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Xiu Xiu

Feb 09, 2026 By Nick Roseblade Photography by Nick Roseblade Web Exclusive

Today Derek Jarman would have been 84 years old. (For those out of the loop) Jarman was an English artist, writer and film maker. His films were experimental but not to the point of losing the point of the story. He also worked with the Pet Shop Boys, Suede, Patti Smith, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. Jarman has nothing to do with tonight’s entertainment, but it felt fitting to watch Xiu Xiu perform their take on David Lynch’s 1977 cult classic ‘Eraserhead’ in front of a massive screen where their accompanying film will be projected. I feel Jarman would have got a kick out of seeing a live noise set in a swanky venue with an avant-garde film behind it.

When I arrived at The ACCA expectation was high. The doors had just opened, and the bar area was filling up nicely. 30 minutes before the show started they opened the auditorium doors and people were filling in to get decent seats. After chatting to a few people, I knew/recognised I went and got a seat with a good view. Just to clarify, there are no bad seats at the ACCA. Tonight’s show was a bit topsy turvy as Xiu Xiu, who were the headliners, were also opening the gig. This was down to their altar of noise being too big to move on, and off, the stage for their set. At 8pm the lights went down. Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo walked onto the stage purposely. They were both dressed in shirts, suit jackets and trousers. Angela was wearing a tie. Their suits looked similar to Henry’s from Eraserhead. The set opens like the film. The sound of wind blowing over a black screen. Then there is a shot of foam/suds being billowed in a breeze while it keeps getting bigger and bigger. After this point the performance moves so fast it’s hard to know what to focus on. My notes are scrawled gibberish. My handwriting is terrible at the best of times, but writing in the dark, whilst not trying to miss anything means I can only make out garbled words, or thoughts. Re-reading my notes is a bit like watching the film as it starts to cut between the imaginations of people and objects. They are not connected but their juxtaposition makes you try and draw a connection, but as soon as you’ve made one, for right or wrong, another image is up and your mind is off again. The music starts to get more intense and abrasive. It never quite reaches white noise levels. Xiu Xiu is too clever for that. I’m expecting that to come near the end. I see at the end of the stage there is a wheelie bin with a load of empty glass bottles next to it. That’ll be fun when it comes into play.

An image appears and it looks like the wrestler George “The Animal” Steel and a bit later one of the masks from the covers of Stewart’s DRUGS albums. The screen is now filled with the black and white zig-zag floor that is used in the lobby to Henry’s flat. This gets a good old WHOOP from the crowd. At some point around here Stewart gets a balloon, I think, and starts making it screech. It’s piercing and uncomfortable. So, it fits in well with the music/noise that Seo is making and the never-ending jump cuts of the film. Halfway through a couple leave and don’t come back. I later see them in the bar looking sorry for themselves. Seo starts playing something that sounds like a penny whistle. This makes the crowd easier as one of the things that makes ‘Eraserhead’ so enjoyable, and watchable, is it’s punctuated with really funny moments. One of these moments is when Stewart just starts shouting “OK PAUL!” repeatedly as loudly as they can. It goes on for ages. So long in fact that it starts off being really funny, stops being funny, but then ends up being funnier than before. This is from a scene in the film when a character is pressing a buzzer to alert his boss of something. Then a klaxon goes off. It’s really LOUD and cut through the audio detritus being created by what knows what on stage. Throughout there is plenty of percussion and deep bass. The sound at The ACCA is incredible and, despite the volume, is anything being lost in the mix. It also doesn’t sound that loud, even though I know it really is. Maybe I don’t realise how loud it actually is because I’m focusing on the screen and not just sitting here listening to the music. Near the end Xiu Xiu starts to play “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)”. It starts off instrumental. Stewart is chiming bells and Seo is playing the melody on keyboard. At first, I thought they were just going to play motifs from it. Which I think they started doing much earlier in the performance. Then I thought it was going to be an instrumental version, but Stewart started crooning and you could feel the crowd humming, and singing, along in places. After this Stewart stands up and walks over to the wheelie bin. We all know what’s about to happen, but when they start hurling glass bottles in there, it legitimately makes me jump. There are at least two microphones at the bottom of the bin. When all the bottles are in there, Stewart gets a massive stick and starts to mix it all up. This feels like something Stewart has wanted to do for a while and we’re all happy to have them live out their Haters dream. After this the set starts to wind down a bit and then, after an hour, it’s all over. We all applaud and file out into the bar area.

Furrowed is playing his set. He has one turntable, that he is able to slow down, speed up and play backwards. This is being run through a sequencer/sampler so he can then make live loops from the records he’s playing. He has another record player that he is using to cut the music that is being played. This turntable has multiple heads on it so I think, big think here, that he can then start to play what he’s already played and feed that back into his sequencer. It all looks very complicated and the music being bad is fairly obtuse. There are no real melodies, rhythms or beats, but the way it is all combined melodies, rhythm and beats start to appear. Only to be manipulated into something else. Despite the size of the bar, it feels more claustrophobic than the music Xiu Xiu created. I would say it was more interesting to watch it being created than to listen to it, but I was transfixed by what Furrowed was doing. And then it was time to brave the cold night air and look at that beautiful full moon again.

The set, for the most part, was Xiu Xiu’s telling of the film. It’s all there. From the spacey intro, Henry heads home, being invited to Mary’s house. Finding out she’s had a baby. Mary, and baby, moving in with him. Mary leaves. Henry’s weird dreams about the Lady in the Radiator and finding out what the true meaning of the title is and its end. There was a discourse after that people expected to see the film and this would be a live score. Most people enjoyed it, but there were some who felt the wording needed to be clearer that the film wouldn’t be shown. I understood their frustrations. If I hadn’t known the set up, I might have been narked too, but I was very happy with what was presented. It was one of the best noise/experimental gigs I’ve been to and the sound was exquisite. The film was filled with references to the film, easter eggs to Eraserhead, and Xiu Xiu, and it had a Lynchian vibe. Some of the visuals were a bit off topic. A woman in a bikini drinking milk and spilling it down her chest was a weird idea but didn’t quite fit in with the film, but it did feel like a music video from Xiu Xiu’s last album though.

This is something you need to see live. It might very well be my favourite gig of the year, and Xiu Xiu proved YET again why they are an incredible band to watch live. Their music is filled with harrowing, yet hilarious, moments that have the power to make you laugh and cry, or both. Tonight, they showed that, when they want to, they can deliver something powerful as well as weird and avant-garde. I would love to see this set again so I could check to see if it was real at all. Rumour has it that there is an album in the works and the film will be made available too somehow, so hopefully I won’t have to wait long.