EKO: Through The Glass Ceiling | Roundhouse
EKO: Through The Glass Ceiling
Sat 18 Feb
EKO will host the closing day of Roundhouse Rising 2012, with a focus on women in music, including live music from The History of Apple Pie, Drop Out Venus, Chapter 24 and Skinny Girl Diet. Expect a workshop on music production with Hannah Holland (co-founder of Batty Bass), a podcast masterclass with BBC Radio 1 producer Amy Redmond, and a panel hosted by Wears the Trousers magazine.
A cloud-tangled view of backyard ‘90s America and a Summer afternoon held in amber, your senses floating with guitar haze over spools of VHS tape and heartbreak soundtracked by lawn-sprinklers. It’s a daydream of private longing and still, suburban expanse, but its dimensions are an illusion and the music that inspired it was crafted in a basement flat in Whitechapel, London. The room, one that Stephanie and Jerome have been sharing a long time before starting the band, is itself an escapist warp: cult flotsam of two decades, shelves of TV series, Steph’s cross-stitched Nintendo characters and aging games consoles. At its centre is the laptop and chain of effects pedals that birthed the first History Of Apple Pie demos.
Drop Out Venus are three junked and jazzed kids. Playing red vein pop dread tonight, waltz tomorrow.
Chapter 24 are influenced by late 70s punk, the Riot Grrrl movement and 60s psychedelia; their enthusiasm for playing live shows has seen them open for Times New Viking, Japandroids and Thee Oh Sees.
There’s not so much a buzz about Skinny Girl Diet as a low rumble, building up to a growl when they plug in and play. A squall of feedback announces their presence and Skinny Girl Diet are all serene smiles: the LOL before the storm. Beyond the media cliché, Riot Grrrl, like punk before it, was never a formula: it blew the doors wide open to shout that anything was possible. Likewise, Skinny Girl Diet are anything but what you expect. Their sound is dark and primal, but without an ounce of gothic pretence; it’s a pure sweet menace. Music this of-itself, this sure of itself, creates its own world whose parameters pull you in alongside, powerless to resist. Skinny Girl Diet are, but are not just, a grunge trio; they are, but aren’t just, a shot in the arm for UK Riot Grrrl; they’re not just anything. They are an ocean of possibility. Hear them raw.
Tickets: £6 - no booking fees
Doors: 7.30pm
Wears The Trousers panel & tickets - here
