Mandy, Indiana – BUFFEE – Leeds Brudenell – Friday 27th March
The brilliant Mandy, Indiana have recently released their second brilliant album Urgh and are currently touring across the UK, after a night at the 6 Music festival they headed to Leeds supported by the excellent BUFFEE. Fighting Boredom were in attendance, read what we thought below.
Fighting Boredom have been stuck on the M69 for forty five minutes, we have averaged fifteen miles an hour since leaving Coventry as we head onto the M1. This is not the plan. The plan is to listen to ear blistering techno and guitars as we speed down the motorways to Leeds, arriving well before rush hour and enough time for a nap. That’s not what happened. We got there as the satnav decided to send us back in circles and how the Photographer swore. But we did miss all but the very start of rush hour and the hotel was nicer than the Catholic retreat we stayed in last time. We complimented the check in lads afro and asked him where the pub was as we headed out into the home of Goth, sunny Leeds.
The Brudenell is one of the Photographer’s favourite venues and mine too now. The drinks are reasonable and the company is friendly even if the door staff seem not to know how to get onto the electronic guest list…
First performer on is BUFFEE, young and looking shy as she stands at her table of electronics. She starts with odd sounds and a weird messed with vocal then massive dub bass and beats slam in and this grabs me by the back of the neck and shakes me. It’s seriously laid back, cool and sensuous music. It reminds me a little of Gazelle Twin in that she’s doing exactly what she wants and just playing it to us to take it as we will. She’s moving to the beat, hair flying around her face as the bass makes the foundations shake.
The synths layer up and she sings in the weirdly cute voice and drones and hums pulse underneath. A bass drum kicks underneath the music as she sings, giving everything to the performance. The bass throbs and dissolves into noise, massive and visceral .
Her vocal is wonderful, just off centre between cute and raspy, but very strong. The sound goes on, weirdness noise and more gigantic bass.
She says she’s going to do a cover of a Britney Spears song, I don’t recognise it but that’s probably the point. She goes into more strangeness, hard bass and drums and distorted hard angry vocals. It sounds like a full industrial band playing now, brilliantly it’s just her, fantastic. It feels frantic and furious. Then it fades to weird noise, she thanks us and it’s over. I admit, I went on Bandcamp when I got home and bought what I could, that’s not the last time we will see BUFFEE.
The place is full, I knew it was sold out, and the feeling in here is good. They appear on stage and there’s a weird humming, vibrating sound. Synths fall down and rise up as the drummer kicks out beats, loud and nasty. The vocalist sings in French over it all. It’s a huge swirling noise and the vocals are holding it all together, she sings with an almost operatic lilt as the music gets even stronger. The beats even out and the vocalist dances to the drums. Synths pile in again but the whole feeling is of teetering on the edge, almost falling away almost on solid ground, nothing is easy about this sound, except dancing, it’s music for dancing. Sharp guitar stabs prod through the noise and you realise that the guitar doesn’t sound like a guitar, it sounds like a weapon, harder, faster and stronger. The drummer, percussionist, keyboardist weird noise maker and the guitarist are just the start here, they aren’t what you focus on at all, they are making the whole place shake and shiver but the eye is drawn to the singer who tells us between songs that this is far better than the 6 Music show because she wasn’t allowed to swear, even in French! She dances, moves, head bangs, smiles, laughs and then at the same time creates a vocal that is infectious, incredibly emotional and utterly perfect for the music behind it.
It gets quiet, then almost immediately, bloody loud. The percussion is gentle over synths and then suddenly we are in a psychedelic swirling electronic beat down sea of madness. By now most of the crowd are dancing, not just moving a little bit, proper, fling yourself around dancing.
They play a new song and alongside saying ‘Free Palestine’ she also states ‘Remember, a dead rapist doesn’t rape anymore.’ A blast of bass fuzz and a simple beat. A strong vocal and a menacing encroaching sound make this track bloody great. A slow electronic beat and then drums with just the required amount of noise comes next, a faster vocal and a massive bass sound, the singer starts off bent double then she’s up and dancing around the stage. The beats skitter and skip while the noise increases again, it’s a messy groove but we love it. It descends into hardcore electronic punk noise as she carries on singing, it falls down into skipping beats and love, this is a complete headrush. Messy and Brilliant.
Another new song and she states ‘Free Palestine and Fuck Kier Starmer, really, Fuck Kier Starmer!’ Over and over, the vocal; starts and it’s weird, messed up over a heartbeat drum. Then everything moves to attack, all the sound is an assault the fuzz builds and it’s a hard angry groove, the guitar slams in with slabs of sound and the singer sits at the back sipping water. Over and over and over it hits.
The drummer channels John Bonham’s Rock’n’Roll beat, a fuzz heavy guitar smashes in as the singer dances, lost in it all. She’s not the only one, the crowd is moving up and down to the sound, it’s glorious. There’s a low fuzzed out bass drone, a skipping hi hat and the singer is right in the thick of the audience, microphone in hand surrounded by dancing figures.
The sound is huge ith a massive vocal coming through, what it is though is anyone’s guess. It kicks in like Metal, hits you like the best Punk but it moves your hips like the very best electronic music, it’s beyond me, I can’t read my notes because I was dancing while trying to write. It’s a kind of pure filtered dance post punk groove and if you’re not happy with that, you describe it!
The crowd sit down, all around the singer, she gestures and they all crouch, all the way to the edge. All moving to the music still, then up again, smiling, laughing and dancing, it’s so life affirming, a brilliant feeling. They play more fantastic grooves and then wave goodbye and they are gone. No one moves. The whole club shouts for one more song over and over. Eventually the singer appears to elation in the crowd and says that they’re trying to persuade Simon to play one more, He appears to another huge cheer. They look genuinely surprised as she explains that this really is the best night of the tour so far. She says they only have one more song they could play, someone says ‘Make it a long one’ and she replies, ‘we will make it as long as it is.’ It is another weird electronic groove with more beats and noise, it’s brilliant and dissolves into noise at the end. She smiles broadly and says they’ve never played an encore before. Well I suppose they’d better get used to it. An utterly brilliant gig.
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Mandy Indiana
BUFFEE
Mandy, Indiana are on Bandcamp, Facebook and Instagram
BUFFEE is on Instagram & Bandcamp
All words by Adrian Bloxham, all pictures by Martin Ward.
