Holy Forrest bring the shoegaze to that tiny corridor on King St Newtown that is the Mosh Pit tonight.

The first part of the entertainment was seeing how this five piece, complete with big amps and even bigger effects pedal boards shoehorned themselves into the pocket handkerchief that makes up the stage area. Amazingly, with a little bit of tetris action, it all fit it, so long as no-one moves….or breathes out.

From the first chord of the droning guitars, the bar was transported to a dreamy, hazy, guitarry place, better suited to floating through clouds in a monkey magic kinda way. Three guitars (count em…three!) pushed through a million and one effects pedals, drove that that intestinal and discordant drone that floated over the bass and drum beat that acted like a switch on a railway track to shift the song directions. Floaty, dreamy vocals topped off the atmos – picture a dark hazy opium den & then add this as a sound track.

But….. it didn’t take long for a few technical issues to raise their heads. The set was regularly interrupted, in what seemed like almost every second song, by the sound engineer trying to get the band to turn down amps so the vocal only amp in the venue could cope with the volume, without blowing a phuffer valve.

The band fought on, with more and more effects being unplugged as the night wore on. But even though the crowd encouraged them to turn up and persevere; the mixer continued his quest to strip out the sound.

The band was visibly a little dejected even though they finished their set; but it would definitely be worth catching these guys in a bigger venue where they could really let fly.

Where was that Brown Note? – probably in one of the discarded effects.