https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdBt3n1MtFM
It’s so cold in this house.
It is ten years since Silent Alarm was released, and you don’t live here anymore.
Open mouth swallowing us.
A small bag for someone leaving for good. You took with you no books, few clothes and all of my significant musical memories. You wanted music to listen to on the plane. I was blank.
The children staying home from school.
I was able to see you off at the airport, to be present even if I was barely able to say goodbye. Your parents thought it was funny as I managed to say all the wrong things and choke on my words in the food court. You looked across the table at me with a smile on your face, fingers drumming, foot tapping on dirty tiles.
I could not stop crying.
Ten years ago, four young English guys were in the right place at the right time. Britain was in the throes of a New York throwback, guitar rock love affair – Franz Ferdinand were huge, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor was the Arctic Monkeys’ first number one and Glastonbury has exploded screaming its heart out to Mr Brightside. In East London, Kele Okereke, Gordy Moakes and Russell Lissack had found the missing ingredient of the ambitious sound they only heard in their imaginations in new drummer, Matt Tong. With a sharp, rhythmic post-punk point of difference, Bloc Party’s debut album Silent Alarm was released to a world ready to listen. This was landmark music.
Ten years ago, I had just started at a new high school and was obsessed with reinventing myself. I had left a school where I wouldn’t be missed and was racked with fear that I was diving into a new nightmare, another school where teenagers were arseholes and weakness had its own inimitable, old-schoolbag scent. I had a hundred lies to tell about myself at the drop of a hat, a persona of someone more confident than I ever felt. On my first day at my new school, Ollie stood with my brother overlooking the playground, watching me plunge into my peers like a breadcrumb into a school of fish. I was so determined, frantically so, that here at last I could be cool.
I would take myself home, feet slapping the footpath in gangly school shoes, imagining a new world where I had friends, where I was part of that sealed world of the liked. I had filled my iPod shuffle with new music and buried somewhere, deep in the one hundred and eighteen songs it could carry, was the seed of my entrée to cool music. It was on these walks home that my feet first fell into the crescendo of a rising beat, a deep hum gathering up into potent, clockwork guitar chords lashed on the off beats as that drum beat just kept driving and driving. To this day, Banquet is my get-up-and-go song. Tong is a fiercely precise drummer, whip-fast and crisp, adding sharp urgency to already blistering guitar. When he is behind a kit there is no standing still – a shoulder or toe will betray you involuntarily. With Silent Alarm on my ipod, I walked home to a new pulse, as if there was some knowledge coursing through me that the world outside my headphones knew nothing of. For the first time, as I gained a couple of new friends, as I pumped down the street with my school bag now absurdly low and my new school skirt rolled up, at fifteen I finally felt cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdkmhquF60o
Music became key to my feeling connected, if not always cool. For then on I was mainlining new releases, always looking for a new sound that had that same kick as the first listen of Banquet. Every song I loved, every album I became hooked on was always in pursuit of that first euphoric rush walking home from school. When my stacked up social anxieties about being liked clouded every relationship with fear, music was my safety net. I consumed it all, with Bloc Party as a benchmark. For me, Silent Alarm had everything. It was awake and passionate, full of the pointless nihilistic anger of youth as well as the pure, meditative moments of clarity. The sound is huge and momentous but the lyrics are Plathian poetry, a dichotomy of grandeur and vulnerability that was everything I yearned for as I untangled myself from the suffocating tension wires and pressure of my teenage years.
The only person I knew who shared this deep-seated appreciation of the album of my youth was Ollie. When in my twenties those tension wires returned, and I felt the edges of the disconnect creeping back again, Ollie gave me a new way out – live music. For four good years we were at shows every other week, shows neither of us ever would have gone to alone. We were at festivals, at warehouse parties, at pub gigs and sold out shows. We were at Oxford Art Factory on weeknights and the Abercrombie on Fridays, and everywhere we went we listened for that rush-punch of Bloc Party. Every great time I’ve ever had was with Ollie and a ticket stub, usually one I’d forgotten to print and that I now regret not keeping for my old age. It was, I see now, the time of my life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM4Mrk3m5n0
Cloaked in the invincibility of coolness and connection, Bloc Party opened a world I’d never felt part of. For Ollie and I, Silent Alarm means the rapture of the mosh at Splendour, it means Oxford Street, it means finding shapes in night-clouds, it means stillness, silent tears and clasping hugs as This Modern Love breaks us. The day Ollie left, I could feel the pull beginning before I got in the car. I remember feeling panic rising as I sat in the front seat, ready to go to the airport, tension cords wrapping around me again. I was shaking and thinking of all the things I was letting go, weeping before I’d even started the engine. On that plane went my gig partner, my tastemaker, my reliable adventurer and best friend. At the airport he sat across from me in the food court, fingers drumming, foot tapping. What could I do to make him stay? What was I thinking as I watched my safety net fly away from me?
You’ll find it hiding in shadows
You’ll find it hiding in cupboards
It will walk you home safe every night
It will help you remember:
If that’s way it is,
Then that’s the way it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5tR03Ev_wE
As naysayers pointed the finger at Ellie Goulding with allegations of lip syncing at Saturday’s AFL Grand Final, the following night the Britpop star tossed her hair and laughed it off. “You guys know how much I love to lip sync right?” she asked a clamouring audience at the Enmore on Sunday night. An ecstatic crowd of acne-ridden selfie-posers had sold out the one-night-only performance, eager to see the glamourous songstress. After touring alongside Taylor Swift and performing at the Royal Wedding, she was unashamed to relegate the AFL uproar to just “that football thing”.
The night opened with Asta, the winner of 2012 Unearthed High and an energetic teeny bopper with the voice of a husky Motown crooner. If Ellie is a pop princess, Asta is the lady-in-waiting, surging with ambition and promise, determined to show she is worthy of the crown. She bounced around the stage in hot pants with hair-whipping galore, delivering a punchy, blasting performance that had the rest of the twenty-one year-olds screaming for more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hzgS9s-tE8
And they got what they wanted. Before Ellie emerged onstage the six piece band opened with Outside, her collaboration with Calvin Harris, and even before her trademark breathy timbre was heard the crowd could not hold themselves back. While the back up singers stole the show with superstar choreography of their own, the audience were literally up and dancing in the aisles of the Enmore mezzanine. When she finally came out it was to absolute rapture, her saccharine soprano belting over the heads of the screaming teenagers. At the start of the performance she spent a lot of time writhing behind a fan (not a hysterical teen fan, but a fan of the air-blowing variety) but soon she loosened up, chatting to the crowd and moving about the stage carefree, and it became easier to get caught up in the hype of the show. The back up singers were the most visually captivating part of the show, however nothing could overshadow the star’s powerful and unique voice. With a three-octave range Ellie could jump around her register effortlessly, adding depth and bounce to otherwise standard electro-pop. Her cover of Your Song was a soft moment for a singalong, while Anything Can Happen was the crowd favourite. Ellie finished with Burn and a guitar around her neck, strumming out the power chords and wishing everyone well until her tour next year. Ellie Goulding… more like Ellie Good-sing… er.
Is Autre Ne Veut fucking with us or what? Arthur Ashin has released his third full album, Age of Transparency¸ and it sounds exactly like what you’d expect someone who has spent a year a half alone in a small room in Brooklyn investing a lot of time in metaphors and thinking about “honesty” versus honesty and what connecting means would sound like. There is a good deal of beauty, and a tremendous amount of thought, in the production of this album. In our recent interview, Ashin told us he pushed himself to grow “by pushing myself into situations I’m not comfortable with [so I] can become a stronger better person without being coddled.” He has pushed the limits of convention and genre in creating this follow up to 2013’s critically-acclaimed Anxiety, working with a jazz ensemble and choir in the recording before retreating to mix the album alone. Exploring the impossibility of true transparency, Ashin has developed a strong concept and built the album from this abstract foundation up, but how accessible is the end product?
It opens with On and On (Reprise), a six minute deconstruction of what starts as a soulful belter with sparse accompaniment that descends into experimental whirring and piano scats, Ashin’s modern jazz influences apparent in the trilling flutes and throw-around vocals. Everything comes off the rails in the end in full breakdown, scattered and manic. Panic Room has been getting more radio play with a more easily digestible twinkly sound in which Ashin’s silky voice shines over electronic sighs. We’re back in the deep end quickly, though, with Cold Winds dousing us with dissonance, yawping bass groans leading to Ashin’s angelic tones, crying “I think you’re a god” over synth madness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaLK3XJfVjk
The title track has more heavy jazz influences, and it is here that the depth and quality of Ashin’s production is showcased. He brings together the gorgeous choral backing with a snapping beat, a purity and clarity emerging from the chaos at last. Age of Transparency feels like the only track of the album that has some sense of unity, keeping the loose deconstructed feel that permeates the album but in the improvised jazz style, rather than disconcerting electronic jumps and glitches.
As the album winds down, Ashin continues to twist from wherever we expect him to go. Switch Hitter is a change again for Autre Ne Veut with a goopy RnB beat and nasal vocal changes and falsettos. Never Wanted is a twinkly love ballad with plucking harp tones and the harmonized choral backing swelling the track and then breaking it back down to a lazy bass and piano line. We are snapped out of this lovely interlude with the biting, sharp stabs of World War Pt. 2. Punctuated with pointed rising scales and a heavy electronic drones, World War Pt 2 highlights the disparity between Ashin’s expressive vocal quality and the jarring accompaniment, with a truly eerie video exploring the burdens we carry with us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzFnojEjjiU
By the time we get to the break down in Over Now we know to expect the unexpected but are still thrown by the white noise tidal wave of static that cuts in at the three-minute mark, lest we begin to be lulled by the easy tempo and dulcet soothing of “It’s over now…” I know that Ashin has done something unique in Age of Transparency, I know that he’s finessed his craft and gone to places others wouldn’t and sought to create a message rather than just produce big tracks. But despite this I was relieved to get to the end of the album, listening to the unhinged modulating high notes and big choral foldbacks of Ashin reaching his triumphant end point. Get Out is seven and a half minutes long and explores the full gamut of Autre Ne Veut, the wild experimental electronic, the jazz and gospel accompaniment, the raw and ragged vocal breakdowns, the ultimate discomfort of dissonance. Ultimately, whether I’ve understood it or not, I know that Arthur Ashin is speaking a different language to everyone else.
Age of Transparency is out today.
Finishing their tour with a sold out show at OAF, Holy Holy have had a big year. They’ve been touring with Boy and Bear, played Splendour in the Grass and sold out their biggest national tour following the release of their debut When the Storms Would Come. In a sold out crowd of over twenty-fives, Holy Holy’s nostalgic vibes and travel worn sound showed why their star has been on the rise.
Melbourne’s Fractures opened the night in sensual style, moving the crowd and delving into heart-melter territory. In molten darkness producer Mark Zito had the crowd transfixed with favourites Twisted and You Won’t Win as well new single Reactor, the first track of his album set to debut next year. With his idiosyncratic moody elegance and some back up fleshing out his sound to dreamier heights, Fractures had OAF in its groove by ten o’clock, ready to celebrate the final night of Holy Holy’s national tour.
A chanting echo of spoken word brought Holy Holy on stage, opening with History. Lead guitarist Oscar Dawson plunged through the familiar California rock riffs, bouncing around the stage in glee and kicking the show off in thrashing, glorious style. Above it all Timothy Carroll’s warm voice was like a ringing bell, smoothing the textured sound into a softer, clearer whole. Every syllable was saturated in earnestness as he cried out across the crowd in Sentimental and Monday. Tim Hart of Boy and Bear joined the boys and bolstered the Americana feel of Pretty Strays for Hopeless Lovers with throbbing guitar riffs and stacked harmonies.
Spectacular solos from Oscar and drummer Ryan Strathie let the talent of the group rise through Carroll’s ballady belting and there were many shining moments in the details of shimmery instrumentals. The crowd was treated to a new unreleased track with an upbeat heartbeat and after blasting through their “spirit song”, Theme From Terminator 2, Holy Holy finished the set with the lashing crescendo of You Cannot Call for Love Like a Dog. The strongest punch, however, came with the final encore of Neil Young’s Southern Boy, a clear herald of the band’s classic influences and a joyous moment for the tour to come to a close on. With so many influences steeped in nostalgia, we will wait and see what fresh direction Holy Holy steers in next as they return to the studio.
Joshua Tillman aka Father John Misty has been confirmed as the first act announced for this year’s Meredith Music Festival in Victoria. If there’s ever a festival where the headliner doesn’t matter, it’s Meredith. It’s all about the vibe and the community, but with FJM (also of Fleet Foxes fame) in attendance that vibe is going to be heightened to fever point as the crowd revel in the glory of his stunner album I Love You Honey Bear live.
Tillman’s evangelical Christian upbringing was first an obstacle to pursuing music but now infuses his songs with a spiritual backbone that injects soul and soothing into every note. Of I Love You Honey Bear Tillmn said “My ambition, aside from making an indulgent, soulful, and epic sound worthy of the subject matter, was to address the sensuality of fear, the terrifying force of love, the unutterable pleasures of true intimacy, and the destruction of emotional and intellectual prisons in my own voice.”
Saturday sunset at Meredith is going to be intense.
We had an amazing time at Meredith 2014 – have a read of our review here, and our feature on how to go to festivals alone!
The ballot for Meredith closes tomorrow! Get in quick here
Imagine you’re sitting in your car listening to the radio. No, wait – imagine you’re sitting in a DeLorean listening to the radio. Nope, nope, you’re sitting in THE DeLorean, with the hover-wheels folded down and Michael J Fox chilling arms folded on the bonnet, and you spin the radio dial. What do you hear? Screech of static. Jangly piano. Are we heading into the nineteeth century? The Queen-esque twang of the slide guitar tells us different. Everything seems solidly eighties until – a walking bass and sharp beat kicks in and is soon maxxed out. That beat is Cream on Chrome, and you have just found Magnifique, Ratatat’s fifth and hotly anticipated album.
In our recent interview with one half of Brooklyn based instrumental pair Ratatat, Mike Stroud was so happy with the duo’s latest album he called it their best album. Why? “I feel like we went back to doing what we’re good at which is using guitar for all the melodies and everything. I just think the songs are more memorable and simple. I don’t know, why do you think it is?” In Magnifique, diversity is key. With a twist of a radio dial introducing most songs, the whole album is a determined catch-call of “BUT LOOK AT MY RANGE!” Stroud and Evan Mast were determined to show exactly how much is accomplishable with a simple guitar and electronic set up. For this album the melodies were written first, and not basing each track around electronic bass or beat mean a cleaner, directed sound. Doomed to be victims of comparison, Stroud beat us to the punch declaring that this album was a lot like their beloved and fun 2006 album Classics, while LP3 and LP4 were “more about the production.” If you were a fan of Classics, you will certainly be enjoying Magnifique as the effect of those guitars and stacked beats has only been finessed in the four years since their last release.
Running through the album, the radio slides and static twists are the glue that bind each track together. I feel the album was designed to be disjointed – there is no meaningful connection from one track to the next except for an occasional spin of the dial. Take three of the middle tracks – Countach is a deep, heavy electronic warp that is bookended by Abrasive, a bendy, strung out guitar-centric four minutes punctuated with lo-fi drum and midi synth, and Drift, a jazzy interlude featuring a striding bass that sounds like it’s being played on a jug and whines of synth sliding up and down like the crying of a sooky cat. Style and structures jump all over the place. The sound strays from rich warps and wubs resonating through your stomping feet to thin, stringy sparkly guitar riffs in Pricks of Brightness and lush tropical strains as Supreme washes through you like rain, seeping and swelling. There is a lot packed into fourteen tracks, a lot to admire and also a lot to wonder at. The attention to detail is obvious, and the mesh of electronic and guitar melodies is at its strongest in Nightclub Amnesia. My favourite of the album, this exceedingly well-titled track is exactly the glitch and thump you’re after. At six minutes long, things slow down around the 2.40 mark only to be brought up with a pulsing hi-hat and funky bassline you would follow anywhere.
What do you do with this album? Sometimes you can dance to it. Sometimes you can jam to it. Sometimes, like when the violin strains of the title track takes you, you could fall asleep to it. The album’s outro, when you come to it, is so distinct and fitting as the spinning reel comes to an end. You know this has been a labour of love, and the level of detail found in each track will speak for itself. Listen and learn, and find out for yourself.
“Misery is wasted on the miserable… You think spending time with her, kissing her, having fun with her, you think that’s what it was all about? THIS is love. Missing her, because she’s gone. Wanting to die…. You’re so lucky. You’re like a walking poem. Would you rather be some kind of a fantasy? Some kind of a Disney ride? Is that what you want? Don’t you see? This is the good part. This is what you’ve been digging for all this time. Now you finally have it in your hand, this sweet nugget of love, sweet, sad love, and you want to throw it away. You’ve got it all wrong.” – Louis CK, “Louie”
Love, the arse-kicker. Love, the spirit-breaker. Love, the soul’s self-flagellation where you toss yourself up on the rocks of someone else’s shore over and over, finding only broken bones and bruises for your efforts. This is the love Pat Grossi has washed us in with every breathy falsetto and lingering note of “Mercy.” The beauty and joy of it is how not only is the melancholy of this state of being so perfectly rippled through each piece, but slowly and carefully we are rebuilt, the Lazurus coming back at the album’s end to right yourself once again.
Active Child’s sophomore album Mercy, a collection of lovesongs and lullabies, has all the hallmarks of an album borne of heartbreak. Released this week through Vagrant Records, artist Pat Grossi stated in a recent interview with Howl & Echoes that, “a lot of the music was written last summer when I went through a pretty traumatic breakup with a person I really loved and cared bout, and I felt really lost during that period. It was during that time that I rediscovered how much music meant to me. It sounds shitty, but I sort of needed that – that intense emotional breakdown.” There’s an understanding of what loving someone really means penned all over the lulling melodies and in the soprano-sung lyrics. 1999 starts the album off with a lone piano and that oh-so-familiar confession, “I think about you all the time.” “So the story goes, a man and a woman…” sings Grossi, setting the tone of resigned reflection and delicate sadness that follows a heartbreak.
The sound of the album is Active Child at its best. In Darling we hear sparse string accompaniment to layered velvety vocals. The harps spread honey, and you’d believe this is what actual heaven sounds like with angelic upswings and cascading harp flurries. Compare this with the RnB vibin’ of Never Far Away, with staccato percussion and neo-soul synth work, and the talent of Grossi as a multi-instrumentalist and a genre-mixer is never more apparent. The title track Mercy is sultry and syrupy, Grossi’s voice pulling back to a delicate murmur as the clicks and beats drive us to the second half of the album.
This half is where Active Child’s sound verges on cinematic. Midnight Swim is a pizzicato soundtrack to nights spent alone, an instrumental interim where the music tells us all we need to know about this low of the journey. From jarring discomfort, Stranger is a sharp ticking over as the whole album picks up. Beats are faster; bass is deeper, syncopation falls in and out of a driving underscore. By the time we get to Lazarus, Midnight Swim’s darker cousin, in which Grossi’s voice breaks through the murk of minor chords with a wrenching cry of “It’s all because of you”, we are on the road to catharsis. The album closer, Too Late, is gentle and submissive, a love lullaby in which sorrow is put to rest. The whole album is stirring, is sentimental, is an ethereal dreamworld which any broken lover has visited, if only briefly. Hold it in your hand, this sweet nugget of love, this sweet sad love.
“Mercy” is out now.
Hot Chip are back, having never really left after fifteen years of playing together, with their sixth album, Why Make Sense? Full of the muted groove and understated pop that is both immediately recognisable and instantly distinctive, Hot Chip is as always uniform in sound and iconoclastic in scope. In the world of electronic, Hot Chip are singular and unflinching, sophisticated groove in a sea of throb and punch. Bringing their live show collaborators onto the recording has added some easily transferable oomph to what Felix Martin has described as their “best album yet.” Why Make Sense? is a good time album, a soundtrack to warped city visions and moody dancefloors, and fans of Hot Chip el classico will be well satiated.
Clever kids Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard first got together in the year 2000, confusing the indie and electronic worlds with a blend of both that created instant buzz. The five-piece kept pumping out their particular brand of complexity disguised as minimalism, remaining one of the most reliable dance floor fillers for DJs worldwide and a consistently delivering fan favourite. In an interview this month, Taylor stated Why Make Sense? came from his “absurd approach to life…the lyrics are free to abandon the need to make logical sense or have a narrative or one fixed subject matter… We took that title because we felt like that’s the attitude of Hot Chip. We don’t need to conform to things that people expect of us, we’ve spent long enough with people being confused – why stop now? People always ask why and that’s the hardest question to answer in music.”
Album opener Huarache Lights is named after retro-resurgence sneakers, and on first listen the revival theme is clear. With a simple drum beat opening a la 2006 hit Over and Over, Huarache Lights builds into a deep pulse, with catch cry falsettos evening the frequencies and smoothing the five minute track out into a growing, incessant ear worm. This is what we’ve been missing, the clear cut mechanical machinations of a group of electronic perfectionists. Love is the Future is much funkier, an invitation to a party you want to be at. Taylor and Goddard still like to spike the punch, with De La Soul’s Posdnuos dropping a verse just to confuse the shit out of you and remind you that Hot Chip were teenagers of the nineties. Likewise, Started Right is at first surely some kind of joke with a super cheesy midi-inspired keyboard melody that is, nonetheless, infectious and spreads into something you can’t really help but bop to.
The whole album is jittery and buzzing, even the ballad White Wine and Fried Chicken a dampened slow dance that refuses to tail off when you expect it to. As discussed in our interview, it’s the mix of emotional connection with synth magic that set Hot Chip apart from the rest of the electro-pop dance crowd. This album is no different, and while there will be few surprises for fans that already know the Hot Chip sound it is still that solid consistency and that emotional connection that will continue to keep Hot Chip at the top of the electronic food chain.
Before you listen to The Positions, Sydney indie rockers Gang of Youths’ debut album, just check a few things about yourself. Are you in a good place right now? Do you have a supportive friend’s phone number close at hand? Is your mascara waterproof? These are all important questions to ask first, because you’re about to dive headfirst into a grief few people can understand and a story that will invariably change your perception of the album. Vocalist Dave Le’aupepe does not hold back, opening a door many would keep shut tight and bringing us into the turmoil, frustration, heartbreak and desperate hope that hallmarks the pain of a young life lost.
From a bleak world of hospital waiting rooms and stark realities, The Positions is a beacon of battle and revelation, written to chronicle and comprehend Dave Le’aupepe’s four year relationship with a woman fighting terminal cancer. When in “Sjamboska” Dave pleads “I will hold on to you. Hold on to me”, it charges the pit of your stomach and twists a twinge in your chest. The album was written, recorded and released over three years and two continents, with input from producer Kevin McMahon of Frightened Rabbit and Titus Andronicus heightened by Le’aupepe’s perfectionism. This drive to create something poetic and grand came from a place of just “wanting to make something I didn’t hate”. The result is large and wrecking, a discovery of beauty and hope in dire circumstances.
These are long tracks, well-drawn and heavily structured. The album is topped and tailed by “Vital Signs” and “The Overpass” at a cool seven and a half minutes each, both stretching their openings and playing with percussive, atmospheric introductions. “Poison Drum”, the lead single from the album, is a mere six and half minutes, but with a punch and drive that manages to stay sustained throughout. “Poison Drum” is an escape track, music to be sung along to on a road trip while you belt the side of the car through your open window. The nineties-grunge leanings of Gang of Youths is offset by more complex instrumentation, adding depth where there could otherwise just be scratch. That voice is the right amount of husk, sex and earnestness that balances between belters like “Poison Drum” and heartbreaking stand out “Knuckles White Dry”. Mid-album the instruments get a shake up with a heavy use of strings and snyth, and “Knuckles White Dry” taking the listener by surprise with a clangy piano accompanied only with the mellow rasp of Le’aupepe.
The long track durations can set the album up to follow a similar structure for each song. In most you can identify the slow start, crashing bridge, and softening finale that draws the tracks from a four minute piece to the six and seven minutes that are the norm for Gang of Youths. By the end of the album the direction of “The Overpass” is predictable, from building cries of the chorus to the straining strings a solemn finish . Does this detract from the fact it is a good song, heartfelt and rich? Of course not. This is an album you come to know quickly, intimate from the outset and instantly familiar. Dave Le’aupepe has laid it all on the table, the gutwrenching origins of the album laid bare, honest and vulnerable as an open wound.
“The Positions” is out today.
Gang of Youths are touring from May 15, see tour dates here
When you know that Jungle – the band whose videos feature unreal dance crews, five year old breakdancers and rollerskating badasses – is actually two white dudes from London, you wonder how that funk and soul attitude is going to translate when they’re on stage performing their self-titled album. How on earth is the punch and grind of their sound going to work when it’s just the two of them behind the decks? The answer comes in the form of a seven-piece live band, an epileptic light show and pin-point perfect execution.
Oscar Key Sung opened the night with the oversized dress and charisma of a nineties croon star, working hard for a budding crowd and bringing his trademark RnB sensibility to smooth electronica. A Disclosure/Craig David lovechild incarnate, as well producing a mix of snappy beats and chasmic bass echoes Oscar is able to throw his voice around in slips and slides that are, well, to say the least… evocative. On stage the man was dedicated to seducing the crowd not only with his silver-tongued voice but also some next-level dancing, grinding up on the decks and frankly outclassing any electronic act that thinks pumping the crowd up involves a lot of jumping up and down and fist pumping. The crowd was left biting their lips in breathy anticipation as he blasted through All I Could Do, with a dance floor all worked up and ready to keep on gyrating by the time the headliners made their entrance.
Jungle became known in the UK in 2013 not only for their unique sound but their anonymity – for months there were no interviews, no press photos, just some amazing videos and two producers calling themselves ‘J’ and ‘T’ releasing track after track of catchy disco-styled electronica. When they came on stage at the Metro they were shrouded in smoke, backlit and surrounded by their bandmates, opening with a scorching rendition of Platoon, and never seen beyond a dark silhouette for the entirety of the show. Watching a couple of shadows perform for an hour could become annoying, but was saved by nevertheless high energy on stage and the effortlessly sassy back up singers, drawing the audience’s gaze with sharply choreographed moves and the synchronicity that makes Jungle videos so mesmerizing.
The energy of the crowd was high from the get go, with beats specifically targeting the hips and pelvises as we were hit with full-on funk to the face. The Heat and Julia gave us all serious groove envy, reeling us in for the big drops and hooks. I am of the belief that more bass and bongos are always a good thing, and the extended bridges of each song, coupled with a blunt cut off to finish, built up such a tension in the room not one person was left standing still. The most impressive aspect of the show, however, was the execution – Josh and Tom are multi-instrumentalists and how they managed to switch between drum pads, guitars and synth while never missing a beat or high-register note was frankly astounding. There were no breaks while they sorted out the switches, just a seamless transition from track to track, finishing with Hottest 100 #67 Busy Earnin and a deafening encore of Time. Jungle sound exactly they way you hope they will live, and even faceless manage to create a cool and charismatic energy on stage that seeps into the toes and hips of everyone watching. Limber up and bring your goddamn dancing shoes to Laneway, because I can only imagine what an audience of thousands is going to turn into once that soul beat starts.
Jungle is performing around the country with St Jeromes Laneway Festival.
Brisbane – Sat Jan 31
Sydney – Sun Feb 1
Melbourne – Sat Feb 7 and also Wed Feb 4 at 170 Russell (tickets here)
Adelaide – Friday Feb 6
Fremantle – Sunday Feb 8