We Fell To Earth at ICA

We Fell To Earth at ICA

01 May, 2009
by: JonnnyTruant

It’s commented on that the ICA is a strange choice of venue for We Fell To Earth, that they might be too much of a connoisseur’s delight. Whilst the venue is slow to fill up, by the time We Fell To Earth glide onto stage bathed in a sea of red light and dry ice the bodies are packed together, expectant and twitchy. Then they begin to play, building from a low rumble to a full, guttural explosion, featuring driving rock guitars and pulsing Krautrock beats that reverberate around the walls of the ICA far and wide, turning the room into a vast endless expanse to rival the high California desert where our players first crashed into each other like wayward particles adrift in the Hadron Collider.

On paper We Fell To Earth seem like a strange collision of disparate elements hurtling towards each other in the night. Richard File, the band’s ringleader and electronic cerebral cortex is perhaps best known as the man who replaced DJ Shadow as one half of UNKLE, but he has also worked with Josh Homme and Chris Goss. Homme, the arch conduit whose Queens Of The Stone Age have led regular desert sessions that have brought together artists for years. It was deep in the desert that File crossed paths with Wendy Rae Fowler, former bassist of Earthlings? and now the coquettish, impish front woman of We Fell To Earth. Part Alison Mosshart, part Eleanor Friedburger and part Kim Deal, she stalks the stage, thrashing wildly and raising a maelstrom of sound before leaning forward to the mic and whispering molasses vocals across the night.

There’s a very organised feel at the heart of We Fell To Earth: they pull together elements of Can and Faust before injecting them with guitar-sodden menace and incanted lyrics that will be familiar to anyone who has heard Wendy Rae working with the likes of Mark Lanegan. It’s incredibly easy for bands of this nature to become mere background noise as the mind wanders and you get lost thinking about what you should have been doing today. But We Fell To Earth manage to keep the ICA focused front and centre for the entirety of their set. Which bodes incredibly well for their first EP.

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JonnnyTruant