Konqistador

Slowly, secretly, figures emerged from underground, from under water: the self-blinded saint, the woman warrior, the stranger named Persuasion. Speaking in half a dozen languages, uniting dozens of instruments and countries, layering moment on moment over the course of years, the images arose and broke into tracks, words, melodies.

They came to Konqistador, an electronically boosted, globally enriched collaboration, as music bathed in biting distortion and trembling on the delicate edge of gut strings. The project, spearheaded by the Canadian duo of Elizabeth Graham and Reginald Tiessen, can grab the hardest, grittiest industrial beats by the horns or turn around and seduce with the gentlest of gestures. Emotional and sonically complex, Suada (release: September 18, 2012) links everything from long-lost Kenneth Anger soundtracks to Afghan poetry, from Lebanese holy women to Turkish street musicians.

A chronicle of a global journey from Australia to the U.S.-Canadian border, from the Bosphorus to the Balkans, the album’s blinding light and deep shadows suggest epic vistas and intimate breaths, searing strength and profound sorrow.

“We were between Istanbul and Detroit and had just left Melbourne,” explains Graham, describing the project’s global wanderings. “I was feeling lost, thinking this album was never going to see the light of day. Then, I realized all the women I met on our travels were digging for some sort of hope, incessantly digging for a treasure in a mound of dirt. All while everyone around her is saying, ‘You can’t, you won’t, you never will.’ But you have to listen to yourself. You have to stick to your guns.”

One day, Tiessen walked out of a Detroit thrift store with an old Hammond organ and took a razor to its flimsy paper speakers. The resultant eerie rumble would eventually resound in shadowy Bucharest studios, through midnights in Melbourne, in massive cellars below Istanbul.

“It was a crappy organ with fluttering, slashed, dirty speakers,” Tiessen recalls, “but it had this new, distressed sound, the beginning of bridging electronica with a grittier, more organic rock drive, something we had been wanting do to for a while.”

From the slashed organ sprang Konqistador, with several hard-hitting albums. Life took the Graham and Tiessen to Australia, where they pursued both their blues and rock lives and tried to develop Konqistador in new ways. Though they gathered an ever growing following Down Under and across Eastern Europe, the duo restlessly explored new approaches, alternatives to the balls-out intensity of their earlier work.

Random encounters began suggesting new roads. A late-night DJ with a shift at the Melbourne radio station where the band practiced handed them a copy of Lucifer Rising, the blistering yet ethereal soundtrack for the Kenneth Anger film of the same name. Its dark yet sparkling sonic imprint made its mark on Konqistador’s evolving sound.

At roughly the same time, Graham became friends with an Albanian woman with the curious name of Suada, literally “persuasion.”

“I started thinking about the centuries-old idea that women have a special persuasive power,” reflects Graham. “Not in a malicious way, but that women can use their influence for good, especially through music and dance. That was the underlying theme, to get at Suada, to find that whole emotive side in what had been very masculine music.” Stories of striking, defiant women resonated, becoming intense, building tracks. “Rafqa” tells the tale of a Lebanese saint who expressed her faith by removing her eyesight, an ultimate sacrifice to her vision of God.

To tell these tales, Konqistador longed to bring in sounds that strayed far beyond the standard power trio or rock quartet. The Rays began collaborating with producers like Janin Pasniciuc, an icon of the Romanian electronic music underground. They began consulting with veteran dark electronic/industrial producers from Dave Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy) to Jacob Hellner (Rammstein). They learned from master film orchestrators and composers, like fellow Detroit-area oud (Arab lute) and kanun (Turkish zither) player Victor Ghannam (Xena: Warrior Princess, Spartacus)

But the biggest leap forward came with yet another international move. Intrigued by the musicians and people they encountered on tour, the Rays took the ultimate plunge: “We found ourselves living in Istanbul. We didn’t want to start playing around samples, with drum loops,” Tiessen recounts. “We moved there because we decided if we were going to dabble in world music, we’re going to do so at the highest level. We set ourselves up there for two years, after touring in Turkey extensively for more than seven years. We immersed ourselves in the culture.”

The intertwining sounds and journeys resound on tracks like “Brancovan,” born on three continents. “It started with a rock riff in Detroit, then Hugh Crosthwaite, an Australian composer and expert on baroque music, orchestrated it, help build the soundscape. It had to make its way east and north again, into a dungeon-like studio in an Istanbul neighborhood near where a lot of the street musicians perform every day. They have dark pasts, some rough habits. That’s where it found its darkness, in this 4,000-square foot basement below the city.” There, the rippling sounds of a street musician’s kanun crossed the brass blasts of an experimental jazz trumpeter, playing full force in that great resonant space.

The community that Konqistador slowly eased into in Istanbul, with its emphasis on exchanging experience and mutual respect, proved the perfect infusion of energy for the project’s long-languishing songs and slow-burning disillusionment. After returning to Canada, Konqistador’s core members continued to reach out to musicians they met in subways, in housing projects for recent refugees.

Gifted young musicians like Cihat Ozturk, a musical prodigy and youthful baglama (traditional long-neck lute) player, whom Konqistador supported in his petition for asylum, helping the musician record a song he later performed at his immigration hearing. This kind of collaboration became a natural, if unexpected, moment in Konqistador’s evolution. “Without knowing it, we went about making this album as diverse as possible to pay respect to all the people we had such meaningful encounters with,” Tiessen muses. “In more cognizant way, we want to build on this, creating a live performance which will include these young, often female musicians,” newcomers to North American who have often gone unsung.

“These musicians are invisible here, even if they are somebodies in their own country,” Graham continues. “We want to find a way to incorporate these émigré musicians into the project, and into the broader musical conversation here.” - Rock Paper Scissors

Konqistador - Courage Riot

> Music Reviews

Reported by: Zero - Friday, Apr 29, 2005. 15:07

Konqistador. What can I say? Plenty, actually. Let’s start with the fact that this album has the capability of rocking the very foundations of your residence. As far as debuts go, Courage Riot leaves little to be desired. A little bit Eastern and a lot rock, with lashings of distortion and a deliciously sinister undercurrent thrown in, it is enough to make you weak at the knees.

Before launching into the album, an introduction is in order, for Konqistador’s history and influences are a good indication of just why this album rocks so hard. Two members, Lizzy Ray and Reggie Ray (72Blues) hail from Melbourne, while producer and co-writer Dave Andrew Chow lives in Detroit. In addition to Melbourne and Detroit, the band also spent some time in Istanbul during production. Oh, and the album is sung in English, Spanish, French, Turkish and German.

It may seem a risky endeavour to bombard an album with so many influences and vernacular surprises – however, it works incredibly well, and the result is one solid, engaging record which will stay in your CD player for days.

First song Kill Konstantine opens with the sound of a siren, which continues until the music kicks in. A pounding drum beat, fuzzy guitars and distorted vocals are the order of the day, and these elements make for one sonically heavy and intense song. The lyrics include the sentiment “kill ‘cause you can”, and this
is where the sinister element comes in. Absolutely awesome.

In Toro Montenegro we are again bombarded with distorted vocals and an enormous sound, but this time the atmosphere is one of pure rock and roll.

Arguably the best song on the release is track four, Courage Riot, which begins with chugging, stop-start guitars. Creepy, layered vocals come to the fore during the stripped-back verses, and there is a fantastic musical break towards the end of the song, which has a warped country-western feel as the lyrics “I found my courage in the belly of a fire” are repeated. This song pounds into your skull and there is only one way to listen to it – up really, really fricking loud!

Namaz 476 has an eastern sound, thanks to the beautiful and haunting vocals soaring over the effects, all building in volume until the song’s abrupt end. This element also appears in the final track Evil Gotten, Evil Spent, conveyed through prominent guitars that chew up the eastern sound and spit it out with all a bombast and volume that every good rock song should have.

Konqistador’s knack for musical diversity continues with Un Cercle Justifie. A powerful guitar riff kicks things off, while a swampy blues-rock element takes over during the verses.

Black As Hell is more of a straight up rock track, which does not mean that it isn’t as effective. Lizzy-Ray’s vocals are perfect as they soar over the gritty guitars.

In case I haven’t already made the point clear, this is a staggeringly good album, and the kind of debut that sets one carting the CD around to friends’ places in excitement. Konqistador, you rock.

- Faster Louder

KONQISTADOR
Courage Riot
Album of the Week

Konqistador have hit the three d's with their debut album Courage Riot: dirty, dark and distorted and it absolutely rocks. Although most band members also play in local act 72Blues, don't expect the same kind of sound. Courage Riot is an album that growls and churns the whole way through with an intensity of songwriting stepping it up above the standard rock release. It incorporates a a range of styles and complex compositions delivering a diverse and energetic album with songs that kick in, give you an idea and then get out without dragging out whatever message they're leaving.

Whilst Lizzy Ray's vocals are still recognisable with her distinctive strong roar, it sounds as if she's pulled this album out from deep within. Konqistador seems to be the vent for this groups anger and they'll take down anything in their path. In their own catchy words "kill cause you can".

Written largely via the internet between members in Detroit and Melbourne, Courage Riot took two years to create and encompasses a heap of different influences. The eastern influence from their time spent in Istanbul is most prominent through instrumental finale Evil Gotten Evil Spent which is along side The Tea Party lines without their pretentiousness. Musically the eastern-style instrumentation shines through Un Cercle Justifie too, mixed with electronic sounds to create a rather spacey vibe.

The lyrics are delivered in different language including; English, Spanish, French, German and Turkish but the tunes speak loud and clear. The guitar is deep and distorted, working perfectly with solid freak-out electro bass lines. Combined with interesting timing, there is an element of space that stops their powerful roar and wailing riffs short of being messy. That said, this is not a polished sound, it manages to sit somewhere between industrial-goth and electro-rock. Reggie Ray has evidently spent time at Dave Grohl's 'everthing I touch turns to gold' school of music, thumping out strong beats on the drums that truly drive the Konqistador sound through your veins.

Highlights include thier killer intro of Kill Konstantine, the rock based Black As Hell which stands up as the most radio friendly track with it's chugging rhythm, the fantastic guitar and samples of Toro Montenegro where the effects carry on the chorus and my personal favourite Namaz 476 with the found-sound archives of travels through the streets of Istanbul.

The album is further diversified by Ballad of Dwight Frye, with a solid effort covering Alice Cooper's 1971 hit from his Love It To Death album.

Overall Courage Riot is loud and aggressive without being abrasive. Like a vicious X it will suck you in, tear you apart and nine tracks later spit you out, but you'll love every minute of it and even thank them when it's over. The more I listen to it, the more I love it. Get it before it gets you. - Beat Magazine

Konqistador "Courage Riot"
(Warthog/Shock Records)

(FRA) Ce groupe issu de Detroit a traversé l’océan pour s’installer à Melbourne. Il vient de sortir un second EP 9 titres et de faire une première tournée en Australie. Une voix féminine qui utilise l’espagnol, l’anglais et même le français…Etonnant non ? Les guitares et les tempos sont pesants et bien hard rock. Des samples et un côté electro qui donnent de la richesse aux compositions et aussi une bonne dose de fraîcheur ou peut-être d’originalité, je ne sais pas… Konqistador est en tout cas bien séduisant avec son look entre glam rock et gothique. La chanteuse envoie ses mélodies dans un vieux micro plein de distorsion, un peu trop même. C’est dommage car elle a une super jolie voix. En effet, elle laisse échapper parfois sa voix naturelle sur des passages calmes et sensuels et ça a l’air de le faire grave. Le dernier titre est instrumental avec un petit quelque chose d’Orient qui se laisse délicieusement écouter. Une belle découverte. La prochaine tournée est en programmation aux States et en Europe avec je l’espère quelques dates en France. (Chris) Contact : www.konqistador.com
GENRE : Indie Rock
- Walked In Line eZine

Konqistador / Courage Riot
(Warthog/Shock Records)

Do you know what it is to feel anxious, yet excited? To have a bloodied nose but keep on fighting, sink that beer and go home to your woman? Melbourne/Detroit's very own Konqistador do. Courage Riot heaves with a back-alley darkness, a King's Cross seediness, but with a heavy guitar-groove, electro-industrial vibe that is inescapable - its long tendrils wrap themselves around you, pulling you inexorably into the rock.

A perfect example of fucked-up electro-rock with even a touch of electronica/atmospheric undertones. Courage Riot is dark, sexy and unstoppable. - Brown Noise Unit

Now available: view the latest Konqistador reviews in the EU
Visit www.undertow-recordings.com for more info.

Dark electro-rock trio Konqistador is part-Melbourne, part-Detroit, and all unsettling evil. Beat talks to the man behind the Trixon Speedfire kit, Reggie Ray, about stirring up ghosts worldwide on the new album Courage Riot

“Konqistador allows us to tap into electronica, new gear, found sounds, new cultures, ancient history, the darker side,” Reggie says, summing up the modus operandi of the band. Reggie brought the band from Detroit to Melbourne, with wife Lizzy Ray on vocals and Kaoss KP2 three years ago, leaving guitar/vocalist/elctrobass/synth maestro D.A. Chow in their homeland. “The logisitics of it is that the band spends equal amount of time in Melbourne and Detroit,” he explains. D.A. has come out to Melbourne three times and the band has returned to Detroit twice now, and the sisterhood of the cities is undeniable.

Growing up on Detroit jazz, blues, stadium rock as well the bar-room rock the town is famous for, brings a melange of flavours to Konqistador’s eerie, dirty sound.

What influences it most is that the writing process rules all. Keyboard, drum, synths, and found sound samples have been uploaded and downloaded over two years between the towns, tweaking and constructing along the way, an idea lifted from Calexico’s continent crossing recording efforts. Technological hiccups plus a daily work ethic for so long made it “a fucking soupbowl,” says Ray, “a mess.” But perfection takes time. “We work with 18-month trajectories,” he says. “We‘re anal, we’re nazis, you have to be to keep something like this going."

Their particularity about their work that has gone into shaping the album and the band is reflected in the way the members are identified. Notice Reggie Ray plays not the ‘drums’ but ‘Trixon Speedfire,’ an ultra-rare 1964 drum kit, of which there are only two in the southern hemisphere. He states plainly that “it is me, I am it.” The kitschy kit, with its squished bass drum and line of toms, was created for surf music and it took Ray years to find one to buy. After much negotiation when he finally got one, he promised to send a photo of him playing to it previous owner, Johnny Lightening. Sadly, between the purchase and his first gig, Johnny died. “The kit is bigger than me,” Ray says wistfully. “It’s bigger than a drumkit. It is its own beast.”

Over the organic sound of the priceless heirloom, Konqistador layer all manner of fuzzed-out, fucked-up technology. Ray says the band is learning over time to manipulate sound through technology, to come up with truly new effects that compliment their thick sinister rock. “Writing’s changes totally. Getting a synth and manipulating a real guttural evil tone inspires writing.” Multiple layering and tweaking thankfully sets them apart from the chilly, plastic sounds of today’s bands that just pick up a keyboard as instrument number four. As well as the songs sounding unlike any other bands, Ray insists he wants even their “synth to be entirely unique.”

He half-jokes that this kind of uncompromising attitude will be the band’s demise. “I mean, delivering an album in Melbourne in five different languages, you just put the noose around your own neck in terms of national radio play,” he laments. “The choice to bury vocals…I’ve had every A&R piece of shit, scumbag motherfucker say ‘No, no, we need the vocals up, 12db above,’ Fuck off.” Thankfully local label Warthog Records, through Shock, picked them up because of their sound, not to change it.

Yes, the album has five languages across its nine tracks: German, Spanish, Turkish, English and French, within the vocals or from samples. Reggie tells of a recent episode in Germany where he was recording neo-nazi parade chants on an election day, and was dragged out by riot police. “We live by our name, we’re adventurers and we’re conquerors,” Ray claims. “You can take that in an egomaniacal way or in a way where we always want to gain new experiences. Travel is essential; if we’re not travelling, this band is dead. We’re into new cultures, we’re into the street sounds of cultures.”
This manifests itself most potently on the track Namaz 476, with parts recorded in Istanbul and on a Sydney to Melbourne flight, Ray says D.A. has a fascination with the word ‘fuselage’ and during some heavy turbulence on the flight, he asked the others if they felt the pressure change in the fuselage of the plane. “Hearts are beating, I’m sweating,” Ray marvels. “It’s your typical turbulence and in that ‘Holy fuck, we could die’ moment, he was listening to the sounds.” They had their Powerbook readily available and recorded the fuselage sound, and later embedded it with the megaphone religious chants from the streets of Istanbul, creating a powerful and chilling interlude.

The mood swamps the whole album: droning keys bleed over rumbling riffs, howling vocals are snapped into line by - Beat Magazine

Courage Riot
Menacing Electro Rock

By Patrick Donovan
December 23, 2005

Konqistador's debut features dark, distorted and menacing bluesy electro rock.
Courage Riot: dark, distorted and menacing bluesy electro rock.

Courage Riot: dark, distorted and menacing bluesy electro rock.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

Successful collaborations between Detroit and Australian musicians hark back to the Radio Birdman days.

Konqistador formed in Detroit in 2003 when multilingual vocalist Lizzy Ray and drummer Reggie Ray took time out from their Melbourne band 72 Blues and started jamming with D. A. Chow, who injected sludgy bass and dark synthesiser washes into their bluesy mix.

For their excellent debut Courage Riot (which was self-funded with the help of Arts Victoria), they wrote nine songs, swapping files on email across three continents, including mixing in Istanbul.

The result is dark, distorted and menacing bluesy electro rock that nods its head to Jesus and Mary Chain, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, KYUSS and My Bloody Valentine.

On opener Kill Konstantine, Lizzy Ray implores "Kill 'cause you can now, kill 'cause you know how" in heavily distorted vocals over wailing sirens, sludgy buzzsaw guitars and a Mogadon slow tempo; Ballad of Dwight Frye sounds like Kate Bush on steroids; while NAMAZ 476 uses the sound of Istanbul's streets - street preachers and poets - delivered through archaic megaphone technology. - Partrick Donovan

Konqistador - Courage Riot
Reported by: Ginger Ninja
Jan 04, 2006

Prog is in the middle of a new resurgence, though few bands actually accept the label. Bands like The Mars Volta, Muse and A Perfect Circle are perfect examples of the public’s willingness to embrace the arty (and occasionally pretentious) music. Perfectly timed to capitalise on this movement is part-Melbourne part-Detroit act Konqistador, a new force in progressive electro-rock.

With an army of fuzz-boxes, ageing megaphones and atmospheric instrumentation, Konqistador create dense, menacing soundscapes that are as disconcerting as they are musically abstract. On Courage Riot, Konqistador mine territory that is unique with tools that are still familiar, combining sinister synthesisers, thunderous percussion and buzzing guitars with multi-lingual, megaphone-smeared lead vocals to create something that generally walks the fine line between abstract ridiculousness and heard-it-before derivation.

As is the case in many prog bands, Konqistador do have a tendency to swing out into the wildly pretentious at times, but forgiveness is imminent, because everything else on the album is so superbly realised. One characteristic that makes the band so interesting to listen to is the fact that no one instrument or band member seems to take centre stage for too long. In each song, the multiple layers of instruments, voices and sounds are balanced in such a perfect way that all the pieces come together as a whole, rather than a series of competing noises.

The density of the production and the interesting nature of all the sounds on the album means that this disc will spin many times before it tires. The overall tone is ominous and occasionally malicious, but the subtleties within each of the songs bring individual meaning and distinction to each. Whether howling or whispering, Lizzy Ray’s vocals are sinuous poems, simultaneously made louder and more distant by the frequent placement of a
megaphone between mouth and microphone. The effect is one of urgency and pain, with the ethereal quality adding to the atmosphere of the album. Add to this the disconcerting use of a spectacular array of languages, and the result is an album that leaves the listener disoriented and fully satisfied.

Both contrasting and complementing the sharpness of Ray’s vocals are the twin guitars of D.A. Chow and Ben James. Gritty and visceral, the guitars pulse and thud in harmony with cymbal crashes and drum beats, sometimes making it hard to differentiate the instruments without conscious effort. Guitar riffs can be deep, distorted power-chords (Kill Konstantine), or strident, piercing counterpoints (Evil Gotten Evil Spent). This versatile nature helps to provide a more diverse range of songs, and offers each song an identity distinct from those beside it.

The true originality of the album, though, draws from the interaction of these instruments with the swirling synths, and the myriad of other sonic sources that provide the depth and colour to Konqistador’s music. Without the details, the spaces that the band members have carefully placed would be mere absences of sound, rather than the cavernous, echoing contrasts that we hear now. Quiet against the loudness, tenderness amidst harshness: by weaving these contrasts through the album, the peaks of the sounds are raised to new extremes. Like emo, prog is a tag bands tend to resist, probably avoiding associations to magic-themed, wizard-obsessed '70s-era prog.

Though Konqistador describe their sound as evil electro rock, it truly is fantastic progressive music. It is undeniably evil in its tone (Konqistador don’t seem like a band to irritate), but it is so much more than just rock overlaid with electro or vice versa. Konqistador are exciting and musically dangerous. They stimulate instinctively and intellectually, spitting venom and inspiring poetry all in the one breath.


- Faster Louder

"We're all pretty level people, pretty grounded, genuine, approachable - so how do we make such a nasty record?" asks Melbourne's Reggie Ray who, along with partner Lizzy and Detroit collaborator D.A. Chow form the core of electro-rock band Konqistador.

Their striking debut album, 'Courage Riot' offers nine tracks in about 35 minutes, in three languages, with found sounds and a mix of dirty rock, electro and synthesizers.

The Rays, originally from Windsor, Canada, hopped the border to Detroit before settling in Melbourne's music scene with 72Blues. Chow who also left Windsor for Detroit, was a mate of Reggie's from high school.

"We lost touch and then found each other again after about 15 years," Reggie says. The Rays came to Australia after Reggie was a photographer at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. "I thought Melbourne could compete with any music industry city in the world," he says. "We'd been looking at London, LA, New York, Austin Texas, but Melbourne has a very healthy community, with support from community radio and press and other musicians."

"Even the govermnent was helpful," he says pointing out that 72Blues' album "Said I Would" and Konqistador's "Courage Riot" were made with Arts Victoria funding. "Courage Riot" was born when 72Blues was on tour in the US. " It was born from the angst of an independent band on tour: personality clashes, a broken-down van, broken-down instruments, cancelled gigs," Reggie says. "It was made from high emotions."

From a jam session at Chow's studio in Detroit, it took two years to finish, with the Rays and Chow swapping tracks over the internet. It's a heady mix: Lizzy, whose blues-rasp siren-screech voice makes you want to get down on your knees and confess your sins, just so you can make them over again, sings in French, Spanish and English. Often her voice is electronically altered to match the mood of each track. 'Namaz 476' uses spoken word and the sounds of Istanbul. Instrumental track 'Evil Gotten Evil Spent' further channels the music of the Middle East with its guitar walls.

"We see learning bit and pieces of other languages as a tapestry," Reggie says. "Soon we'll be dabbling in a new set, maybe Turkish and German. We're also dabbling in found sound, which comes from our constant travels and crisscrossing the globe with a backpack and a minidisc recorder. Our songs are geographic; they come from our immersing ourselves in a new culture, its rituals and traditions. And without being too considered, it can open up new markets. We are very aware of ourselves as foreigners. I think it's proper to address an audience in their national tongue if you can take the time to learn it."

'Toro Montenegro' sung in Spanish, was written after viewing the Tony Gatlif movie 'Vengo', which features gypsy and Spanish music. As the song's title suggests, it's about bullfighting, and" says Reggie, "It wouldn't have sounded right in any other language. It's tapping into the sport from the point of view of the bull. If the game wasn't rigged the bull would kick arse every time. It's not fair, but neither is life."

That unfairness, and how we react to it, could stand as a theme of the album. "Courage Riot" is a symbol of the demons in all of us , revenge but also hopefully decency and respect," he says. The album also features a superb cover of Alice Cooper's 'Ballad of Dwight Frye', managing to enhance the asylum theme without losing the essence of Cooper's vision.

"I read in an interview with Greg Dulhi of the Afghan Whigs where he said he wrote songs about all the shit people were afraid to talk about or afraid to be heard talking about. As a youngster interested in rock n' roll, Alice Cooper was the first band to do the same. He was a normal guy from a normal family from a normal part of the country, so what's with all the theatre? It was the beginning of the idea of being in a band and writing music like that. It's an ode to our mentor. I have to send him a copy yet." - The Courier-Mail Australia

Konqistador, Van @ The Oxford Tavern, Wollongong
Reported by: Ginger Ninja
Jan 18, 2006

Showing themselves to be the tightest band, Konqistador made the transition from setting up to playing much more distinct, leaving the audience in no doubt as to when the set had started. With a tight snap of gritty guitar, Konqistador kicked the set into gear, drawing every eye in the house.

From the moment they began, Konqistador were challenging and aggressive, from the first burst of harsh guitar chords until the last squeal of feedback. There was no respite from the constant layers of disquieting sounds, even between songs. Guitarists Andy 84 and D.A. Chow would find and exploit the pockets of feedback, assailing the audience with violent shrieks and warps.

Lizzy Ray sings to prove the old maxim ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. Somehow she channels the wrath of every woman who has ever been mistreated and allows it to explode through the mic in a staggering array of different languages. English, French, Spanish: all these and more, without ever losing an ounce of the biting menace that drives her singing. On stage she is serpentine and demonic, a succubus that few straight men could resist: hips swaying, hair flying, with eyes that burn black. The Frankenstein monster that was the synthesiser/Theremin was treated mercilessly, pounded and strained until it seemed it could take no more. Lizzie Ray wrought sounds like screams and deathly wails from the duct-taped beast, adding to the dense and ominous atmosphere.

All the members of Konqistador are giving this everything, as though they were playing to a crowd of thousands rather than a moderately crowded local pub. Lizzie Ray is biting at the microphone and abusing the synth; Reggie Ray is attacking the drums with such force that he looks like he’s trying to destroy them, to pierce metal with wood and split skins. James and Chow are more subdued, but they are constrained somewhat by space.On their album Courage Riot, Konqistador created a dark and threatening atmosphere from the very beginning, using a broad array of sampled sounds and disorienting effects. So detailed was the sound palette that it seemed impossible to recreate live without losing some of the details that made the layers work so well together.

This didn’t prove a problem for Konqistador, though, with their songs not failing but flourishing in the live setting. The passion that lives throughout their music seems redoubled live, yet still they manage to include the sweeping, ethereal noises that underpinned the album.Konqistador were dark and passionate; always disquieting, never disappointing

All About Konqistador (Artist), Oxford Tavern, the (Venue), Oxford Tavern (Promoter) - Faster Louder

Visit Undercover.com.au for Konqistador's latest VIDEO INTERVIEW The band talks with Andrew Tijs about the status of the new record 'Electriker', their new videos shot in Istanbul, Turkey and Cairo, Egypt and the evergrowing K-Army worldwide.

Check out:
http://undercover.com.au/Interviews.aspx - Undercover/Roo Group