Yacht, Chops & a.P.A.t.T. - Cargo, London - 29/4/08
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
This being my second time seeing a.P.A.t.T,I know what to expect. They are a very, very silly band to the point of almost being cringe worthy and embarrassing; definitely not a band for people who think they are cool. Luckily I am not in the slightest bit cool, so I can appreciate the finer points to what a.P.A.t.T do without much problem.
I would guess that the band formed whilst studying music at a music college, because they all seem quite musically able, with most of the members competently able to play more then one instrument. The really big give away is the fact that the guitar player only plays guitar, something which often happens on music courses as one has to be totally dedicated to guitar just to compete with the vast amounts of guitar players that want a place on a music course.
They've also got a lot tighter since I last saw them, and I'm glad to see that the guy from the Stig orchestra is no longer playing with them, as he didn't really do a lot for the performance other than just generally making me feel on edge, like he shouldn't be allowed near electricity.
A band is often only as strong as its weakest link. One of the best things about ex-music students is that they can all quite confidently play odd time signatures and unusual melodies, and after a few tracks you become comfortable with the constant lining up and knocking down of disparate musical ideas that have very little to do with one another.
The main problem with the performance came from a technical fault which I'm not sure the band were aware of. The guitar player was a lot of the time using a pedal designed to make his guitar sound like a synth, nothing wrong with that, and when it was quiet this worked to great effect, but whenever he gave it some real welly, the guitar pedal could clearly not take it and would begin clipping furiously. Small grievance, though.
I have never seen anything quite so slap dash as Chops. The amount of work they had put into this set seemed particularly minimal; there were sections that you could tell had been properly written, but for the most part it just seemed completely jammed out. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, it was just a bit of a surprise, and a confusing mess.
Huge boards of pedals are not something that are hard to come by at Upset the Rhythm nights, but at times they were being used to great effect in Chops' set. Putting any brass (or acoustic instrument for that matter) through an octave pedal will always yield interesting effects, but this had been thought about a little bit more carefully with Mr. Stage Right in Chops. I was also amazed at the audacity of using an incredibly expensive looking, beautiful, wonderful sounding analogue synth at the same time as using a cruddy old Casio that was buzzing in between songs and making abrasive howling noises. Every so often the band would start building up something really good which was mostly aided by the band's energetic drummer, something which would get up to a point were the happy go lucky quirky melodies sat along side the furious pounding drums as if they were really getting somewhere. And then it would stop.
Mainly coming out to see the first two bands tonight, Yacht was an interesting experience. I was confronted by two people who, although they weren't bad singers, didn't have outstanding singing voices, singing against a backing track. At first I thought 'oh no, this isn't going to work', but within one and half songs I was thinking 'this might work', and by the end of the third song in which the two people on the stage (mastermind John Bechtolt and his girlfriend Claire L.Evans) are singing repetitively 'Everything is f**ked' my mind is changed. That statement is obviously something we have heard a million times before, but right here right now two people are out on stage singing it, not in a cynical way, but in an oddly empowering way, a way that inspires a sort of community spirit.
After this point the whole set is fantastic. The layered up samples are so artfully and lovingly crafted, using suitable source material like Michael Jackson and the like set against hard hitting booty bass, the boy Yacht is obviously a big pop music fan and uses this attitude to invoke a simple, pure joy. Between songs Mr. Bechtolt is simply charming, after the show he asks if there are any questions, and deals amicably with the inevitable one or two limp hecklers. He then ends on a Nirvana inspired rock track that deftly clears the palette, putting a positive sheen on the whole night.
I go home reminded of why I go to these things.
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