(((O))) Live: Shearling • Allarme • HAAL • paper hats – Windmill, Brixton

“I will bury you beneath fifty tons of concrete

and raise a hell like no other.”

Consider me buried. And on a Monday evening, no less.

Shearling is the new creative endeavour from Alexander Kent and Sylvie Simmons, formerly half of Sprain. With a monolithic, single-track hour-long debut album released earlier this year – Motherfucker, I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah” . . . – the quintet, rounded out by Andrew Chanover, Wesley Nelson and Elizabeth Carver, have done what Sprain failed to do, and get across to Europe and the United Kingdom for people to come and bear witness to their live-set aural disintegration and devastation.

It seems apt that their two sold-out London dates are held at the Windmill in Brixton. Home to a scene that has produced and continues to yield an extraordinary amount of talent, many of whom play at the outer exegesis of what “rock music” can be, it feels like the perfect, fertile environment for maverick musicians from America to export and showcase their own output.

One of the Windmill’s most famous progeny in recent years is black midi, and particularly frontman, Geordie Greep. In oh so many ways Alexander Kent is different to Greep, but it occurs to me they share the same DNA in their band-leader approach to each of the groups live simultaneous implosion/explosion. [Plosives popping periodically prior to perpetuity on the mic.] Like orchestral conductors, I have seen each guide their band members and indeed the music itself through extreme convolution until ultimate dissolution. They wield their guitar as if it were an additional appendage; a limb reacting to the mind’s direction as implicit as any biologically attached.

During this dextrous demolition, there is a distinct voice providing ongoing ‘commentary’ (albeit like an extremely depressed Lewis Carroll) over this sonic field of noble yet nauseating aural negation – different, definitely, but also deleteriously, like a melted blackened midi. . .

Before delving into the reverential (“Amen”), approaching the splenetic divine (“Hallelujah”), the audience that had braved transport strikes across the capital greedily and gleefully consumed gargantuan riffage from three other bands.

paper hats, uber talented and seemingly preposterously young, open proceedings after a last-minute line-up reshuffle. Much like Shearling, the London-based four-piece only have one recorded, officially released track to their name, but ‘D’Artagnan’, from June this year, is a diminutive four minutes compared to the Californian’s behemoth. They play this as the penultimate song of their set, and it’s clearly the track their local fans know the best, with the front of the audience briefly becoming a mangle of limbs jostling and jumping with frenetic energy.

 

With forthcoming support slots for other celebrated bands such as University on the horizon, it’s clear the quartet’s fan-base will steadily grow, especially on the evidence of this attention-grabbing, bewitching half-hour set. With material that comprised gnawing, gnarly discordant noise rock coupled with the mathy post-rock alt-indie the Windmill has become iconic for, I’d argue much of this is equal if not betters that initial salvo; this other material proving they are a band mature beyond their years compositionally. The conveyor belt of talent that passes through the venue continues, unbound.

HAAL are the culprits of the alteration to the planned schedule, with traffic causing delays to their arrival from Bristol. The four-piece have fast become a staple of the UK underground, one of the new suite of bands that are pushing the definitions of what post rock can be these days. It does, however, take the band a song or two to get into full swing, but this can easily be identified as arriving later than intended and an issue for the drummer that runs up to the start of their set, and – as far as I could tell – was unfortunately unresolved at the time of them needing to start.

 

Playing as guitar, bass, and drums, they are filled out with a member with a table worth of effects pedals, mixers and more, creating a sound I can only describe as ‘rounded’ to the sonic tapestry they weave. With these samples and electronics infused within their amplified crescendo, they sound like a less mathy, somewhat stoned baby of 65daysofstatic and Kowloon Walled City.

Playing material released this year as well as favourites from their debut EP from 2024, Back To Shilmarine, the band get all heads in the venue nodding in unison before their climactic end. With forays into remixes of their limited back catalogue already, having been remixed by members of Squid and Water From Your Eyes, and with support slots for Arab Strap and appearances at ActTanGent festival, it feels as if HAAL are prepared to leap off the cliff edge, but rather than fall they’re ready to soar. Hopefully the UK underground doesn’t have too long to wait for a full-length.

Allarme hail from Warsaw, Poland, and are Shearling’s European partners on this sprawling European tour. They are supporting their very own recently released debut album, the excellent Bruit, an alarming compression of noise rock and post-punk, showcasing a penchant for wild experimentation with alto saxophone firmly thrown in for added dizzying, psychedelic compositional diversions. The third quartet of the day, it’s immediately apparent that the four members have been concentrating, honing, and distilling their labyrinthine rhythms and screeching virtuosity for some time – a singularity time bomb that explodes and splutters over the largely unsuspecting audience in the beloved Brixton temple of noise.

 

The four-piece have coined their own term, łomotwave (thunderwave), for their sound, and while I sometimes find this self-identification awkward and even clumsy in the music scene, here they are true to their word. The jagged guitar, bright sax and energetic vocals provide the crack of lightning, as the ominous, rumbling bass and crashing drums provide the thunderclap. Much like a force of nature, Allarme feel inevitable and the complex wall of sound they produce can feel powerful, beautiful, and overwhelming all at once. I look forward to experiencing their storm of ideas and potent, wailing uproar once again.

Talking of Spector-esque threnody and tempests of unabated emotion, Shearling take to the stage shortly after the Polish squall has subsided. They have to be quick, as they have one track that breaches the hour mark to masterfully perform. Their first London gig, which was organised after this original date due to demand, took place the Friday before, with the band finishing after midnight, a luxury not afforded to them now.

Many bands play loudly, but few seem to be masters of the medium when it comes to volume. Despite my years of consistent gig-going, it’s still rather rare to view an artist that seems to be able to wield clamorous, tumultuous roars to their very whim. A handful come to mind; SWANS, Sunn O)))…  Maybe the first step is to name your bands with an ‘S’ at the start, given Sprain similarly exercised such voluminous bursts of sonic devastation, albeit we in the UK never had the “pleasure”’ of witnessing it.

While the band certainly have sub-genres like noise rock, sludge metal and more in the soup of their foundations – bringing to mind legends such as Harvey Milk, Cherubs, Unwound and Earth – Kent & co. also clearly admire movements such as musique concrete and sound collage. Indeed, their debut LP formally uses these approaches: inserting into, onto, and stitching together hours upon hours of experimentation and improvisation around, over and under the more ‘traditional’ elements and expression of the record. While they don’t have the time for such wild diversions here, the ethos is very much plain to hear. Kent brings to mind Greep with him leading the band like a composer at various points throughout the sprawling, deafening hour.

 

While the entire band are mesmerising to watch, it’s hard for one’s eyes not to focus on Simmons and even more so, Kent. He is the consummate ringleader, the most expressive of the five, and the one through whom the very music itself seems to be humming and writhing within. As the wails of noise calm toward the dénouement of the track and their overall set, Kent knocks the microphone against his temple. I’ve seen vocalists do this countless times, often with some blood spilt. But the Shearling frontman must nick a vein because the liquid pumps freely, covering his face and exposed torso. This was clearly ad hoc, rather than purely performative – I have been reliably informed sets ended very differently each night of the tour, including the first London date – but it is also a picture that has cemented itself in my memory, and is surely one of those legendary images I’ll remember of an incredible, overwhelming set ending in an iconic way.

The day I finalise the edit of this, I have learned that Shearling have signed to Atonal as their booking agency for future UK & EU touring. They’ve certainly signed to an aptly named agency for their noise, and I am utterly delighted that we seemingly won’t have too long to wait for the quintet to visit our shores to challenge our ears once again.