17th March 2010, GIG: Spectrum, The Luminaire

When you go to see Sonic Boom's Spectrum, you're not going to see a display of musical virtuosity, you're going to see a bunch of feedback and, at most, three chords. So, what this requires, most importantly, is decent sound. It needs to be loud. Otherwise the walls of guitar noise and feedback that build up or suddenly appear don't have the impact that they should have. This gig, sadly, wasn't loud enough. It might sound like I'm being some kind of audiophile geek or something, but really, it was kind of hard to be interested in Spectrum when the sound just didn't hit you with any oomph. It's supposed to be a wall of noise that you can get lost in, that can carry you along and if it's not, it's a bit pointless. His set was a varied one, some new stuff, some Spacemen 3 stuff (an early and surprising Set Me Free a highlight) including Revolution and Suicide (of course), a couple of Sonic originals and a load of covers. I'm sure it would've been great had the sound been right, but it wasn't, so it was a bit rubbish.