The Dirty Three - She has no strings Apollo

There's not many bands that you can play air fiddle to. Fortunately Dirty Three is one of these and even more fortunately i've had the pleasure of seeing one of my friends stand in the middle of a crowded concert manically playing air fiddle in time with the Dirty Three's Warren Ellis on stage. Of course by doing this he created a large circle of space as the surrounding concert goers slowly moved away from this obvious lunatic. this in turn created an even more surreal experience as suddenly said friend was standing on his own with no one whithin 5 metres of him still blindly flaily away with his imaginary bow and fiddle. This only enhanced my enjoyment of the concert and if you've ever attended a Dirty Three concert you'll know that they are mentally and physically exhausting experiences. Mentally because the music of D3 is so intense, so emotive and so loud that it consumes every part of you. The fact the it is all instrumental heightens your senses as you have no vocal lead to tune into. Your brain gets slammed from all sides with ellis' wailing violin, jim whites thrashing guitar and mick turners manic drums. Physically because some of this becomes a matter of endurance, D3 songs are built around intros and crescendos, and the cresendos can be extreme and lengthy. The violin is not always your friend at such decibels.She has no strings Apollo is the Dirty Three's sixth album ( of 7 LPs ) only 6 songs long, but boy, the intensity of those songs. bookended by the absolute corker of an openener "Alice Wading" and the rough and tumble closer "Rude" it's as good as any of their previous 5. if you're not familiar and want to get an idea this is not off this album but one of my favourite songs of all time here