I was always more of a Spacemen 3 than a Loop but Main never seemed to get the credit they deserved. I mean, these guys played Reading. If there's an indie guy who turned more inward than Robert Hampson I'd like to know; this was positively Scott Walker.
The Main album reviews tended to be positive in a ??? kind of way but then the whole Isolationist/Scape thing really took off (i.e. lots and lots of meandering nicenoise) and Main seemed to get left out of the fun, until post-rock (Tortoise - Urgh!) came and steamrollered over them, leaving them like a retarded boy-child of My Bloody Valentine, playing in the filth of their own effect boxes.
Hampson got his head down and kept on.
Laptop prices came down. People could sample Main and drag out a whole set from a few minutes.
Fucking Terre Thaemlitz.
Fennesz passes Hampson on the Vienna by-pass. Even with the language difficulties, you can see he's grinning his face off.
Hampson is lost in hair but he carries on.
Soon, everyone has forgotten all about him. The twin tubs of beautiful body-evil of those first few eps and albums are lost to posterity. No one can remember who this guy thinks he is.
But he carries on because the sounds in his head haven't stopped all this time.
On Deliquescence, recorded live, Main re-arrange things their own way, plugging into their own ouvre and spreading it out, playing with it and forming loose coalitions with the past. It's the end for Main, or seems to be. He's probably fleshed out the last arterial guitarline and started the slouch towards Bethlehem.
Somethings they did sounded like stars.
Gotta love him.
4 comments:
ahhh - Main - truly loved their sound
hydra calm still is a great record (well 2 x 12 inch) - think it was released on a single cd too - yer can sample the delights at http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,246622,00.html
they took guitars to a whole new arena...
having a bit of trouble with the russian links here though
With all that build up I was excited about downloading this business, but the links are down!
Take Care,
Hector
By the way I have started blogging mp3s over at http://blacknoise.blogspot.com
i think the deal with tyhe site that hosts these files is they are only available between certain hours Moscow time... i checked at around 10 last night and they were working fine...
hope that's some help...
and yeah, hydra-calm was great...
fantastic stuff - just listened to them
Post a Comment