Lightning Bolt
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- For the 1967 film by Antonio Margheriti see Lightning Bolt (film).
Image:Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow.jpg Lightning Bolt is an experimental noise rock duo from Providence, Rhode Island. Formed in 1994, Lightning Bolt's initial line-up featured Brian Chippendale (drums) and Brian Gibson (bass guitar), with Hisham Bharoocha of Black Dice (guitar + vocals) joining the group after their first show. Chippendale took over singing duties when Bharoocha left in 1996. (The only officially released music with Bharoocha was a track on the Repopulation Program comp.) They formed while Chippendale and Gibson attended RISD in Providence, RI, when Chippendale heard about "a new kid" who was a whiz on the bass. At the same time, Chippendale was preparing to set up Fort Thunder, a disused warehouse space in the Olneyville district of Providence that housed a number of different artists and musicians, including Brian Ralph. Aside from the Talking Heads, Lightning Bolt is perhaps the most well known of the bands connected to Providence's RISD musical scene.
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Sound
The band's music takes cues from canonical Japanese noise rock bands like Boredoms and Ruins, although jazz composer Sun Ra is a well-acknowledged influence. The band's heavily distorted sound consists of Brian Chippendale's unusual approach of eschewing a microphone stand and instead holding the microphone in his mouth, running the signal through an effects processor to further alter the sound, with Brian Gibson's oddly strung bass guitar (tuned to cello standard tuning (fifths) with a banjo string for the high A) going through several pedals, including two overdrive pedals, an octaver and a bass whammy pedal (pitch shifter). They have also been heard using a sine wave generator, triggered by the bass drum.
The band has reportedly never been a fan of the studio recording process. When they recorded five tracks for the self-titled debut album released in 1999, they discarded four of them and replaced them with lo-fi tracks recorded at various live shows from '97 and '98. The music on their second LP, Ride the Skies, was nowhere near as fast or distorted as the same songs played live when the album was finally released. Wonderful Rainbow is probably the most accessible recording to date, featuring supremely heavy yet catchy riffs in odd meters. The band wasn't fully happy with the sound on any of their albums until the release of Hypermagic Mountain, an album where about half the tracks were recorded in a house, direct to a 2-track DAT master tape, with the audio engineer unable to tell exactly how the final result would sound.
Their lyrics and persona are mostly silly and tongue-in-cheek, however occasionally they'll attack more political subjects ("Dead Cowboy"), albeit in a humorous tone. Lightning Bolt's lyrics, when comprehensible, cover such diverse topics such as terrorism, anarchy, fairy tales, and superheroes.
Live performances
Image:Lightning Bolt Live Photo, by Ren.jpg
Lightning Bolt are renowned for prefering to put on guerilla gigs in places not usually played in by established bands. They usually play on the floor of the venue rather than the stage, creating a tight circle of spectators, with them in the very center. These shows are often quite hectic, mainly due to the fact that only the people at the front can see anything, and result in a lot of pushing and pulling as people try frantically to move forward to see the band playing. As their live setup has become larger and more elaborate since early 2005, they have now taken to setting up their equipment beforehand, giving the audience fair warning as to where to be when the show starts. They have also played in other, more unusual locations, such as radio DJ John Peel's front garden during the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, in kitchens, and in the parking lots of abandoned drive-ins.
With the intense music that brews from within Lightning Bolt, it's only assumed that the duo are hard of hearing. In 2004, Gibson was diagnosed with a form of deafness. Although he still plays almost daily, he says that he wished he never would have started playing music in the first place.Template:Fact
Discography
Albums
7 Inch Records
DVD / Video
Compilations
- Repopulation Program (Load) (1996)
- Fruited Other Surfaces (Vermiform) (1999)
- You're Soaking in It (Load) (1999)
- Bad Music for Bad People (Trash Art) (2000)
- Mish Mash Mush Mega Mix (2000)
- U.S. Pop Life Vol. 7: Random Access Music Machine (2001)
- KFJC Live from the Devil's Triangle Vol. III (2001)
- Real Slow Radio Compilation (Fort Thunder) (2001)
- U.S. Pop Life Vol. 12: Random Slice of Life at Ft. Thunder - Bands Who Played At (2002)
- A Benefit For Our Friends (DMBQ Tribute CD) (No label) (2005)