Screamo Bingo, MOTH Club
Somewhere between a current of sonic distortion and a bingo card marked B3, the crowd screams; not out of rage or victory but because repressing the scream is no longer an option inside Far From’s Screamo Bingo at the MOTH Club in Hackney. When Harold, vocalist of Export/Import, provokes the room with the question – How many years dead are you? – the crowd startles to language; the answer surges instead through sound and movement, charged into the night. This crowd declares that they are, in fact, very much alive.
The night opens with Export/Import, an 8-piece ensemble which, featuring Aldi Ho’s enchanting vocals, summons the ‘50s. Glistening red jackets dance with the sparkling interiors of MOTH, enveloping me in warmth and golden sound. Yet, their set does not offer a comfortable seat in the past. Instead, I twitch to the touch of an ominous undercurrent. Harold’s mystical presence – cane, top hat, and an expression lost in thought – seem safely distant until he glides inside the crowd and spins with those nearest. Magic teases the simmering lovers of screamo, bouncing between bodies, unpredictable and untamed. No one in the room is safe and the seed of release is planted.
Above photos / collage by Carlos Fell Alvaraz
The crowd vibrates louder, pulsating to and from the smoking area. Upon return, the four-piece, Scadenza, draws me deeper inside, into a landscape of whirling bass and heavy instrumental textures. I am cut through and held together by Elisa’s piercing vocals. She explodes in a series of unintelligible guttural releases, inviting the room to undress from lyrical structures and slip into the vulnerable colours of wail. ‘It’s not pain’ Elisa tells me after. ‘It’s liberation’.
The interruption: Bingo. The absurd brilliance of pairing screamo with the politeness of Bingo – how do they interact? One moment, Elisa’s vocals grip the insides of the crowd, colliding bodies together. The next, silence unleashes the sweaty mass into another round of anticipation. As bingo host, Harold resumes the mic with a ceremonious, metaphor-heavy monologue. Numbers are read out with gravity. A BINGO scream erupts. The triumphant winners step onto the stage and receive their prizes: wellies, a golden doll, a lemon tree. Bingo melds sonic anguish with a sense of play, and agony is tinted with amusement.
Scadenza by Crow Higgott
Excitement lifts off and it’s My Rushmore who catch it – the four-piece from Glasgow brings looseness and a daring attitude. Ethan, frontman of the band, lets us inside his room. There is no stage-audience divide, no remote spectacle. Voices rise and people get involved. Dive off the stage and, lifted by the crowd’s hand, you are the gliding body of My Rushmore’s sound. Ethan turns his back to the surrounding movement, immersed in a guitar solo far away. The band’s devotion materializes in the collective take-offs and collisions, revealing less ego and more movement.
My Rushmore by Crow Higgott
A short break and the last band, I’m Sorry Emil, emerges amidst scattered bingo cards: a three-piece of urgency and heart. Intimacy is in the stripped-down drums, melodic guitar, in Philip’s vocals – half-spoken half-screamed. This is a communal unravelling of a sound as delicate as it is chaotic. Someone next to me shouts ‘I came here to drink beer and win at Bingo’ before plunging into the surrounding oneness. Emo becomes ecstatic; bingo somehow sticks between these walls.
I’m Sorry Emil by Crow Higgott
Dim-lit throats turn hot and glimmering eyes illuminate the stage. Between the ending day and the one to come a space opens, housing release. Holding our hand, the current of sound – in a shape specific to each band – lets us inside. Golden ceilings and sticky fingers, MOTH can hold this non-performance. The warmed-up floor caresses the divers unmet by hands, shooting them to reclimb the stage, jump again. Appearances are shed and scream takes shape. I see it bouncing in the crowd, I smell it in the girl’s hair which whiplashes my face – sharp and sweet – as she turns in song. A communal purge of boundaries.
Words by Sofia Ishoy
