Where to start with this?
How about this – the drums are great and…no, that’s it.
Gorgon City, on this performance, are here to ruin your lives, the lives of future generations and most the certainly the life of the bat-sized moth who has the misfortune to loom down from the disco ball tonight; poor sod. At least he vibrates to death though – I have wade through the battalions of balderdash; the dismaying mediocrity; the fifty shades of beige.
To start with, the abject lunacy of this band being somehow linked with Deep House and its supposed revival – has it ever been away? – is baffling in the extreme. House? – I guess parts of tonight’s extravagloomy are; deep? – yah, about four bars of the encore are; Deep House? – left the building [never entered].
None of that would particularly matter but there’s a shameless, and shameful, all-pervading cynicism about this evening. No amount of, admittedly impressive, sub-bass can disguise the fact that this is vapid, designed by committee, cobblers.
It’s anaemic, soulless and, above all, gutless. Even the noisier moments and flickering strobes are without anything approaching danger or verve.
And the sad thing? It’s constructed by no one other than the two young lads on stage. I’m looking at you Kye Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott. Though it smacks of a Cowell-esque svengali getting in on the game and voiding any material of any integrity it might possibly have, it’s all their fault.
There’s a chasm at the heart of every single second of this gig; not a jot of life beyond surface sheen and a deep and cold exploitative con. Sure we get some house beats; a bit of dub step; some soul(less) vocals courtesy of the disappointingly mundane three vocalists but anything to suggest a flicker of vivacity behind the glass-eyed exploitation? Not… a… bit.
Look, I can hear meaning and heart and depth in a twelve minute drum track but any frantic, desperate hope of joy and fizz is extinguished each and every time the crassest of crass ENORMOUS synth breakdowns comes in. Sound familiar? Aye, this is EDM dressed up as something else. And it’s the most transparent disguise since that wolf in Little Red Riding Hood tried his luck.
It’s the safeness of the whole thing; the lack of courage to wait and seduce. You want groove, originality, effervescent being? – head for the exits. This is dreariness punctuated by sonic laughter tracks. Terry and June writ electronic. The lamest of afternoon radio dressed up as the heat for da kidz.
And don’t those very same kids love it. What do I know? The place is jumping and mad for it; there’s no debate about that. But within a hundred metres of the front door allowing admittance to this festival of the prosaic, electronic music of far greater vitality is available on tap. Right there, right now.and yet they choose this; the Lighthouse Family remixed by Skrillex; disgraced by dishonesty and vacuity.
Even the relief of their delicately produced ‘Right Here’ – with a stand in for Jess Glynne on vocals here – is tinged with regret. A flighty but attractive record with a little substance, here seemingly tainted with solid C-grade flatness.
Lord knows, they seem to be trying, and the vocalists entreat successfully to the enthusiastic crowd but it is all so wrong, wrong, wrong. Or rather, there is so much better out there than this bland cack.
Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles, Mr Fingers, Larry Levan, Louie Vega, Morales, Terry; every one of them would be spinning in their grave at this utter bastardisation, in the worst, most exploitative, sense of the word. Well, the dead ones anyway. If I had a shovel big enough I’d dig dear old Frankie up and shove him down the front row; life expectancy – four minutes maximum.
The most terrifying thought – apart from the fact there’s seemingly a huge market for this thoroughly upsetting dross – is the notion that the chaps actually mean this; that it isn’t just for dosh and kicks. That, I could almost forgive them for. The idea I walk the planet with sentient beings who might actually consider the bargain basement, screaming unsophistication and negative pressure, dead-eyed offerings put forward here as any kind of acceptable behaviour is frankly grim.
This is dance music as laid out by junior estate agents with ambitions to get a place in Berkshire and contemptuous satisfaction that, out there, amongst us, are people so bereft of imagination they will lap up this half-arsed guff. Well, I say Berkshire but that might be a bit too racy: lets settle on Bedfordshire; this has Luton written all over it. Luton via Dubai via… death.
I look at the sextet [the three singers, the lads and a live drummer] onstage and wonder: “Boys, you know your way around the kit, you can do this; how about chucking something at me that doesn’t immediately bring to mind a slow-mo video featuring dead-inside desperadoes flipping bottles of expensive [cheap] Russian vodka about?”
It’s a plundering of genres, each and every one full of glories, then fed through the most middle of the road filters of doom. Regrettable, bordering on calamitous, stuff; this is overwhelmingly, blandly average. I am being charitable. Very charitable.
I just want them, someone…anyone(!), to live inside the groove, to feel it and mean it. To exist within the rhythm and construct outwards. Instead we have stuff flung at us that may as well have been knocked up by a psychopathic, yet deeply dreary, gerbil with a miniature studio and a hammer. Its rictus grin disguising the hollowness within and deflecting our dismay with an air-punch of his furry fist.
As the (blessed) end approaches, the encore of ‘Baker Man’ borrowing ‘Ready For Your Love’ manages to take a plaintively simple but beautiful riff and somehow morph it into an colourless hymn.
I head for the exits and into doleful oblivion; things can only get better.
Horrifying.