The Droyds - London Mean Fiddler - 6/4/03
4/5
By: Toby L
It's a surreal afternoon; suited fellas covering a keys-tinged rendition of 'Waterloo Sunset' - converting it into a distressing piece of 70's-fitting holiday-camp fluff - and hundreds of attendees that look as if they've just landed from Planet Peculiar, all rubber tops, extravagant make-up and haircuts that ache to merely look at (let alone adorn). All that aside, and there's nigh-on a moment of devastating logic amidst the insanity - and that's saying something when considering The Droyds live.
A considerable achievement, the latter effectively make for the sleaziest, most ominous act of the afternoon in London's Mean Fiddler, amidst one day reserved for a 10-hour fest of all things electro and as - OK, don't panic... - un-guitar as possible. To its raw basics, The Droyds - a group responsible for one of 2002's underground dance-anthems of the year, 'Girls On Pills', and recent pen-to-paper merchants with Alan McGee - mark one of the UK's most engaging pop-sensations for a veritable patch, taking as much pride in their dapper cloths as the construction-process for each of their darkly infused four-minute brood-a-thons.
On occasion, the subject-matter proves, presumably, autobiographical; through singes of pulsating stares and epic synth-sequences, we get an opening welcome to the 'freak show', and you're not doubting them, and excitement only heightens when a closer look reveals that - yes! - their main bird has her tits virtually hanging out. Still, 'Daily Sport'-isms aside, and tinny Kraftwerk rhythms and textures rigidly grind against accusing glares and pouty smoking to vigorous, penetrative effect: altogether the perfect backdrop for eerie, hypnotic chart-bound matter that serves as both instantly inviting, if wildly austere - a complex to the product that surpasses standard time-signatures and forgettable interview-quotes.
Things even become free-range in certain instances - a vocoder-diced 'Vampires', for example - whilst a lurching melodic quality, as clad naturally in customary zapping bleeps, undercoats the frivolous 'Shiny People', and the onstage lighting of course goes golden. Several hundred fags smoked later, and the set culminates via the likes of a spooky 'Follow The Leader' (dedicated, mysteriously, to one Craig David) and talks of 'reanimating' stuff. Well, we're sold.
Although confronted today by a group the ill-informed would deem indebted hysterically to the 80s, where The Droyds jump a couple of decades/furlongs to remain far ahead of their rivals is via a hit-parade classicism and zesty, youth-based appeal which is - arguably - quite timeless. For that, and their arsenal of chilling tuneage, prepare to meet your new emperors of archly stylised cool - but just pray they don't come for you.
Artists in this article: The Droyds
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