The door to tiny Yvonne Ruve is tucked amongst a maze of stairwells and corridors that in their inside-outside twisting evoke the devious logic of an Escher drawing. You could go mad wandering around in here and it would be sheer luck if anyone ever found you. It’s a venue perfectly suited to the disorientating soundscapes of Castings, and intimately associated with them too. They’re pretty much the house band.

Castings are six, hunched over their microphones and samplers as if each were trawling their own personal nightmare around them like a tight net. They moan and shudder, occasionally weighing down on keyboards or attacking a drumkit that sits stage-centre; not that there is an actual stage in here, and the lack of delineation is part of the intrigue, part of the discomfort. On record Castings can be surprisingly delicate and in previous performances they’ve proved that they know the difference between light and dark – or maybe that should be between grey and graphite – but tonight they move with the acidic menace of a chemical fog, drawing down layer upon layer of noise. As with so many noise bands there is an undeniable masculinity to their persona: bullish but wounded, shirts on and then off, yet there is a base note of abjection that undermines – perhaps deliberately – the strength. Kicking and then kicked down.

Just as the sound reaches its harshest pitch and the room’s last remaining oxygen threatens to vanish – there are no smoking regulations in here – it’s all over. Twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. I’ve seen better and longer performances from Castings yet still, they crawl under your skin.

by Emmy Hennings