Swervedriver + Giants Of Science + Loomer @ The Zoo, 16.01.2011

The last time I saw Swervedriver was at the ATP MBV-curated Nightmare Before Xmas weekend back in December 2009, in a still-yet-to-be-written blog post. It was supremely loud (not as loud as MBV, but then nothing comes close to that) and frustratingly the band played in the dark, making photographing them the usual, frustrating low light experience.

Knowing this, I was expecting a repeat performance but it wasn’t: at the time I didn’t think it was anywhere loud enough (and also found it a bit disappointing as the sound was really muddy) but leaving just before the end, I could hear the band still playing when I was down at James Street, maybe about 500m down the road from the venue and when I got back home my ears were ringing.

Also unlike ATP, they had surprisingly pretty good lighting for the three songs I photographed. It was one of those rare cases where the lighting seemed to be so good that after about 1½ songs I was a bit bored of photographing and didn’t know what to do with myself. Of course the good lighting turns out to be something of an illusion as when I start processing the photos I realise that everything is horribly saturated with red light and fixing it makes the images thin and less vibrant. Black and white to the rescue (as ever…).