Aulos @ Clwb Ifor Bach

Wednesday 23 December 09 • Categorized as Gig Reviews

If you turned up to watch Aulos, the first thing you would probably notice is the fact that no one is singing, and that is for one very simple reason: they don’t have a singer.

Now that may surprise you at first, but not for long because you will probably soon notice the second thing, which is: this band ain’t exactly what you would call conventional.

They have more pedals that Halford’s bike section. They use so many that there were some on top of the guitarist’s amp because there was no room left on the floor.

And what are those pedals used for? They are used for creating the weirdest, widest array of sounds and noises that you are likely to find in the space of 30 minutes.

The sound constantly evolves and changes through out the set, it moves from sounding like an earthquake to sounding like a spaceship to sounding like insanity. There are heavy bits and spaced out bits and fast bits and down tempo bits, more bits than anyone could listen to in a month of mainstream radio.

And just when you think it can’t get more different the guitarist pulls out a gameboy and starts playing music with it, and the bassist starts playing a Speak & Spell. I don’t think there has, in the entire history of the internet, ever been a more appropriate time and place to type these three letters:

WTF

But I mean that in a good way.

The music is experimental, and progress can not happen with out experiment. Aulos is three guys who are not afraid of trying new things and are marching fearlessly into the unknown musical abyss.