Health / Madame JoJos, London
Noiseniks good for your Health
Words Luke Turner / Image(s) Lee Hooper
Health spend more time wandering about the White Heat stage fiddling with cables than the buggers who prevaricate about connecting your house to the outside world. Meanwhile, Iggy Pop’s ‘Nightclubbing’ is punctuated by blasts of try-out static from machines and guitars.
But boy, it’s worth the wait. For where they might at first seem like a distilled take on Liars, tonight Health prove they’re actually the witches with whom Angus Andrews and Co. were conducting the séance of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned: bearded, warty, and using your baby’s umbilical as the noodles in their terrible cauldron.
They might have the hip Health/Disco remix album out this week, but this is anything but mere fodder for the white plimsoll hordes: a terrifying mash-mash of propulsive rhythms and discordant gasps.
At the Primavera festival, Health used the big stage and bigger PA to make their sound expansive. Tonight, they’re equally comfortable at taking the claustrophobia of Madame JoJos to channel a desperate intensity, sticks thwacking against tom rims like the panicking signal of an old-fashioned Morse machine.
It all suggests that Health make odd bedfellows with their remixing buddies Crystal Castles, and before you start accusing them of being dude noise mongers, see the cold fact that Crystal Castles are just an uninteresting wank fantasy for indie boys in hoodies. Health is pure, elemental percussive and progressive noise/dance that just seems to get better with every encounter. Who knows where Health’ll go next, but there’s no damn doubt it’ll be good for you.
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