Don't Think Twice.

And another thing. Absoluten Calfentrail at the Tote last night was fucking unbelievable. And I don't mean unbelievable like EMF meant it, I mean like it was difficult to believe. Two painfully loud blasts at the beginning of the set scared most people out of the room and into the beer garden, where apparently earplugs were still necessary. The volume didn't let up for the whole set. I stayed, of course, totally fucking mesmerized, finally convinced that for music to be intense, it doesn't have to be fast. As I think I've stated before, I'm not really down with the noise scene, due to its predisposition to pretension, but differentiates Grover from the vast hoards of knob-twiddlers is his almost total lack of self-awareness. There's no comforting ironic distance here, no knowing winks to the audience. He stands in front of a table of pedals and mixers and other electronic toys, creating on the run, thuds and blasts and noise generated from somewhere, rocking back and forth, staring at the table, at the ceiling, at the microphone. At the end of the set, when he screams and throws over the table, you know he means it.