Seeing the alt-rock experimentalists Big|Brave on a festival stage is one thing but face to face at the Green Door Store is a whole different proposition. Formed in Montreal over a decade ago by Robin Wattie (vocals/guitar) and Mathieu Ball (guitars) they soon decided on a ‘loud can be quiet’ approach, ditching the acoustics and plugging in. From here their elemental sound evolved, setting the aerobatic thrust of Wattie’s singular voice within Ball’s swirling storm of distortion and, since 2019, Tasy Hudson’s pummelling rhythms. Heaviness, controlled volume and feedback remain the fundamentals of Big|Brave’s music which, seven albums in, continues to push the boundaries of sonic daring and songcraft.
Their last visit to Brighton in May ’23, upstairs at the Hope & Ruin, saw the pints in the ground floor bar shivering to their descending drone. Tonight they return to the city in the Green Door Store’s subterranean noise cave. The gig comes at the closing stages of an exhaustive European tour, but there is no sign of an energy dip in what follows. If anything, it feels like Big|Brave are wringing the very last drip out of a live set which pivots around music from their latest album ‘A Chaos Of Flowers’.
First up though is frequent Big|Brave live collaborator Liam Andrews a.k.a Aicher, who also provides the deep ocean bass swell as a fourth member of the band’s tight touring gang. So he’s well placed to set the tone for the evening with his visceral, molten electronic solo work. Through the curtain from bar to main space and you’re immediately headspun. Aicher is not on stage but to the left at floor level, framed by a flickering black and white projection, his tall figure stood working at controls hidden inside a mysterious case. Caught in a vast squall of sound feels momentarily disorientating but soon vocal-like yowls emerge alongside the distant thud of a slow processional drum. This is noise music at its most abstract and powerful.
Aicher’s constant physical activity also makes for compulsive viewing. Striding between his control stand and the monumental bass amp spotlit at the stage edge, he leans into the stack and coaxes out contorted feedback loops. He also brings his futuristic, metal machined bass into play, lancing it full length into the cabinet then levering the instrument into the venue’s flaky brickwork. There’s nothing synthetic or purely programmed in this performance, it’s alive and on the edge.
Shaped by the bleakness, bite and beauty of Scandinavian winters, Aicher’s music releases the spirit of that place into a tiny room in springtime Brighton. Passages throb like volcanic dub or heave to a cranked up Einstürzende Neubauten undertone while elsewhere diversionary Davachi strings drone. It’s such moments of unfathomable, explosive dynamism that stay in the memory long after the gig.
Aicher/Andrews returns, this time up on the stage as the bass anchor for Big|Brave. Their entrance is casual, sipping at juice and beer, removing hoodies, positioning notes and connecting up, activities of purposeful focus. With stage lights off except for floor level orange beams, the first quaking chords from Wattie and Ball’s guitars rip into the room.
From the outset it’s clear that although the songs from the ‘A Chaos Of Flowers’ album are the framework for tonight’s music, this is no exercise in giving the punters what they hear on the record. Amidst the crunching downstrokes and rearing distortion, Robin Wattie’s vocal cuts through with phrases from what may be ‘chanson pour mon ombre’ but maybe not. It’s an uncompromising introduction, almost freeform and improvisational, balanced finely on the point of noise chaos but then commandingly reined in by the band.
After this breathtaking release of pent-up energy Big|Brave appear more settled, riding on a wave of feedback into the gouging riff of ‘Not Speaking Of The Ways’. The recorded song roars impressively but live it shudders with the sonic intensity of early-era Swans. What’s clear when experiencing such a Big|Brave performance is that this is a band who may abandon the traditional definition between instruments in their post-metal slabs of sound but still manage to carve out moments of high emotion. As Matthieu Ball’s SG and Liam Andrew’s bass wrestle monotones from their amps on ‘quotidian : solemnity’ the piece begins to sway majestically along with Wattie’s vocal fanfare. Then on ‘canon: in canon’, Tasy Hudson’s soft-beaten cymbal work blends subtly with echoing guitars and Wattie’s aching voice to shroud the song in a mystical gothic aura.
Another undercurrent within Big|Brave’s set tonight is the bluesy spaciousness they have injected into the ‘A Chaos Of Flowers’ album. ‘theft’ creeps along ominously to Hudson’s hi-hat, Andrews’ minimal bass walk and those predatory guitar harmonics while Wattie sings of pale cheeks, tears and bones. It sends shivers. Meanwhile the dark folk epic, ‘I felt a funeral’, sees Andrews bring bow to bass as the arcing drone unfolds and the band hit that intuitive processional slow march.
Before the last song Wattie offers a shy word of warm thanks, genuine and authentic like their music, then they briskly plunge into the eerie ‘moonset’. While the jangling Bad Seeds-ish story unfolds you sense something mighty will happen and it does… Pow, a scorched, welded chord descent hammered by Hudson’s thrashed drums.
As she tidies cables post show, Robin Wattie admits to us that she prefers these smaller venues to the larger stages. Tonight’s gig evidenced that preference giving access to moments when a band, crammed close and personal, could really set themselves free and the crowd could feel that release. Next album, next tour, next May, can’t come soon enough.
Green Door Store, Thursday 23rd May 2024
Words by John Parry
Photos by Jo Higgs
