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see all the photos from this concert here
Andi Sex Gang
The Dead
Demeter
Devilish Presley
Rome Burns
Underworld, London
Sunday August 29 2004
~review and photos by Uncle
Nemesis
It’s been five years since Andi Sex Gang
played the Underworld. I have a particular reason for recalling this statistic:
I was the promoter of his last gig here. That night remains in my memory
as...well, let’s say, something special. It certainly wasn’t an ordinary
gig, as you can possibly tell from this uk.people.gothic thread which appeared
shortly after the dust had settled: http://www.makeashorterlink.com/?C114259A9
This time, things look likely to be a little
more straightforward. No Hare Krishna dance troupes, at
any rate. Some things, you can only do just once. Instead, we have
a varied bunch of support bands, the first of which is Rome Burns. They’re
one of those ‘been around a bit, never really made the breakthrough’ outfits
which lurk in the murkier corners of the UK goth scene. They’ve made some
very fine music in their time, but they’ve never quite touched down in
the paydirt zone. Perhaps that situation will shortly change, because their
set of erudite, wordy, quirky songs seems to hit the spot with the audience
tonight. ‘Nothing good can ever come from this!’ chortles the vocalist,
as the band rattle in to the first song. Musically and lyrically, Rome
Burns probably have more in common with all sorts of off-centre pop practitioners,
from Talking Heads to They Might Be Giants, than yer actual goff bands.
If you close your eyes, you can imagine a band of new-wavers standing there
in skinny-fit T-shirts and Converse All-Star sneakers. Open your eyes and...there’s
a bunch of goths on stage. Mike from Manuskript is also on stage for one
song, as an impromptu backing singer. It seems he’s doing some production
work for the band, and if anyone’s on the Rome Burns weird-pop wavelength,
I think it would be Mike. I look forward to hearing the results of this
collaboration.
Devilish Presley do their usual trick of
pouring petrol onto the gig-fire. Any time Devilish Presley appear
at a gig, you can bet the energy levels will suddenly shoot off the scale.
They do it again tonight with a set of manic boisterousness, all battering
beats and rip-roaring guitar; and as ever with this band I’m struck by
the fact that there’s such an outpouring of energy you hardly notice that
there’s only two people on stage. The Devilish Presley fan club is in full
effect down the front - one of them donates his hat to Johnny Navarro -
and even some unplanned guitar-glitches can’t stop the flow. There’s a
new song in the set, a tribute to blues guitarist and inventor of all that
became rock ‘n’ roll, Robert Johnson - the band bigging him up in such
familiar terms you’d almost believe the pioneering bluesman was one of
Devilish Presley’s mates from East London. Maybe, in their heads,
he is.
Demeter are an odd bunch. They’re half
way between a full-on glam rock experience and some sort of ethereal outfit.
It’s as if the band couldn’t quite decide whether they wanted to be Hanoi Rocks
or the Cranes, so they compromised and ended up being a bit of both. Their
songs smooch along on smooth, almost ambient, grooves, then occasionally
erupt with squalls of big guitar - which just as quickly die away again,
leaving the band tip-toeing their way once more through the sensitive zone.
The vocals are way down in the mix, an incomprehensible croon, so much
so that I can’t quite work out if the vocalist is singing in plain English,
or if she’s doing Cocteau Twins-style random vocalisations. One odd touch
is the fact that the singer has two microphones arrayed on a kind of gantry
in front of her: the additional mic, apparently, is plugged into some sort
of effects unit, although why the effects couldn’t be controlled from a
foot switch, or flown in and out by the engineer at the front of house
desk, is a bit of a mystery. As it is, I’m forced to take my photos of
the vocalist exclusively from the stage-left angle, because the other side
of her face is masked by frankly unnecessary extra hardware. I’m left with
the impression that Demeter are a band with plenty of ideas, but not necessarily
the nous to put those ideas into practice in the most effective way.
It wouldn’t be an Andi Sex Gang gig if
we didn’t get some art thrown at us, and sure enough here it comes. A motley
assortment of individuals appears, un-billed and unnanounced, on stage.
‘We are The Dead,’ announces the frontman, and I’m not at all sure if that’s
the name of the ensemble or simply an observation of their state of being.
‘A post-punk aberration,’ he elaborates - and then they kick up a mad swirl
of free-form noise, over which we are treated to a poetry recital. The
audience wears expressions ranging from intrigued delight to outright horror.
There are only three poems, and I think it’s wise of the band to keep things
to this minimal level. An abrupt, hit-and-run raid of powernoise performance
poetry works rather well in a short, sharp, shock kind of way, but any
longer and I suspect The Dead would definitely outstay their welcome.
At last, it’s time for Andi Sex Gang himself.
This is an ‘ambient/acoustic’ performance, a detail which never quite made
it onto any of the pre-gig publicity, which means many people in the audience
are a little bemused to discover that there isn’t a full band on stage
tonight. Andi is joined by two Sex Gang guitarists - and that’s that. No
rhythm section, no backing tracks. But for all
that, the sound is detailed and full, rolling out of the PA and filling
the venue quite impressively, as the guitars jostle and duel. Andi himself
- suited, booted, and wearing a pair of frankly alarming spectacles - stands
centre-stage and effortlessly commands the proceedings. This performance
showcases Andi Sex Gang the torch song balladeer, rather than Andi Sex
Gang the abrasive post-punk rocker, so the overall style is grandly dramatic,
all sweeping gestures as Andi virtually acts his way through the songs.
It’s an engaging performance, although I can’t help wondering what the
be-mohawked hordes of diehard deathrockers who revere the Sex Gang Children
as post-punk heroes would say if they could see this side of Andi Sex Gang’s
art. ‘Arms Of Cicero’ is a sweeping, swooning highlight, but it’s ‘Sebastiane’
- here rendered almost as a doomed ballad - that captures everybody’s attention
and even provokes some dancing down the front, although this set is hardly
designed to get the mosh seething. I dare say this isn’t Andi Sex Gang
as most of his fans would think of him, but as an exercise in cerebral,
cabaret cool, this show works rather well.
see all the photos from this concert here
Andi Sex Gang: http://www.andisexgang.com
Demeter: http://www.demeter.tv
Devilish Presley: http://www.devilishpresley.com
Rome Burns: http://www.romeburns.co.uk
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
11/28/04 |