5. Oxbow DuoLive At Supersonic 2007
This was a one-off collaboration and it was with Niko and Eugene from Oxbow Duo. They were joined by Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))), Justin Broadrick from Godflesh, and then Dave Cochrane from Head Of David. I suppose it’s kind of marking the occasion because you’d never get that collaboration anywhere else other than that particular Supersonic. That was the first record that we put out as Supersonic Recordings to try to capture these very special live moments. With Oxbow, as with The Bug, we’ve kind of developed this ongoing relationship with the band. They have come back to Supersonic and performed with an orchestra and they’ve also performed with a choir. This year for Supersonic, Eugene will be performing with an Italian trio called Buñuel.
We did a showcase with Oxbow at South By Southwest, and I don’t know if you’ve seen Oxbow perform before but Eugene often strips down to his pants. He’s quite built, has a lot of tattoos and he’s very physical in his performance. For some reason the security didn’t like him stripping in that way. I mean, he still had his pants on, but they decided that it wasn’t okay, or that because it was an all-age bar that it would offend young people, although there were no young people there. They turned off the PA, then they were trying to forcibly remove Eugene from stage, at which point the band Pelican were also at the showcase and so they stepped in to try and protect Eugene – although actually Eugene is a cage fighter, so he is the last person that needs protecting. Pelican, who are like really skinny guys, were in between Eugene and the security and then Jenny and I were like these tiny little English girls trying to stop the security fighting and it just turned into this really chaotic bar room brawl where glasses were being smashed and everyone was being pulled across the room in this massive fight. The police got called and it got broken up that way.
That was in 2007 and weirdly, after it happened everything was calm and then we went to House of Pancakes with Oxbow afterwards. It was terrifying because in the States there’s that extra edge isn’t there of like, will this turn properly violent and will people have guns? It’s the first and only time that I’ve ever been in the midst of a full-on proper bar fight.
It’s one of those moments where you all kind of bond together because you’ve been put in such a horrific situation. We’ve had such a strong relationship with Oxbow over the years, but that moment cemented that relationship.
