You all know, due to Covid-19 concerts have been a bit of a rarity in recent years. Due do a lucky dip in corona measures in Germany I did get a chance to see Ex.Order in October 2020, but other than that the last Wave Gotik Treffen was the last time I saw anything live.
In general there are not that many concert that I want to go to, especially not in my home town. I almost never visit concerts in Eindhoven. Most of what is scheduled here is not my taste. I few years back A Place To Bury Strangers played in the Effenaar and before that perhaps Psych Lab festival (also Effenaar)?
Anyway, just before Corona hit, an announcement was made by Metakamer of a concert at the Stroomhuis, a venue I had never been to. Scheduled was noise no less, the Dutch act Offerbeest. Naturally the concert was postponed and postponed again until Corona settled down a bit and plans to have the concert after all started to appear.
Well, Corona did not entirely calm dawn as Offerbeest himself had to cancel last minute because of a positive test… Offerbeest was replaced with a Dutch act I did not know yet, Vonder.
So, last Friday I went to that strange building on a strange place near the Eindhoven railway. As the name suggest, this used to be an electrical power house. Stroomhuis proved to be a bit of a ‘punk hole’ with a rough room with some sort of podium, tagged and stickered toilets, you may know the kind of place. I was somewhat surprised to see that my hometown had (or at least attracts) a bunch of goth and wave type people. There were about 50 people present in the unheated (the irony!) place. Something that I certainly did not miss about concerts of days past is people smoking and this appeared to be a case of ‘when one sheep crossed the dam, the rest will follow’…………..
A DJ played (minimal) wave type music to fill up the wait for the first band. Vonder proved to be pretty much not my taste. They are (minimal) wavey, sometimes a bit of angstpop or rather more uptempo beats. Styles that I listen to frequently, but this was really not for me. Taste, little to say about it.
The next duo was from Eindhoven. BHPL made an energetic piece of EBM. Quite an amusing show.
The main act was Spit Mask, another duo. I know this Berlin project. Pretty rough music somewhere between (rhythmic) noise and EBM. Not too bad, but I am not too crazy about the vocals. Also their show was quite energetic and mostly: loud.
A venue where people smoke while it is not allowed. Where the volume appeared to be louder than allowed (even with earplugs it was hardly bearable). Am I getting old for not seeing the fun in that? In any case, it was fun to see what kind of people who showed up at such a concert in my home town and the BHPL show was amusing, so…