Is This Music?
Review of Usurper's performance at the Kill Your Timid Notion fringe event.

It finished for me with the mighty Acid Mothers Temple, but it starts a couple of night earlier with almost the exact opposite of the Mothers' high volume psych-fuzz freak out. Drouthy Neebors is practically empty when Giant Tank/ Gilded Lil side project Usurper take the stage to play their "deconstructed metal" but, if anything, this helps with the whole feeling of the evening.

Deconstructed is dead on, strews around the stage are the common tools of rock; an amp, drums, a guitar, but something is badly wrong. These instruments are mostly broken or not attached to each other: the guitar has not strings, the bass drum pedal no bass drum to hit. Everything is mic'd up including the floor as the duo go about performing their minimalist rock music.

Usurper use amp hum, drum stands and broken cymbals to create a sublime near silence. The audience is spellbound concentrating on minute changes in the sound of a squeaking bass drum pedal or a brushed snare stand. It is an astonishing performance.

'Alex'

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