Writers have it easy!” my inner monologue would bleat as future pop stars grunted reluctant monosyllables into yawning chasms of dead air. As a radio presenter I envied music scribes who were able to flour up reviews and duff interviews with fluff, something you can’t do with a link or live conversation. Now though, having cobbled together a few of these ‘columns’, I’m starting to wonder.
Watching bands play their first gigs can be a conflicting experience. On one hand you feel obliged to leave certain shortfalls aside but at the same time you still crave that elusive glowing rush of excitement, as opposed to a loosely positive shrug of vague potential. It’s unsurprising that hyped new acts in London often come across as nervous, self-conscious and underwhelming, especially when you consider that they’re attempting to forge an identity in full view of an impatient cluster of A&r types, writers, bloggers and Pr people; an audience that is all too keen to pin insurmountable hopes on the embryonic musical experiment struggling to bud before them, and before everyone else.
“Terrible shoes,” I unreasonably ponder, as a harshly lit duo wobble self-consciously on a stage roughly the size of an iPod Shuffle. The bobbing, bearded half of the band, bent double over a table strewn with expensive looking equipment, jabs away, stopping only to push his glasses back up his nose, while his female counterpart struggles to weave cold soul phrases around thoroughly unremarkable Witch House-lite beats. The thirty or so members of the audience assembled the other side of a bare ten feet square space nod politely at first but quickly lose interest.
It’s unfair to name the band. They’re playing one of their first gigs on a dead monday night, plagued with poor lighting, sound and technical problems, but one thing strikes me: when reviewing new bands playing live, just how does one establish a criteria for (potential) greatness? Sounds? Visuals? Energy? Interaction? With apologies to any future subjects, I’m searching for words while you are finding your voice.
About halfway through Emika’s live perfomance (at a launch party for her excellent self-titled debut album at East London’s cAmP basement) I ask a professional writer friend for suggestions as to how he would go about reviewing the show, given that – brilliant as her thick, thunderous mesh of dubstep, techno and abstract pop undoubtedly sounds in this sweaty underground space – a harsh critic might opine that we’re merely stood idly staring at a sound designer who happens to be singing over slightly altered versions of her own compositions. “I’d write about her voice,” my friend says, “…and her brightly-lit LED shoulder pads.”
So visual tactics are a vital ingredient for a good show then, right? Not according to Death Grips. At their explosive debut UK appearance at East London’s XOYO, Sacramento’s lauded punk rap soldiers assaulted the giddy throng almost entirely in pitch black, save for the odd strobe. The relentless intensity of Zach Hill’s drillcore drumming pummeled a march for the ferocious and furious mc ride to bark to, building an intensity only compounded by the lack of a clear visual focal point.
Barely an hour later, ears ringing as I travelled home in a harshly lit train carriage, what had initially been a glowing rush of excitement quickly faded as I realised I wouldn’t have a clue how to put what I’d seen into words.
Words by Jon Hillcock
Photo by Al de Perez