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Parasite Nurse

Jun 03, 2025 By Nick Roseblade Photography by Nick Roseblade Web Exclusive

If you want to see noise and experimental music mid-week in Brighton, your best bet is The Bee’s Mouth. They don’t have noise sets every week, but they are regular enough for you to take a chance and see. Or just look up online before heading out is also a good idea. This evening there was a real treat for the senses. As Parasite Nurse was in from America, and leg of European tour of including Distraxi, Pale World and Sword of Damocles was swinging by Brighton. If this wasn’t enough List of Moths was also on the bill. This had the prospect to be something very special indeed.

List of Moths was first up. Opening with what sounded like ornate church bells and chimes, Michael D. Brown’s set slowly became more fractured. This happened gracefully. Static started to enter the set. Then a deep drone kicked in. That mutated into throbbing bass, or was that just a byproduct of the sonic assault that Brown was concocting? After 10-minutes the drone gets louder. Brown is forever twisting a knob on his device. Brown leaves the results for a few seconds before pressing a button. Leaving that to grow, and ebb, before, you guessed it, moving something else. The whole set was an exercise in minimal manipulation. Everything is in constant flux. The final few minutes were the most impressive. All the static drops away and we’re left with a glorious drone. It’s serene, rhythmic and, dare I say, catchy. Then it all just stops. The use of white noise feels inspired. Instead of trying to melt our faces off, Brown uses it as punctuation to the wonderful drones. It emphasises their strengths, rather than covering their weaknesses. Listening to List of Moths reminds me of listening to 65daysofstatic for the first time 25 years ago. It made me sit up and pay attention, but what do we expect from the man who also goes under the names Fleshlicker and Foul Prey?

Sword of Damocles was next to grace The Bee’s Mouth. After lighting an incense stick Alastair Fyffe turned his back on the crowd. I always enjoy it when a musician does this. Some feel it shows contempt, but I think it shows respect. It so says, to me at least, that Fyffe is creating music for himself first and our enjoyment second. If Brown’s set was an exercise in less is more, Fyffe’s was more is more. The majority of his kit was housed in a massive, bright orange flight case. Underneath that was a tape deck, that I think was used to record the set, rather than to project any music. Cassettes were used throughout the set. They had elegant drones on them. Really pretty and pastoral pieces of music. Then, after the desired length of time, BAM, Fyffe depressed a button in the box, and it was just white noise, feedback, distortion and confusion. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the noise was removed, and another drone was playing. A funny thing happened when the noise switch was flicked. The crowd jumped. It was such a sudden, and unexpected thing, that we were all taken aback. This happened four more times throughout the set and each time we jumped. One time I was filming it, and the camera noticeably moved. The highlight of the set was whenever Fyffe used his contact microphones, especially next to speakers. To the right-hand side of the flight box, on the altar of noise where everything was set up, was a small guitar amp. It was the kind you’d get with your first guitar. Fyffe repeatedly turned this on and just rammed and rubbed his contact microphone all over it. The resulting feedback was a delight. Throughout the set Fyffe drank a pint. At one point he picked up a chain, a contact microphone and dropped it in the dregs of his drink. Then sloshed it about it a bit, then left it feedbacking. It was a joy to see and the results, though slightly less audible, added to the general malaise. Much like Brown’s set, it suddenly ended.

Next up was an artist I’d been a fan of for YEARS but had never seen live before. Pale World. As with the previous two sets Pale World opened with an ambient drone. This was short lived as swirling vortexes of static, feedback and, well, noise erupted from the speakers. Like Fyffe, Joe Parkes positioned himself with his back to the crowd. He leant over his table and hammered his pedals, depressed switches and generally made an ungodly racket. It’s through watching someone at the top of their game, as Parkes is, that you realise how 2D some noise acts are. They think that all you need to do is put everything in the red and it’s a good show. Wrong. You need the textures. You need nuance, but most importantly you need something to say. And boy did Parkes have something to say. It felt like his set was about grief, anger and sadness. Throughout he built sounds up and tore them down again. At one point he had a metal box that sounded like it was full of pebbles. This was shaken violently but also turned over quizzically. At one point he shot his arm out. Then let it hang, unmoving, for what felt like minutes. The sound inside the box rattled and slowly ceased. Then he’d do it again. SHAKE. STILLNESS. It was powerful. His performance, and it was a performance, was a joy to watch. At times he scowled like a Richard III and made use of all of his body, not just his hands and head. Feet stamping on the floor. Then came the really powerful stuff. Hanging next to his small table was a piece of sheet metal and a metal pole. Parkes started to attack it with the pole. Just lumping it for all it was worth. Then he stopped and started bowing it. On its own the noise would have been piercing, but added to the sound of the world on fire it added extra texture. This happened again and again. The final moment of the set was a ghastly exercise in sound. I had to keep checking the speaker to make sure that they weren’t actually smoking as they sounded like everything was ablaze. No one, and I mean no one, does the sound of the world on fire like Joe Parkes. And then his set was over. After I’d clapped until my hands hurt, I sat in silence and thought about what I’d witnessed. Then two words came to mind. Awe inspiring.

Distraxi was the penultimate performance of the night. Alina Church’s performance was the most theatrical. The set started off in a power electronics vein. Church’s altar of noise was festooned with small keyboards, a laptop, pedals, a microphone, contact microphones and a stack of junk to be abused at some point. The set started not with a drone but with a vocal sample. This sounded like some kind of chant. Not religious, but probably spiritual. Then bass and keyboard entered the mix. It got loud quickly. The Church started shouting, ranting, raving and making a vocal cacophony. Seeing someone screaming into a microphone so hard their stomach looks like its retching is striking. The only downside was most of it was lost in the maelstrom coming from the kit on the table. But it looked cool nonetheless. Then Church took to stalking through the crowd, microphone in hand. After some bellowing over the dystopic soundscape, Church started picking audience members at will, putting her thumb on their forehead, and then pushing their heads back. It was like a religious atonement. After this Church went and started doing some contact mic work. Just dragging, and scraping, it along any surface that looked like it would give off a good dose of feedback. Speakers. Tables. Chairs. Then her attention was turned to the pile of junk at the end of the table. An old Sky box got bashed and abused. Then she picked up a piece of sheet metal and started attacking it with her head. It was like watching hardcore wrestling. And like hardcore wrestling, Church drew blood the hard way. No blading here. Oh no. Just ramming her head into the metal. After this she lay down on the end of the table for a minute or so before shutting off the music. It was the most dramatic set of the night. Church had to up her game after Parke’s performance.

The final act of the night was Parasite Nurse. Sam Hernandez set up her box of tricks in the middle of the room and pressed play. Her homemade/custom built synth had dozens of cables protruding from it and the same number of lights flashing. I had no idea how she was going to work it but was looking forward to finding out. From the moment Hernandez started her set, deafening feedback filled the room. It ranged from white noise, clicking sounds and silence. It dawned on me midway that the silence was probably because so much noise was being produced it was making something short out and emit silence. Hernandez changed the sounds by moving a small joystick at the front of the synth, pressing buttons on/off lightning fast and moving tiny dials. It was mesmerising. Like watching a bee, or hummingbird, collect nectar from plant to plant. After 10 minutes of this Hernandez flicked a switch and all the white noise dropped from the set. We were left with what sounded like a typewriter. After a few moments it dawned on me that what we were hearing was Hernandez flicking switches and moving the joystick. After a few minutes of this the noise came back. After the relative quiet of the last few minutes it was a jarring shock to the system, but it gave the noise more power because of its absence. Again, I was transfixed by watching her nimble fingers and a master at work. And then, as quickly as it had started, it was over.

After saying thanks to the acts and promises to meet up when they were in town again, it was time to leave the bowels of The Bee’s Mouth and re-emerge in the normal world. It had rained since I entered the pub and there was a chill in the air. As I walked through town, I had the smug air of someone who had seen something special that the majority of the city had missed. Each of the acts was a master at their discipline. Each has released music I really adored and to see them all together was a proper treat. Nights like this don’t come about too often so you have to grab them when they do!