(((O))) : Ufomammut and Thraa – The Hug and Pint, Glasgow

In Scotland we don’t get the chance to see Ufomammut very often, so when the opportunity arises you grab it with both hands, even if the gig is on a Monday evening across the other side of the country. In fact, there’s been only one other occasion where Ufomammut made it up North, which was back in 2015 after the release of their album Ecate. Now Ufomammut are finally back and their show at one of Glasgow’s smallest gig venues (the Hug and Pint, capacity around 120) came through a slight double booking error, where they initially were scheduled to play on the same day as their Desertfest London appearance, which would have been a challenge even for the Doctor and his Tardis. This resulted in an even bigger appeal to see these veterans of the psychedelic stoner doom genre, as this had all prospects to become a very loud, busy and intimate gig, not an opportunity to be missed.

Without a local band to open up the proceedings, Manchester based drone duo Thraa had the honour of being the main support. The band is about to release their new album called Half Light, and I assume their 30 minutes set was mainly focused on that release, though it’s hard to tell especially in the drone genre, where things often evolve into completely new and different soundscapes than the recorded output. The band afterwards confirmed that their live sets are never the same, but do have some sort of base piece to work with. Their set was a mesmerising set of evolving sounds, noises and feedback, all accompanied by the ethereal vocals from guitarist/vocalist Sally Mason, who also produced some excellent guitar noises together with Andi Jackson’s guitar work, making up for the second half of the duo.

After a short change over break the stage was set for Ufomammut, and since the small size of the stage it was great to be able to see their musical set-up in a lot more detail, for example how they work their synthesiser/spacey sounds using some clever looking device containing 10 differently numbered switches, assumingly having sound samples pre-programmed into the different channels. I’m not a gear nerd though, so I’m not 100% sure how those things work, but it was very impressive to see both guitarist Poia and bassist Urlo use the samples with great effect throughout their hour-long psychedelic sonic journey. It was also great to see their new drummer Levre in live action for the first time after he took from band’s original drummer Vita, who left the band back in 2020. Levre an demonstrated nicely that he’s an excellent replacement, producing some great drumming, keeping a very steady groove to the long songs.  

The set mainly focused on their new album Hidden that’s just been released on their own label Supernatural Cat (or on Neurot Recordings across the pond), starting with album opener ‘Crookhead’, one of the album’s great tracks and also included my album favourite track ‘Mausoleum’, where Levre’s great drumming really started to show, with the song having some slight off beat rhythm sections. They also played their cover version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Welcome to the Machine’, resulting in some great audience participation for those who recognised it as a Pink Floyd cove, which to me wasn’t clear until the chorus started and I was like “Hey, that’s Pink Floyd!”, which is a sign of a good cover version in my humble opinion as there’s no point in covering a song and having it sound exactly the same as the original version.

All in all, this was an incredible performance from a band celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, giving a great demonstration as to why they are one of the great veterans in this scene.