With Yoola, Gail, John, and Heidi we went to Brighton to see Lali Puna. This is a brilliant example of a group that is greater than the sum of its parts: Three fairly anonymous, charisma-free German rock-indie types with a drum kit, a bass guitar, and a heap of sampling kit. They are fronted, if that's not too crassly a rock role to be cast in, by a continuously nervous woman playing a sampler and a keyboard. The vocals are pale, repetitive, non-sequiturs and opaque sloganeering imprecations. It has a completely immersive and hypnotic effect, as if looped from a radio station that had ceased to be inspected by the sponsors some time ago. I remember seeing Stereolab in a tiny hall somewhere in Hackney in about 1991, and this show had a similar effect; songs in the form of communiques or sonic postcards, a total lack of Rock Action, a quiet but compulsive buildup of persistence of form. It's completely refreshing to feel so un-performed-at but still entranced.
No comments:
Post a Comment