Report: Rockfeedback @ iTunes Festival Night 29 – Simian Mobile Disco, 29/7/09
5/5
By: Dickon Stone
This year, Rockfeedback is delighted to be the official blog partner for the rather exciting iTunes Festival, taking place at London’s Roundhouse every night in July. Over the course of the festival, we’ll not be missing a night, delivering morning-after reports on everyone from Oasis and Bloc Party to Franz Ferdinand and Kasabian playing intimate sets to fans lucky enough to have won tickets to the shows.
The stage is dark. A deep blue light phases around catching the equipment in the centre; 4 monitors pointing inwards at heaped up modular synths and LFOs and sequencers which flash LED red and green; ticking over in their un-pushed pre-show state like the central nervous system of a sleeping intergalactic warlord (presumably a Vulcan; everything is far too precise and purposely position for the likes of Klingons…)
There is smoke everywhere. It drifts and billows about the gloomy light. A siren builds in pitch and volume; growing and growing; yet there is still nobody on stage. Then through the darkness two figures emerge and make their way to their flight controls; James Ford and Jas Shaw seeming like cameo roles in the 1979 Alien original when John Hurt is in the mist room and first discovers the eggs.
Like a pair of ghoulish Igor’s they set to work with crooked hunches and nodding heads; out of the sirens creeps the telltale sign of ‘bidniss as usual’ for Simian Mobile Disco; ‘Sleep Depravation’ is rising.
The light show is UN F**KING REAL. Like nothing I have seen before; lazers, strobe, these big kind of kaleidoscope lights, and huge visuals which correspond individually to each track; like ‘Synthesize’ with its collection of circles in formation which jump and glide about the screens behind SMD.
Jas gives a kind of angry chimp hunched hop as he begins to bring in the beeps which signify that we are about to experience ‘It’s The Beat’, and sure enough after a breakdown into nothing but those beeps which are played with rhythmically with brain damaging amounts of strobe until WHAMMY, they drop the vocals and beats and IT certainly IS the beat.
By this point all I can think is WOW. Simian Mobile Disco have only released one album. And with the second one on the horizon it is not implausible that this duo of music maniacs could certainly be the next… Orbital? Chemical Brothers? With so much material I don’t recognise but find groin strikingly wonderful I feel safe in assuming that the new album is going to be mega.
I realise that no matter what has become popular, or phased into obscurity as far as music is concerned in the mainstream market; SMD have stayed true to what they know and love. Techno. This is nothing BUT. It is pure, occasionally adulterated (with poppy vocals) techno. And there is a carpet of jumping-like-mentalists people in The Roundhouse who prove that it is not going into obscurity anytime soon. Rather, this is simply proof that if anything, real techno is on its way to the mainstream.
A ping pongy track with visuals that remind me of menigococal blisters rattles about my ears and eyes all red dots which divide and multiply on the screens behind the now fully roused tyrannical brainbox. ‘Audacity Of Huge’, the first single from the new album then hits our ears and like some kind of mental techno blood test the visuals go haywire and the sounds wind up to a calamitous clamour until I almost feel like my head is going to explode – like when the camera is on Garth in Wayne’s World and they talk about that scene from Scanner – but then miraculously it all suddenly becomes clear; like the polyrhythmic majesty of a Tool climax where all necessary parts finally meet (after about 256 bars of madness) and you go from a state of confusion to this ethereal bliss of clarity.
A huge winding noise then begins to build; up and down and up and down with a mass of percussion which finally becomes recognisable as the opening to ‘Hustler’, which James and Jas make us wait for as they adeptly use filters to play with our expectations before they finally drop that beat. In the middle of the hit single the pace drops and goes to a quasi-dubstep beat which sends people mad – talk about having them in the palm of your hand – before they whoosh it back up to speed. When ‘Hustler’ comes to an end there is a huge break of silence and darkness from the stage, which is met by an ear-splitting roar from the grateful crowd.
They think it’s all over.
IT BLOODY ISNT!
With another crazy mashup of noise and seeming like the lighting men were fighting to see who could out-do the other with lasers we are led into some new material which is a delight; females vocals and just pure and delicious SMD. I love these guys. They are special. Breakdowns, phasing, filtering, taking out percussion, bringing it back; the crowd just cant contain themselves.
At one point the background visuals are like stars, and we are moving through them; and slowly slowly they slow down and the music slows and we are all in some kind of pressure drop and then we speed again, with rising synths and straight to warp 5 and the delightful opening of ‘Tits and Acid’.
It goes off. They stop before the second drop. They take a bow. They drop it. I am out of my seat. Everybody is possessed. The song comes to an end and the two mad genius chimps say their thanks and leave the stage.
They think it’s all over.
ENCORE!!!!
‘I Believe’ is too cool. It begins to quicken towards the end and in come the sounds of ‘10000 Horses’ which ploughs on through ‘til the drop, where Simian Mobile Disco stop the music once more for a bit of screaming and shouting from the crowd. They drop the final drop… Masses of powerful toms, golly what a pair of nutters. Like heaven. That is how I will describe this gig. I have a certain amount of adrenaline just thinking back to it. Incredible.
Artists in this article: Simian Mobile Disco
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment