Oranssi Pazuzu trip the light fantastic
Psychedelic black metal priests host a shamanistic uprising
TAKE ONE LOOK at STURLE DAGSLAND and you know you’ve got a batshit insane evening ahead of you. He’s wearing a velvet shirt, short shorts and tights. He also moves so erratically that it’s like every step is on Lego bricks. Yet, he’s somehow even weirder on the ears. Gracing the Underworld with just one backing musician, the Norwegian singer’s MO is to howl, beatbox and whistle nonsensically over bongos and looping beats. There’s a beauty in the lunacy, his set both looking and sounding like a drug-fuelled tribal ritual.
On any other day, Sturle would be the most bizarre thing on the bill. However, ‘bizarre’ is this gig’s bread and butter. Oranssi Pazuzu have brought nothing less than a shamanic circus to level London. DEAFKIDS continue the oddity apace, eschewing the electrified art punk you’d hear from them on record in favour of percussive, grinding sacraments. It’s music ideal for your next peyote high, with drummer Mariano Sarine leading the charge as his two colleagues compose sinister atmospherics. Frontman Douglas Leal’s wails echo wildly, while Marcelo Dos Santos’s synths buzz ominously. It’s tempting to call the set ‘otherworldly’ – until tonight’s headliners show up and take the word to hitherto undreamt extremes.