Annie Mac Presents... Kid Sister & Miike Snow – Koko, London – 14/11/09
4/5
By: Samuel Smith
I’m not usually one for Gonzo journalism, but I should probably predate this review with the short tale of how my night shaped up before attending Annie Mac’s little shindig at Camden’s Koko club.
After doing the hard bit and blagging a pair of tickets to the night which was to feature Kid Sister, the brilliance of Boy 8 Bit and the only U.K. appearance of Miike Snow (pron. meeek sno-w, pictured), I forgot to put a call into any of my very busy friends’ secretaries, thus leaving me with two guest passes to a brilliant, sold out night, and no friends to go with. Rather than sobbing long and deep into my lonely cup of tea, I decided to man the heck up and hit the place on my own. Surely I would be able to pull off the brooding lonely stranger thing. Everyone is watching that True Blood thing nowadays aren’t they? Maybe some hot girl might take me for a mysterious vampir-ey kind of character and ask me back to her Buffy-obsessed lair…maybe, just maybe.
Pulling on the stiff collar of my oversized rain mac in a way that I’d seen some guy do in a film once, I stepped out into the darkling night. And onto a bus. Then onto a train. Then another train. By the time I got to the venue I felt a lot less like a dark, brooding stranger and more like a pissed off, uncomfortable commuter. So the night started out with me pretty low on spirits, but that was soon to be remedied (no thanks to the ridiculously over-priced bar prices, I mean, really, six pounds for a double Jamesons? How do you expect me to brood moodily next to a pillar if I can’t afford to sip on a shit whiskey out of a plastic cup?)
By the time I finally got myself settled up on the first balcony, Kid Sister were already halfway through their set. Accompanied by her brother on decks (true story, how modern-day Enid Blyton is that?) and the obligatory rap-assistant, this talented young lady played a viciously hip set of thwomping “club rap” to the fifty or so people gathered tentatively on the dance floor. In spite of being almost overwhelmed by the muffled sound of the bass too-heavy PA, Kid Sister’s blend of 909 beats, Garage bass lines, hip-hop samples and…err, cats, was entirely engaging, swinging between hip catching un-pop, and camp, lo-fi synth beats. It didn’t get me moving or anything like that, but that’s less the fault of the music, and more to the fact that I’m pretty sure this guy behind me kept checking out my behind and clapping his massive hands together like some sub-Roald Dahl character. However, even I couldn’t help but shuffle a toe for the final track Let Me Bang – a dirty stomper of a track, the kind of thing that Prince would probably write were he to remove his hand from his scrotal area and learn how to program a good beat. The song also features that kind of breathy vocal perfectly engineered to make men go all funny and quivery at the knees. Oh, and talking of quivery bits, Kid Sister’s set also included a full half hour of choreographed B-boy dance moves performed by two women in very tight bodysuits and cat masks, changing the show into the kind of spectacle that I guess Lady Gaga used to make back on the Manhattan club circuit. Pop brilliance, just a shame that most of the people watching were just getting a good space for the next band.
At this point I felt the siren call of whiskey beckoning me back into her overpriced arms, but answer her I must. This meant that, just as the grumpy barlady begrudgingly decided to hand me my drink, the first strains of Miike Snow’s opening track ‘Burial’ came flooding through the venue. Now, I was both incredibly excited and a little nervous at this point – Miike Snow’s debut self titled album has personally been one of the most exciting and strangely un-acknowledged releases in this half of the year – and I was very unsure whether their tricksy studio set-up would translate well into a live situation, particularly one as cavernous and sometimes atmospherically stilted as Koko. However, from the very first moment I argy-bargied my way back to my position on the first balcony, I was quite firmly reassured that I never had anything to worry about. This band play live like Soulwax desperately wish they could – fusing electronica and synthesizers to a thumping, beating human heart – performing not just an audio perfect reproduction of the album, but something that is, in the most essential sense of the word, live.
One particular highlight was the track ‘Syliva’, a song which, on record, broods and hums, balanced on the edge of emotion and abstraction. Live, it fuzzed lightly, hissing and popping like an autumnal fire of damp leaves, bringing a humanity to what could otherwise be quite a cool midi-synchronised tune.
The slower songs in the set teetered and wobbled majestically, but just as the booze began to burn and kick in the hot room, the offbeat synth opening of ‘Plastic Jungles’ ripped through the speakers as if Soft Cell never happened. The crowd bounced exuberantly along, lapping it up like calcium starved milk-pussies as the lights dropped down to a single backlit spot, throwing the band into stark silhouette. It was at this point that it struck home how much this bunch of odd looking Swedish fellows looked like a band. And I mean that in all its italicised glory, these guys looked cool.
With a venue-destroying outro that belonged more to Fabric than an indie nighclub, the band hum their way into the night, leaving behind a trail of feedback and the crash of cymbals in a smoky train of euphoria. As the exultantly half-drunk crowd made innocent dirty love amongst the spilt beer and the piling glasses. I stumbled out into the night, my iron head stone high and firm.
Artists in this article: Miike Snow
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