Gaggle - The Old Blue Last, London 25/8/09
4/5
By: Dan Monsell
Unpleasantly crammed into East London's Old Blue Last, we find ourselves jaws-to-the-floor as 20 or so colourfully cloaked women take to the stage with just 6 micropohones and a lap top side of stage for accompaniment. This is Gaggle we’re staring at, and they are a phenomenon - a riot grrrl choir of sorts led by the marvellous Debra Coughlin. Commanding and conducting her ensemble side of stage, Coughlin takes time out at the beginning of each track to only hit ‘play’ on the laptop - kicking into gear the dubstep-infused electronic backing beats created by her and an off-stage partner.
Tonight in a nasty East London room that’s packed wall-to-wall, we see written before us another chapter of this quickly spreading buzz on one of most original new acts around. Combining the fiery femme punk of Le Tigre - down to the spiky, hilarious, frequently male-bashing lyrics - with Polyphonic Spree type gang vocals and calls-and-responses, it hit us like some much-needed tough love, speckled with some feisty popped-up M.I.A.-like dubstep in the backing tracks.
At times almsot difficult to watch, leaving us feeling oddly voyeuristic, Gaggle can come across less as a band and more a rampant support group for an amazingly mixed group of different women. Here they are together, thrashing out their feelings about bad luck with lying men, all the while with us watching... But really what Gaggle are is a smack in the face of conventionality from what we've come to expect from modern music, from popular culture and definitely from the London music scene in general.
Formerly a member of electro-popsters 586, Coughlin flirted with the fringes of indie-pop success. She's made it clear in press how she found the restraints of the conformity this enforced (whether to look a certain way or sound a certain way) suffocating. What she's created here with Gaggle is not just a knee-jerk reaction to mundanity and the desire for conformity in music she has experienced, it's a full-blown crusade.
Artists in this article: Gaggle
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Gaggle - The Old Blue Last, London 25/8/09
Rating 5
Wasn't able to get in to this show, heard it was packed wall to wall. Saw them on a small bandstand stage at field day. F****** phenomenal!!!!Login to post your comment