The Juan MacLean at The Deaf Institute, Manchester

After the glowing review I gave their second album last month it goes without saying that I was excited about seeing DFA’s The Juan MacLean live. The band were performing at the weekly Now Wave night in Manchester’s The Deaf Institute, so I had the added anticipation of visiting an exciting venue for the first time.

Walking up a flight of stairs that wouldn’t be out of place in a boarding school, I didn’t quite know what to expect as I entered what is called the Music Hall. I was pleasantly surprised when I entered a small room that looks like a funky attic in a country house. The bar is lined with speakers, the stage is more or less the width of the room, and there’s even a lovely area of tiered seating if you can’t quite hack the whole standing and waiting lark.

The first band on stage was local band MAY68, whose energetic electro-pop was the perfect start to the evening. They were followed on stage by Everything Everything, whose ever-so-serious and disaffected songs was a bit deflating. I was also a little disappointed to learn that their name doesn’t have anything to do with Underworld. All that said, the band’s vocal harmonies were unexpected and impressive, meshing together chords that you don’t normally hear in this branch of indie-rock (apologies for the genre labels by the way).

By 11, when the gig was supposed to be over, The Juan MacLean had only started to set up on stage, and this was a lengthy process. What made this more enjoyable was seeing Nancy Whang sing along to the Chromatics’ cover of Running Up That Hill as it played over the house speakers. Eventually main man John said “I just want to play,” and things got underway.

Kicking off with album opener The Simple Life, it was clear from the band’s manner that they were there to do a job: play some kick-ass music. There was no crowd interaction, the band just got on with their business. After song number one Nancy Whang asked for an increase of volume, and John quickly asked “can you make everything louder? That was a joke.”

Their set was short but powerful. New single One Day was played, as was Give Me Every Little Thing, from 2003’s Less Than Human. The killer climax came with a 20 minute acid freakout gleaned from the bones of Happy House. On paper six tracks doesn’t seem like much of a performance, but their extended rendition of last year’s piano-led anthem was something to behold. A thousand stars washed over Nancy’s face as she sang “Launch me into space,” and the irresistible throb of the acid workout was just the icing on an excellent, if all too brief performance.

After the band finished an indie-disco kicked off with tracks from the likes of Animal Collective, Aeroplane and La Roux, so if you ever find yourself in Manchester on a Wednesday night and you’re not going to Old Trafford, definitely make a beeline for this excellent venue. With excellent new and established bands playing a lush and intimate setting, and even some great drinks specials to boot, it’s not a place to ignore.

Live Review: Ladyhawke at the Academy

Ladyhawke at The Academy 5th February 2009

Wearing a man’s t-shirt with rolled up sleeves, men’s jeans, fuck-off biker boots and a bandana, Ladyhawke looks like Axl Rose. It’s a pity she hasn’t got his stage presence. Ladyhawke is literally the shiest pop star that ever was. Any time that she looks at the crowd, a glaze of terror and panic comes into her eyes. Deer in the headlights? Nah, more like being asked to do a quadratic equation in front of the class, when not only do you have no idea what’s going on, you’ve also wet your trousers. There’s no support band, and the set opens with ‘Professional Suicide’ which segues straight into ‘Manipulating Woman’. She does a fine line in pouting and power-chords (though, naturally, not at the audience, preferring to focus on the drummer instead), but when the backing track breaks mid-way through ‘Dusk Til Dawn’, she stalls, and her only banter with the crowd is a muttered ‘fucking technology’. The song is abandoned, for ‘Magic’ and ‘Another Runaway’. During the latter, it seems as if she wishes she was anywhere else but onstage at the Academy. The lines ‘it’s too late, it’s too late, I’m just another runaway’ take on an air of terror and desperation. A b-side- ‘Danny and Jenny’- is introduced, to a crowd who have no clue as to what a b-side is. She may as well have promoted her latest minidisc.
The set closes with ‘Paris is Burning’. The middle 8 is earnest, and Ladyhawke launches into another rock pout solo. But wait! What’s this? A smile? It’s the last song of her set and she manages to actually wink at a crowd member. Is she actually flirting? The last drum beat strikes, and she shuffles quickly and embarrassedly offstage, only to return 5 seconds later to play ‘Dusk Til Dawn’ once more, ‘because it didn’t work the first time’. Girl’s got the tunes, no doubt, but she needs some swagger, stat.

Two DIY and one skinny Wolves’ gig later

Last weekend was quite eventful for me, I managed to see a load of Irish acts and one from LA. Not bad for a weekend in the middle of January. The common thread running through all of the gigs was the way that they were organised and where they took place; downstairs in a regular Northside pub, in a shed and in an art gallery.

On Friday, I headed along to my first gig of the weekend in The Tap pub near Smithfield. My friend Aonghus is the “singer” in a noise band called Sex Bat (short for Sexual Battery). Aonghus has been in a plethora of noise, experimental and metal bands over the last few years but somehow I’ve never made it to any of his gigs. So I made an effort this time. The gig was in the basement and was a DIY jobby to celebrate some dudes birthday, Cian was his name I think. I didn’t know what to expect Sex Bat to be like. Noise is a pretty broad term afterall! I moved up to the front as they took to the stage - big mistake… Within 30 seconds of the gig starting, Aonghus’ flailing arms hard knocked a full pint out of my hand, all over me and those unlucky enough to nearby. Another 30 seconds later I got punched in the stomach as Aonghus screamed the most aggressive non-descript roars down the mic. The set went on like this for awhile as Aonghus launched himself into the crowd and sprawled out on the floor. The band jammed along all the while producing a dirty amalgamation of feedback heavy guitars, harmonics and sporadic drum bursts. Tommy from Estel visibly hammered also joined the jam, using a pint glass as a slide wave after wave of squealing distortion wailed from his direction. This was one of the most intense gigs I’ve been to in a long long while. Afterwards Aonghus explained that the aim of Sex Bat is “pure aggression” - I think they’ve got that down to a tee.

Photo by Maeve.

Saturday saw me standing in a creaky shed on South Circular Road soaking up the incredible sounds of Children Under Hoof. About 15 friends of the band gathered together for what was to be a trial run for a series of regular gigs in the Shed, aka the Box Social. The shed is usually used as a practice space but for the night, it was a particularly suiting venue. As the roof lifted with the wind, ghostly knocking noises were added to the mix while the band blazed their way through 5 lush ambient / experimental jams. Dead pan beats a la Neu!, synths galore, a variety of eccentric trinket sized instruments, sax, considered bass lines and yelpy washed-out vocals all contributed to create a somewhat epic soundscape throughout the whole set. I was enthralled for the whole thing and further convinced that Children Under Hoof at the vanguard of making interesting original music in Ireland. Luckily I had a WAV recorder with me on the night so you too can bask in the glow of the Children Under Hoof live experience.

Bonefire (live at the Box Social) mp3

Photo by Jamie, Skinny Wolves

Sunday is meant to be a day of rest and relaxation so it was fitting that LA’s Lucky Dragons were performing at the Joy Gallery. Fitting because of the positive and uplifting nature of the Lucky Dragons set. Support act Boys of Summer started proceeding with an extended drone wank that unfortunately had no climax. Some people seemed to appreciate it but it was completely lost on me. Next up was Sunken Foal, his album ‘Fallen Arches’ was one of the best Irish albums of 2008 so it was great to finally catch him live. I wasn’t sure how his sound would work live but being joined by his friend Rob really helped lead Foal Duncan Murphy find the right dynamic between the organic guitar sounds and the layers of synthetic beats / samples. Then came Lucky Dragons’ turn. Luke Fischbeck is the mysterious human being behind Lucky Dragons. Throughout the show, Fischbeck leads the audience through a collaborative experience of communication through sound. Contact mics on long cords were passed out into the audience and the only way sound could be generated is if people connect by holding hands. It was really cool to see complete strangers sitting on the floor connecting with each other to make music, albeit fairly trippy sounds. The whole experience was completely unique and even though I did personally contribute, I was left with a really positive feeling afterwards. It was like meditating or something. Even the three teenage girls who had talked incessantly through the other sets shut up for a few minutes. Apparently Lucky Dragons will be back later this year so if you get a chance, I totally recommend heading along.

Morning Ritual by Lucky Dragons from Jordan Dykstra on Vimeo.

We Have Band- Live Review 15th January

We Have Band- Live at Crawdaddy.

We Have Band romped through their half-hour set at a breakneck speed on Thursday night. Dede WP plays tambourine like an Egyptian and looks like Margot Tennenbaum, crossed with Edie Sedgwick. Husband Thomas WP sings not unlike Jemaine Clement. Percussionist Darren Bancroft brings 80’s buzz cuts and spot-on offbeats. Current single, ‘Oh’ is a frenetic Korg-fuelled battle call to the dancefloor, while ‘Hear it in the Cans’ is Human League crossed with a bored Neanderthal beat. The group form a triangle around a drum machine, exhorting a half-empty room to dance. The unexpected whistling in ‘You Came Out’ breaks through the hipster cool, exposing the pop song roots. The room dances. This is what Hot Chip wished they sounded like live. A cover of the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘West End Girls’ closes the show. It was a fitting note to end on- a clever, hooky, synthy pop song, both knowing and insouciant at the same time. We Have Band are, as yet, unsigned. If they keep up at this rate, I can’t see that lasting long, at all.

Support on the night came in the form of Dublin Duck Dispensary – Bobby Aherne’s homage to Phil Spektor and mic hiss. Like the kid at school who pulls your hair then kisses you and runs away, D.D.D’s songs are short noisy bursts of pop distortion, each no longer than 3 minutes long, each 3 minutes too short.

Fake Blood at the Twisted Pepper live review

Photo by Matthew Johnson

Bodytonic kicked off the grand opening weekend of their much-discussed new venue The Twisted Pepper in fabulous style by playing host to one of the most elusive producers and DJs around at the moment, Fake Blood. Attempts by yours truly to secure a tête-à-tête with this most mysterious of figures were fruitless; the man quite simply “doesn’t do interviews”.

This didn’t come as a surprise. Over the last eighteen months, Fake Blood has risen from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about remixers and producers on the electro scene without doing a single interview. The internet, and particularly the blogosphere, has worked itself into a flurry with theories abound as to who exactly the man behind the moniker is.

Why his face or identity matters so much is beyond anyone’s guess, though the more Fake Blood attempts to conceal his real persona the more the guessing intensifies. A simple browse across various blogs and forums reveals myriad of guesses: Diplo, Switch, Hervé, Sinden, Boy 8-Bit, Norman Cook and, bizarrely, Tiësto are among some of the speculations put forward by bloggers and dead-serious electro aficionados. A tongue-in-cheek blog even ran for a while.

Such rampant hype might lead to easy conclusions that Fake Blood is more style than substance, but his remixes have proven him to be an extremely adept and intelligent producer (perhaps the strongest argument that this is not a man who came out of nowhere and just started twiddling knobs and pressing buttons). His rhythmic preferences would definitely suggest a history somewhere in big beats; the drum loop in The Wiseguys’ 1998 hit Ooh La La is suspiciously similar to Fake Blood’s style. In fact, the theory that Fake Blood is, in fact, a DJ called Theo Keating, formerly of The Wiseguys and now of The Black Ghosts, is the strongest of the lot.

In each of Fake Blood’s remixes his name is uttered by the original artist, giving his works a tag or audio stamp; amazingly, this is done by cutting the original vocal part into tiny phonetic fragments (phragments?) and reslicing them to construct the words “fake blood”. This is careful, deliberate time in the studio; clearly he is spending a lot of time poring over his production, something backed up by the fact that his remix total from the last year-and-a-half has yet to hit the double digits. Yet even with this low output, he has successfully spread his gospel of “grindcore” far and wide.

With this kind of hype and anticipation, the atmosphere in The Twisted Pepper’s main room was already electric before Fake Blood had even stepped on stage. Dresses from an earlier NCAD exhibition were suspended from the ceiling at various positions, yet these additions could not distract the crowd as the man himself emerged and began dropping incredible bone-rattling tracks like pebbles in an extremely responsive pond.

This bone-rattling sensation wasn’t just thanks to the DJ. The Bodytonic guys are renowned for an incredible attention to detail, and doubtless they have spared no expense giving their newly-renovated jewel in the crown the most tinnitus-inducing audio configuration possible. Wobbly basslines pulsated and throbbed through the room, while Fake Blood’s extremely distinctive punchy bass drum, used in most of his remixes and definitely in his solo work, snapped through the room like a low-frequency whip.

Spoken/sung “fake blood”s were heard at least every thirty minutes; he incorporated most of his remixes into his two-and-a-half hour set, including the reworkings of Cheap and Cheerful by The Kills and Stuck on Repeat by Little Boots. There were also some remixes and re-edits that won’t be found on any blog or internet resource, including a version of Soulwax’s Teachers re-cut to say (surprise surprise) “Fake Blood is in the house” - unfortunately this results in the drums being sliced up as well, resulting in some messy rhythms and confused (but still extremely enthusiastic) dancing.

The last half-hour of his set saw the kind of incredible, potent, kinetically-charged atmosphere of mutual amazement and appreciation which is witnessed on the Dublin club scene once in a blue moon. Before you ask, there were very definitely no illegal substances flowing through my veins, nor was I under any significant alcohol-based influence. The tunes were simply that good. The robotic vocal lines from LFO’s Freak were combined with the manic snare attacks of Vitalic’s Valletta Fanfares, and thrown into a genre hot-pot that even saw Dr Dre make an appearance.

At 2.30 a.m. he finally played the track that many had been waiting for: his first solo effort, Mars, with its heavy, punchy drums and crunking bassline, though that organ sound definitely seems to be nicked from somewhere… *cough* 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready for This *cough*. This was followed by a track that’s still burning substantial holes in dancefloors everywhere - Soulwax’s remix of MGMT’s Kids. Suffice to say everyone present went completely insane, all the way till the song’s close. As the lights rose he dutifully played Blood Splashing (Fake Blood Theme), the B-side of his solo EP. Once again the room went nuts.

Upon retiring outside, a large majority of attendants found themselves covered in sweat, clothes firmly glued to selves, the product of a hectic set that had everyone dancing with little pause for over two hours. Crowds lingered, puffing on cigarettes and still beaming from ear to ear, knees still wobbling from the effect of being hit with so many crunchy basses and thumping drums. The verdict was unanimous. Who is Fake Blood? An incredible, incredible DJ, that’s who.