MUSIC

Dynamo Hum rock out with the best of them. Julian Owen can’t help joining in on the chorus.

Dynamo Hum don’t play punk rock. Nor do they play glam rock. Come to that, they don’t play alt.rock, prog rock, post-rock, pre-rock or anyoldtomdickorharry rock. They play, simply, rock. Rock in the sense that every correctly raised music lover understands it, hard, loose and shouty. Rock in the manner best exemplified by Led Zeppelin, the band they used to... sorry, hang on a sec. “We talked about whether we would mention this,” says drummer Andy Sutor. “But it’s not something we should avoid, because it made us who we are.” Stout fellow. Yes, in a previous incarnation, the members of Dynamo Hum were a tribute band, Live Zeppelin. And they were pretty bloody good at it. Even when the wigs fell off. In fact, there’s a line of argument among Hum scholars that argues they got good when the wigs fell off.

“We played a gig at the Old Fox in Bishopston,” says guitarist Ben Johnson, “and they said ‘Great set, guys, but why are you wearing wigs? You look like idiots.’ From then on it was all about the music.” Live Zep became the pub’s de facto house band and regularly rammed it to the rafters. Not bad for a homework assignment. As students at Access To Music, Ben, Andy and bassist Louis Hessey-Antell were playing together in a group called Naked Twister. When asked to form a covers band they were stuck with one key Zep-related challenge – where on earth do you find a Robert Plant? “Matt [Carter] played drums with another band,” recalls Andy, “and it wasn’t until one of the college gigs when he was playing drums and singing we realised ‘Oh, god, this guy’s got a really high voice!’ We got him in...”

The covers period, says Andy, served them well. “Some of the difficulties you have when first starting a band were already taken care of – we could concentrate on writing good songs, not worry about the playing or technical aspects.” No doubt, there’s an explosive effortlessness to their sound, first debuted in February last year. Take the whomping great blues riff on ‘Test of Faith’, for example, underpinned by assuredly Bonham-esque drumming, colossally heavy on the beat, but with all manner of subtle dibs and dabs going on around it. The bass locks tight against it and Matt’s rock god shriek bobs, weaves and soars through it all. Hmm. ‘Shriek’ doesn’t sound like a compliment, but we mean it to be – the boy can holler. All of which ingredients would be just so many diamonds scattered uselessly to the wind were they not bathed in engine oil and wrapped glisteningly around monster hooks and choruses. Just listen to ‘You Wanted It All’ and try stopping yourself joining Matt’s cry to “Be my wooooorld!”, the repeated plea held aloft in the air by harmonising “aaaa-aaahs” from his band mates. Make no mistake, these are tunes, precision engineered and first kiss-memorable.

Kill It Kid fans will find plenty to enjoy here, with the band also rightly citing John E Vistic and Mars Volta as fellow travellers. “When you say hard rock,” says Louis, “you think Guns N’ Roses, Deep Purple. I’d say we’re trying more to be in the area of things like The Raconteurs: bluesy edges, bit of musicianship, nothing flashy.” That’s certainly the view of Matt Sampson, the Bink Bonk studio engineer Ben admits they’ve “got a lot to thank for – he helped us find our sound.” Andy explains why: “We planned for weeks how we were going to each record separately, drums to a click, and he was like ‘What do you want to do that for? You’re a live band!’ so we knocked it out, three of us in a room.”

Manchester, Cardiff and London can all vouch for their live chops, but it’s Bristol’s turn next. And it should be quite a night, attests Matt. “We haven’t gigged since February because we want to sell out the Louisiana, make it the biggest gig we could do.” To that end Bobby ‘Yes Rebels’ Anderson and Rob Jackson (“very Neil Young, but sounds like Julian Casablancas”) will play downstairs, while upstairs come Jemima Surrender (“amazing, just her and an electric guitar), Emily ‘Formerly of The Whispers’ Grist’s new band (“heavier, got a fuzzy edge – sounds amazing”), and then the band richly deserving to add a second level of meaning to the description “big noise”. There’s pragmatic planning afoot. “If you do a music course like we did, there’s no romantic idea left,” says Louis. “You’ve just got to look at the success stories and see how they did it, not be down in the dumps.” It helps that each band member can’t imagine playing with anyone else. “No matter how much one of us is acting like a d*ckhead at certain times,” says Ben, “we all understand that we’re a f*cking amazing band together.” This isn’t said with any tone of boastfulness or braggadocio, but as matter of factly as if he’d observed “We’re four blokes. We breathe air and eat food.” More promisingly still, Matt adopts a similar tone as he says “I don’t feel like we’ve even got started yet. This is just waiting for the right moment...”

DYNAMO HUM PLAYED THE LOUISIANA, BRISTOL ON SAT 2 JULY. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/DYNAMOHUMUK

Copyright Julian Owen 2011