First up, let me get it straight out the way, that going to what is basically a techno gig and sitting in seats and listening seemed like a weird idea to me. But I was willing to have a go.
The whole idea was about having techno artists perform live accompanied people playing other instruments and try and have this free form jam kind of thing.
Fortunately, there were warm up acts for the above three, who had more planned out sets. I will get to why it was fortunate shortly.
Ok so first up was Henrik Schwarz and his buddy on a piano, inventively called the Henrik Schwarz duo. This was wicked. Easily the highlight of the night for me. Basically really melodic and beautiful tracks, where the piano didn't over crowd the laptop twiddling or vice versa. Think Eric Satie with a beat and weird and beautiful electronic noises in the background and you wouldn't be too far off. They managed to have an interesting concept, but it wasn't just concept music if you know what I mean. It had the ups and downs of emotion that music should have, and managed in parts to be genuinely beautiful. The second to last track may have even made my eyes wet a little. Wow, I thought. This sitting and listening to Techno is rad.
Next up was Matmos. They began and for the first fifteen minutes I was waiting for a dwarf in a red suit to walk on stage backwards and say "Garmonbozia".
Disturbing visuals with disturbing noise to boot was the name of the game, until it became a pretty standard beaty affair in the middle and then returned to weirdness. I enjoyed them on reflection....at the time my brain hurt a little though.
Next up was the three we had come to see. The good things. Moritz Von Oswald certainly looks cool. So much no moving charisma. He took minimal to the extreme. I think I saw him move once. He also stayed on stage behind his laptop after everyone else had finished making us wonder whether or not he thought he was still going and had a whole bunch of silent loops still playing or sub bass so deep only animals could hear it. Funny.
Apart from that though it was a bit of a mess. Sometimes I think techno artists are so caught up in their "we are actual musician" hurricanes of self doubt that they feel they have to over compensate by trying shit like this. Bands with real instruments don't generally go and play a gig without practicing some songs first, and if they did it would sound like a me and my friends in the late 90s early 2000s, drunk and fucking around with noise and instruments we bought from the 2 dollar shop. Example here.....yes we recorded it.
The thing is, our stuff is supposed to be formless, because, well, we are shit basically. But that adds a dimension of fun to it. You can feel the fun leaking out the headphones can't you?
But if you try and make a jam session have form, and also be pretentious about it, and on top of that have the levels all fucked up whilst looking for this form, so like an interesting melody will start coming from Craig, and he seems to be looking around going come on guys follow my lead, but Sax man goes, Nah I am gonna play something different and louder than you, and then piano man does the same, and then Moritz goes, my bass is lower and ignores everyone....take a breath Greg. Well anyway it was a fucking mess. Like a pre-school concert you got dragged to or something.
There were moments where I thought it would come together and that just made it more frustrating.
You wanna know what weird is though?
This is weird!
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