Two of the year's most forward-thinking bands come together in performance art project
Savages first encountered Bo Ningen in the most unlikely of settings - a desolate pub deep in the North Yorkshire wilderness, since then they have been cropping up all over the latter's songs - Nichijyou and CC. Most collaborations between bands end there, but the East London based musicians decided to take it one step further, in the form of a 37-minute long performance piece.
Words To The Blind is inspired by the Dadaist concept of 'simultaneous poetry', first performed at Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire club in 1916. The poem is based around conflicting multilingual voices that eventually become incomprehensible.
Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth speaks in her native French, and Bo Ningen's Taigen Kawabe in Japanese. Their whispers are the calm before the storm, as they give way to barrage of dark, sonic noise, that sometimes veers on the edge of violent. The resulting chaos is reminisant of Bo Ningen's psych rock at it's most acidic.
The two bands first showcased their work at London's Red Gallery on May 29th 2013, taking to the stage in a U-shaped formation to resemble a battle. This, and the desire to immerse the audience into a musical warfare that is punishing, eerie and hellish - at times all three, makes WTTB become more of a unique performance-art project than a gig. But that is what sets Savages and Bo Ningen apart from their post-punk peers - an appetite for musical anarchy.
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