Yard | Body Horror
The George Tavern, London
12th November 2024
Dublin Electronic trio Yard are currently appearing inside some of the small venues we are always encouraging people to visit. Keith Goldhanger reports on their recent London show.
If you’re a gig-going Londoner who has never attended The George Tavern in East London’s Commercial Road then do something about it. Comparable to Brixton’s’ Windmill, The George Tavern is also a small pub equally as exciting to visit as The Shacklewell Arms a few miles away in another part of East London and on most nights will feature some of the best shows by many of the best new bands you can see without having to buy tickets three months in advance for. This is another place where things start for some of us. Tonight, on a murky, grey, horrible Tuesday evening it’s the location for two bands that one or two have seen before and will no doubt be seeing again another day in larger establishments with a lot of other people alongside us.
Andy Williams (Music To Watch Girls By) is being played through the speakers as we enter. Most of the people here are currently hanging out in the side garden, smoking, shivering and anticipating what’s about to be served up inside, therefore as soon as the stage is occupied by the opening band this empty pub suddenly transforms itself into a busy venue ready to party.
Most of us in attendance here already seem to know what to expect. We witnessed the magnificent Yard ourselves at this year’s Sŵn Festival in Cardiff and support band Body Horror have been highly recommended even before hearing the music that complements these comments. Everything we hear this evening could not be further away from Andy Williams, our dancing shoes are on and it’s expected that we might still be home before midnight.
You can’t help but appreciate that we’re all getting a head start on all this tonight. Body Horror arrive with their buzzing electronics that are soon complimented by that big bass drum we’re all now conditioned to lose our minds and bodies to. Each tune is driven by infectious, foot stomping, clockwork Techno rhythms and a singer that we would like to think could be singing in German (he isn’t). The drummer is adding to the rhythm of the electronics and at times simply just concentrating on the high hat that cuts through the noise being made that we’re all used to hearing when we find ourselves standing in the company of music such as this. For half an hour we are back in our happy place, a place where people can’t stand still and are temporarily transported back to one of those fields we often stagger around in during late summer nights in much warmer conditions.
Some of us are old enough to remember when we missed out on bands for being either too young or located in a different country. German band Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (D.A.F.) who in the early 1980s first ignited some of our enthusiasm for (not quite Disco) Dance music can be heard in the music of Body Horror. It’s as Hypnotic (but rowdier and faster) than The Umlauts which some of us have been playing on repeat this year and sits perfectly alongside our recent new favourite outfit Adult DVD who continue to have us dancing around the living room when we don’t go out at night. This is a great band to prepare us for what is to follow that are making music that we hope to hear more of in 2025.
Yard are from Dublin which of course is where all the cool bands come from nowadays. Vocalist Emmet recently left his day job as bass player in Gurriers to concentrate on this project (and was in the same room as us witnessing his old band at Bristol’s Simple Things Festival earlier in the year). Rehearsal buildings back home are shared with all our favourites and they’re about to start travelling on that same path that we witnessed Scaler take (who we believe Yard have shared a stage with already).
It’s the heavily processed vocals that set them apart from their Bristol counterparts though. Two sets of electronics sat beside a guitar with an array of effects make the noise. It’s as noisy as Gilla Band or Enola Gay and with no bass or live drummer the music is given space to breathe and run away with itself. Sections of Techno and Drum & Bass creep into the mix as the audience continue to be unable to stand still just as witnessed with the support band. It’s as intense as those early Killing Joke shows and at times one could imagine this at Download Festival as well as Boomtown or any of the other dance-orientated events. One concludes that as long as the band continue the momentum they’re travelling in that one or all could possibly become a reality one day.
Electronic (noisy) rock music hasn’t sounded as exciting and fresh as it has done in 2024. With the names already mentioned above alongside bands we already love such as AK/DK, Chalk, Clt Drp and Mandy Indiana, we should be in for a great ride in future months ahead. Energetic, piercing, intense yet joyous slabs of noise are what many of us leave the house for nowadays. We like to be surprised, energised, be able to dance without realising it, hands in the air, whooping with delight and having to be reminded at closing time that it’s still early November on a Tuesday night in a dimly lit East London pub. One day there will be hundreds of bands like this. Tonight was magnificent.
~
Yard are Dan, Emmet and George and they can be found on Instagram here, Spotify here and YouTube here.
Body Horror can be found here.
Words by Keith Goldhanger. More writing by Keith on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. You can also find Keith on Facebook Instagram and X.
Photos by Robyn Skinner
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