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Go Genre Everything Vinyl Launch feb 13

Comment I Made about 1 year ago

Go Genre Everything Loophole

“Do you want to have ‘eternal youth and carefree cleanness?” the fella at the entrance to the backyard of Barricade Books asked each new arrival. For many who had come to experience the launch of “Eternal Youth Carefree Cleanness” by the anime, post rock, weird rock, or just plain weird band Go Genre Everything, this was just a taste of the obscurity to come. Each person also received a booklet containing myriad instructions and questionnaires to be completed. Several thematically dressed booklet auditors roamed the yard’s different sectors (A, B, C) checking on everyone’s progress, stamping random pages and jotting down teacher-like comments such as “messy and unruly…handle with caution” or “fairly genuine.” Sooner of later, most people would have to return to the start to get their tie-on fabric mask sporting one pattern or another. You had to ‘pass’ three stages before finally being allowed into the band room (no-doubt biding the band time during set-up). Once in, the grim reaper gave you some tasty ‘ankh’ cake or ‘infinity cake’ (containing no elicit substances, only infinite quantities of careful attention and blue food colouring). For the numerous scribbling booklet-bearers, this marked a satisfying end to the machinations of an imaginative but frustrating pseudo-bureaucracy. While the elaborately costumed Go Genre Everything might at first look like a bunch of psilocybin fuelled performing arts students, this helped their live act achieve a kind of beautiful madness. A giant white unicorn, a horned demon, what appeared to be a cumbersome dragon, and a big round candy-faced character, sang, screeched, and played their way through a surrealist take on a mutant piñata party. The punk pop songs sounded loose enough to disintegrate at any moment. At one point, everything suddenly stopped and the mesmerised punters were instructed to introduce themselves to each other (an abrupt shift of focus from the spectacle to the spectator), followed closely behind by the band’s unaccompanied proclamations, “I am alive! I am alive! I am alive!” The psychedelic ritual aspect was strong. We were alive in this strange, strange place, witnessing these strange, strange creatures doing strange, strange things, like when they broke out into a boot-scooting interlude. And, inside the venue, it was hot, very hot. So much so that the band had a dedicated, gas-masked attendant who constantly sprayed water vapour into the costume cavities to prevent each weary wearer from passing out. The smoke machine was on overdrive, and we had to crane our heads around shifting clouds just to see what was happening next.
Are Go Genre Everything clinically insane? You never know. But what’s certain is that their live extravaganza was a definite eye-opener and proof that they are a band to be experienced as well as listened to. Framed by Grist’s various experimental soundscapes, performed before and after the show, this launch really was an unforgettable event.

David Prescott-Steed