Lewsberg Is Not a City but Wolfen Is

Out and about in a college town basement dive with a Dutch band and German film

Earlier this week, I penned a quick history of ORWO film here. It was written primarily to address the buzz surrounding the company’s 2022 announcement of two completely new color film formulations and my first use of one of those early stock batches in 2023.

In September of ‘23, Clangoring had the incredible honor of presenting a show by the Dutch band Lewsberg here in the NC Triangle. Though their name might sound like it’s taken from a city, it’s actually a play on the name Robert Loesberg, a late Dutch writer whose 1974 prose work Enige defecten (Some Defects) has a small following among the arty/cerebral crowd in the Netherlands. Both Lewsberg and Loesberg called Rotterdam home.

A Sunday night is always a tough sell to club bookers. Especially for a band that deals in abstraction, pokes at the inane and builds sound around texture and the rhythm of the human pulse rather than just cranking up the amps, man. Not to mention, maybe four people around here besides me had even heard of the band. But that was the night they’d be coming through. Lewsberg played Gonerfest in Memphis that year and was doing some other dates around it. So, yeah, logistics.

After a couple of venues passed (their loss), it dawned on me: Lewsberg’s music feels like being in a conversation with a few cynical, clever, deadpan, and oddly philosophical acquaintances. Music doesn’t need a big PA or a killer lighting rig. It doesn’t even need much of a stage, really. Just a place to play where people love to listen.

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” I exclaimed to myself. “THE CAVE!”

Located in a basement on W. Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Cave has been around since 1968. It’s as quintessential as college-town dive bars get. The drinks are cheaper, stronger, and colder than most other places in town. The bathrooms are gross but functional. The staff are cool but can be cranky from time to time. You might find yourself bonding with a stranger at the bar over a band, a book or a belief. It can be a tight space if a lot of people are up front watching the band. It’s called the Cave because the room’s main décor is chicken wire and paper mache “stalactites” hanging from the low ceiling. By appearances, it’s the kind of room where on first impression one may think that sound may not be all that great when it comes to live music. Those always end up being the BEST room when a band is locked in and understands the kind of room it is. It can sound like unadorned perfection.

That night, Lewsberg left no doubt they knew rooms like it well. Coming from sonic gardens similar to the Velvet’s Third and Galaxie 500’s oeuvre, they weren’t loud. So much so that Johnny Valiant (he of Personality Cult, Future Fix, Sweet Knives, etc) observed that they were “probably the quietest band to play the Cave in a while” but in a perfectly subtle and complete sounding way. The way the room swayed to the simply hypnotic groove attested to that.

The camera used was the Minolta X-370 I bought new in high school many decades ago. The film is a good example of me ignoring all the advice others had shared about shooting ORWO NC500. Many people recommended rating it lower than the suggested 400 ISO on this Wolfen, Germany produced to tame the grain and correct the off-color balance that were “noted” flaws in the early batches. I went the opposite way. Having spent a bit of time at The Cave now, I have discovered many ways to make its lighting work for me without relying on auto settings or digital trickery. I pushed the ISO up to 800 and developed accordingly.

The newer batches of NC500 still tend to lean slightly towards a hot red and orange under certain circumstances (see my Florry piece from this past June for example.) These earlier batches especially did. Especially as the prominent color lighting a section of a small room. Pushing the film up a stop brought out the already pronounced grain when shooting it at the suggested lower speed even more. I like how scrappy and mood setting it looks. I like how it visually conveys moments that it unknowingly fits in with. It’s not a film to use to tell every story with but I do like how it has a way of spinning a yarn.

LISTEN TO LEWSBERG

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