Dear God, I hate myself. So wails Jamie Stewart as he stands wracked, seemingly almost in pain, at the microphone. His eyes are permanently screwed shut as he wrestles with technology to expose whatever demons lie rank within him.
With an ever shifting line-up, California’s Xiu Xiu (that’s Shoe Shoe) currently consist solely of Stewart and multi-instrumentalist Angela Seo, but the two of them certainly manage to conjure a heck of a racket.
Xiu Xiu’s sound is an overwrought mixture of splintered, almost abstracted, song forms connected to Autechre-like electronic splutter and revved up Digital Hardcore style spray and scree. The techno overload of the material is so great that, at moments of peak intensity, the songs sound as though they were tearing themselves inside out, as if the internal emotion is too great to be contained and has to spill out as digital detritus. It’s the imaginary sound of Scott Walker’s Tilt as produced by Alec Empire.
Stewart himself seems, between songs, a quietly reticent presence. Head bowed, offering genuinely heartfelt thanks to the audience, there does seem to be something slightly damaged about him. His impassioned bellowing feels like cathartic release, intertwining with the electronically treated guitar blasts being ejected like volleys of useless ammunition, filthy innards being spat out.
There is little in the way of easy listening with Xiu Xiu. This is volatile, abrasive music borne of some unnameable pain expressed through visceral levels of volume and texture. Stewart’s vision can seem bombastically insular but it also feels very far from the standard potential mediocrity of a small Monday night gig and deserves plaudits for its challenging determination alone.