hottest it had been in a while, so when the show opened with FiFac I was dripping in sweat. As I look back on it now, for all of the times I've seen FiFac perform (and not just this weekend) I want to say that this was the first time I've seen him solo. This, combined with the electronic music being played, made for quite the loud FiFac set as I'm used to it being more chill.
Granted, as the show would go on, the music would get louder but I've become used to hearing FiFac as this electronic/experimental/improv type of musician and while those elements were all here it was definitely louder than anything I've heard FiFac do before. This was also a good way to open this show as someone walking by might have heard it and wanted to stop in for more.
That feeling all changed though as soon as Nursing Death started playing. Nothing about the music of Nursing Death is going to bring in people from the outside. If anything, it might cause people from the inside to go outside. And that is one of the reasons why I really love it. It's harsh noise. It's loud. It's in your face. It's unrelenting. The sound never really gave you a break to feel like it was going to be anything else. Every time it felt like it might another distorted blast came through.
There is an old saying about always leaving them wanting more and as this set was just over ten minutes it definitely did that. But this also made it feel punk rock, like just getting up doing your thing and then leaving before the cops came. This wasn't a marathon, it was a sprint and somehow that made it just feel all the more violent. I also know about the same amount as I did before of how harsh noise is created with listening to it on cassette versus seeing it live because the tricks of the trade weren't revealed here.
Ambigere took to the stage next and this was a harsh noise set as well except there were different sounds creating that noise and also audio clips throughout. It's funny because you can have this idea of what makes harsh noise but then hear two different artists back to back and realize that there are different ways for it to come out. Ambigere stayed mostly behind a giant "FUCK" for this set as well, not giving away any secrets.
This felt more like there were audio clips in the beginning and at the end, with the noise in between, but I think most everyone who experienced this set is going to remember it for the audio clips at the end which discussed the greatness of soup. I feel like soup gets a bad rap because people only tend to eat it when they're sick or it's cold outside but we should all eat soup more because there are so many different types.
The show ended with Conor Perreault who created weird noise that was borderline harsh at times but overall just felt hypnotic. I will confess that this music put me into this trance and so at one moment I was switching to go from video into photo mode and this loud burst of distortion just came through and gave me a jump scare. If someone behind me was recording, they would've seen me fly back at least two feet.
But the way that the music was able to lure me in to begin with is what really matters and how this music sounded. To feel that level of comfort to be able to get that type of reaction on a jump scare really speaks volumes because everyone (especially me) should've been on their toes when we had just experienced harsh noise before this. This just goes to further prove the unpredictable nature of music.
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