大象传媒

"We are The Continuous Battle Of Order", says Hornby, the guitarist. "Or TCBOO. It's something new we're trying for 2011. Continuous Battle of Order's too long, right?"

It would be great if they were to try something new - and they do, playing a new track in a set that's well tried and tested by now. 听It doesn't stray from the enigmatic fusion of exuberant jazz-drumming, complicated live sampling and guitar that exhausts in its technical ability and makes them as interesting to watch as they are to listen to, but for TCBOO this isn't a problem. 听It merely shows that for all their experimentalism, they create their own rules rather than break them, and new material in the coming year should be something to look forward to.

Thread Pulls, however, are a different matter. 听The stripped-down Dublin based two piece released their LP 'New Thoughts' towards the end of last year, a proto-rock, mechanised album comprising bass, drums, vocals and the odd bit of trumpet. 听It was bare, stark, and intriguing enough with the textures created through repetition and looped sounds to give most conventional guitar groups something to chew over in its creativity and ingenuity.

Transport the band to the stage, unfortunately, and this doesn't transfer quite so effortlessly. The vocals are drenched in reverb and snarl, but without the Mark E. Smith anti-charisma that's needed to make it work. The drummer flings his sticks wildly in enthusiasm, and while there's something approaching a bit of groove in some of his rhythms, it doesn't catch the same mesmerising, momentum felt from the record. 听Live trumpet samples accidentally record some feedback from the amps, sounding messy.
For the main part, it's Thread Pulls stop-start manner of punctuating the set between songs that give the set an awkward, clumsy feel. 听

The songs themselves are short but imprecise, ending abruptly with little sense of flow. 听Everything is left hanging uncomfortably in the air while the band shuffles around to fix the equipment for the next tune in a cagy silence.

Thread Pulls were never meant to be a straightforward listen, but unlike TCBOO beforehand, they don't bring a sense of performance that engages the audience. 听It's a great pity; if anything a concept like this should be provocative to watch. 听On the surface, it's raw and well-formed music based on an interesting idea, but on this occasion it shows how trying to boil down something to its bare elements is never as simple as it would appear. 听It seems that tonight's just not their night to pull it all together, and given what they're capable of on record there's hope they'll get it right another time.

Aoife McKeown