Gig: Dälek
Nov. 17th, 2017 09:19 amLast night saw a broadening of my musical horizons. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hjdoom invited me to an experimental hiphop gig at the Camden Underworld. I've not been there for years, but it's a nice well-laid out venue, with plenty of seating far away from the bands so you can have a conversation at a sensible volume if you're not blown away by the support bands.
The first band, ADCX, were, well, an opening band. They describe themselves as "Space Doom", which is not a genre I'd heard of. There were some interesting ideas in what they did, but not enough to fill the set, and they were lacking polish.
The third 'band', Goth Trad was a man with a laptop, which is a difficult kind of music to make work live, and he didn't seem to be doing anything innovative, so this was the point at which we took advantage of the comfy seats in relative quiet, but to be honest I was quite happy with that, as it'd been far too long since I'd seen Oliver, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up properly.
The headliners, Dälek, were also new to me, and I found myself feeling that that was a mistake on my part. Because my auditory processing isn't great, I can't just listen to hip-hop and make out more than a tiny fraction of the words, so I appreciate it a lot more if I sit there with the lyrics on my first few listens to a song. The last few hip-hop gigs I've been to I did this and really enjoyed them, but this time the words got lost, and whether because of or in addition to this, the MC didn't seem to have as much stage presence and relationship with the audience as some have. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on in the soundscapes, and I did enjoy that, but I think I didn't get as much out of it as I could have done.
You might have noticed that I skipped the second support band initially. This is because I was saving the best to last. Fuzz Orchestra were bloody brilliant. The description on their website: "FUZZ ORCHESTRA mixes heavy rock sounds with a fluxus of analog noises and a narrative layer build up by voice samples borrowed from old movies and documentaries." is a pretty accurate summary, but what really drew my attention was their incredibly distinctive aesthetic. A crazy homeless guy who is clearly secretly a wizard doing weird things with electronics, your year 11 geography teacher but kinda hot on drums, and a moonlighting estate agent who just got away from the office on guitar. The drummer in particular was very obviously really really skilled, but the whole package was tight and innovative and really enjoyable. I'm not sure whether they'll work as well recorded as they did live, but definitely well worth looking them up.
hjdoom invited me to an experimental hiphop gig at the Camden Underworld. I've not been there for years, but it's a nice well-laid out venue, with plenty of seating far away from the bands so you can have a conversation at a sensible volume if you're not blown away by the support bands.The first band, ADCX, were, well, an opening band. They describe themselves as "Space Doom", which is not a genre I'd heard of. There were some interesting ideas in what they did, but not enough to fill the set, and they were lacking polish.
The third 'band', Goth Trad was a man with a laptop, which is a difficult kind of music to make work live, and he didn't seem to be doing anything innovative, so this was the point at which we took advantage of the comfy seats in relative quiet, but to be honest I was quite happy with that, as it'd been far too long since I'd seen Oliver, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up properly.
The headliners, Dälek, were also new to me, and I found myself feeling that that was a mistake on my part. Because my auditory processing isn't great, I can't just listen to hip-hop and make out more than a tiny fraction of the words, so I appreciate it a lot more if I sit there with the lyrics on my first few listens to a song. The last few hip-hop gigs I've been to I did this and really enjoyed them, but this time the words got lost, and whether because of or in addition to this, the MC didn't seem to have as much stage presence and relationship with the audience as some have. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on in the soundscapes, and I did enjoy that, but I think I didn't get as much out of it as I could have done.
You might have noticed that I skipped the second support band initially. This is because I was saving the best to last. Fuzz Orchestra were bloody brilliant. The description on their website: "FUZZ ORCHESTRA mixes heavy rock sounds with a fluxus of analog noises and a narrative layer build up by voice samples borrowed from old movies and documentaries." is a pretty accurate summary, but what really drew my attention was their incredibly distinctive aesthetic. A crazy homeless guy who is clearly secretly a wizard doing weird things with electronics, your year 11 geography teacher but kinda hot on drums, and a moonlighting estate agent who just got away from the office on guitar. The drummer in particular was very obviously really really skilled, but the whole package was tight and innovative and really enjoyable. I'm not sure whether they'll work as well recorded as they did live, but definitely well worth looking them up.
