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LIVE REVIEW
QUASI AT THE FREEBUTT, BRIGHTON
Quasi
The Freebutt
Brighton
25/05/10

In business there is an age old adage “success breeds success” – in other words, gain it with one venture and achieving it with another will be easier. With music such notions do not apply and each band ultimately stands or falls on its outpourings.

That Quasi have been functioning as a band since 1993 and have won high praise for their recorded releases should prove testament that it can’t all be bad – except tonight they are repeatedly confronted by the touring musicians worst nightmare: technical problems. The trio are constantly knocked out of their stride by bouts of unexpected feedback, amplification temporarily disappearing and, in one case, an amp blowing up entirely. In those glimpses when things are going semi-right they morph into an indie guitar band of the old mould – one that stomps through a series of the type of unchallenging American slacker rock that was once the mainstay of college radio stations across their homeland. They offer more than a straight re-incarnation of Granddaddy or Pavement, though, in that they seem to have an adventurous side fascinated with discordance and other such avant-garde mainstays. Tonight may not have gone as planned but at least Quasi survive to fight another day.

By Nathan Westley

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Originally published in issue 18 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. June 2010


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