Thing of the Day 

Cutthroat Convention, Doubledge Scissor snips, Hag's highflying Eagle-metal and the notions of just doing it yourself...  

March 18th 2011

HAG are playing a Doubledge Scissor night with CUTTHROAT CONVENTION any day now, well, not any day, the particular day in question is this Saturday March 19th. You can find out lots more over on the Doubledge Blog where Scissor squad proclaim: “and next up we have… DOUBLEDGESCISSOR NIGHT… 19TH MARCH…. FEAL REAL/ HAG/ CUTTHROAT CONVENTION + DATA ERRORS!!!

   The doubledgescissor machine rolls back into town… snipping… cutting and making things seem a little bit different than they was just before it arrived…. picking up speed with every slice… snip snip… snip... and double snip...”
More about the event, the snips and how the cuts are falling, over on the Doubledgescissor blog or the Doubledgescissor Facebook page

The gig happens at the Urban Bar, 176 Whitechapel Road, London E1 (just by Whitechapel tube station). You can expect four rather challengingly tasty leftfield bands of a noisy persuasion, you can also expect art projected on walls from London based artist Steven Rawlings

For those not in the area or unable to take in the gig, or for those who haven’t checked out some of the music made by the bands on the bill yet, the Doubledge Scissors house band, CUTTHROAT CONVENTION, have a seven track album that you can go and download for free, and if you haven’t checked out that HAG album yet, then here’s a reminder of what we said about it on the old Organ pages back in April last year

HAG – Hag (Noisestar) -  The debut six track album from “London based Anglo-Hungarian-Swedish Eagle-Metal outfit Hag...” Eagle-Metal is their term of choice, or at least that’s what it says on the press release, Eagle-Metal will do us fine, whatever the flip it means, sounds bout right. We like Hag, we’ve played them at you on the radio, we should have reviewed this album already, it came out at the start of April. We’re late with the words and Hag are a band who more than deserve our words. Six raw tracks, raw focused tightly-strung blues, acid flavoured stabs of heavy primal rock’n roll fuelled by a love of heavy blues and based around some kind of grinding edgy experimental Melvins, High Of Fire resonation...  Primordial noise that never actually gets too noisy to live with, I mean, yes, heavy as hell, raw, blistering, no easy listening lounge music here, but perfectly fine to have it rumbling loudly on repeat play all day as they get on with their freight-train rolling cutting-edge blues flavoured heavy rock and all their finely-tuned noise. Face biting tick tack toe and nailed just right, seriously good  - www.myspace.com/hagnoise or www.noisestar.co.uk

The CUTTHROAT COVENTION album Denizens Of The Bath House (out on the band’s own label Doubledge Scissor) conveys the always instantly recognisable London outfit as they sounded a couple of years ago. We’re waiting for the fruits of a new album recording session right now, meanwhile the 2009 Denizens seven track album is available to download for free from the band’s Bandcamp site. Denizens Of The Bath House is the band’s first full album, the first album from the string driven thing, that alongside a number of very DIY singles and EPs, has helped established a sound, a reputation and a cult London town following. That reputation has also been built from the events, the DIY gigs that they regularly put on rather than sitting back moaning that they can't get gigs like most bands do, there’s the rather forthright blog, and the scissor-flavoured street art that they may know something about. 
   There’s the gigs they play for other people in strange places, there’s the DIY ethos, the cakes and lots more helping to establish that growing Cutthroat reputation. They get themselves involved in lots of stuff, but the sound is the most important thing  - that sound is rather unique and the scissor way is always a slightly different way.  They do have a rather distinctive feel to their music, and at times, flashes of inspired brilliance. 
    Cutthroat Convention sound like they’re soundtracking some weirdly obscure 70’s arthouse horror film, all those slasher stabs and cuts, those menacing violins, booming bass lines, eastern flavours. Quite a different cocktail of sound driving their intense brew of progressive artrock and their moody Sabbath tendencies that poke at the notion of Radiohead gone all dirty-edged punk rock. Certainly some of those Radiohead textures and moods in the cocktail, more of a menace though, like some triad gang you really don’t want to know too much about. 
   Those violin lines sound a little like Kayo Dot at times, those Eastern modal things that Kayo Dot use, maybe a touch of the darker side of Extra Life musical drama as well? That violin is rather brilliant actually, an almost macabre style that gives them a whole different pallette.Those exotic, ominous violin stabs give them a different atmosphere, freeing up the more conventional instruments and players (in terms of rock music) to go to slightly different places, places other bands don’t really think of going to. 

There aren’t many rock bands around right now who really can claim to sound different, but Cutthroat Convention can … They say they don't use names, they don't want to be individuals within the thing that is Cutthroat Convention.   Cutthroat are working on a new album right now (while they busy themselves putting on gigs, running a DIY label and generally walking it rather than just talking it). Let’s hope they nail the production just a little more this time and really get over what they can do live. While we wait for the new album, catch up with who they are and what they sound like via these older recording on their Bandcamp site - cutthroatconvention.bandcamp.com