From: Joep Vermaat <pjoe@grafix.xs4all.nl>
To: idm-owner@hyperreal.com
Subject: Orbital/Locust
Orbital/Locust saturday december 10th Paradiso, Amsterdam
The setup was much like Triple X Oscillate, the mega electronic-music event
earlier this year. In the center of the relativily small church, compared to
the huge round tank that is the Gashouder, they had put up a scaffolding two
stories high. The lower part filled with live mixing desks and the DJ playing
decks. And the upper part especially reserved for Orbital's stuff.
The concert would start late. So when we came in about eleven, nothing really
good happened. The DJ wasn't very broadminded and played straightforward trancy
techno. We went to check the place out, seeing the lame chillout room and
looking at the setup from the balcony. When we came back down again, the music
had changed.
The sight was very confusing. We knew Locust would play soon. But the only
thing we saw was a guy at the turntables putting on records. And behind him
another guy twiddeling knobs. And then tracks started to kick in. Enormous
compositions, very low basslines, complex loud rhythm structures. And NOISE,
lots of it. The music sounded like a divine combination of Autocreation, Mu-ziq
and My Bloody Valentine. Nothing like that has ever been put on record, as far
as we know it, so this had to be Live. Only we didn't recognize the guy
playing. At first we though it was the DJ, maybe the guy from Mo'Wax, because
he's getting quite notorious in England. But then we started to concentrate on
the guy twiddeling the knobs... wait a minute, that's LOCUST!
This is the second time he fooled us. Months ago, in the spring he played at an
Ambient night in the Melkweg. Then the only thing you could see was his video
wall. Mark van Hoen (Locust) hid behind a pillar doing his thing. Now he had
found a way to play his music and have everybody thinking it was the DJ playing
records. He must be enormously shy, or he just hates the old artist/crowd
interaction. The music got better and better, and only in the end some of the
audience started to catch on and realise this was Locust playing. When the set
ended the meagre applause was swamped by the loud trance record the DJ put on.
Orbital. I should have realised when I went to interview them at Triple X. The
brothers Hartnoll have sold their souls to Satan. Or the big bucks music biz to
be more exact. "Snivilisation" is overrated. In every music magazine, barring
Melody Maker, the record has been lauded as a "Classic". Well, don't believe
the hype, because it's just a boring fart of a record. Okay, it has a lot of
different styles and tunes on it. But they used to put a lot of styles and
tunes in just one song. We think Orbital must have made this step for big bucks
sake. And the thing is, the audience buys it. They don't care this is a step
back musicwize. Back to the time when techno tracks only had a 4:4 bassdrum and
an 8:8 hi-hat on top. The disco variety. Only "Impact" lived up to the old
standard. The rest of the set was just replaying the record and raping classics
like "Halcyon" by making it into disco tracks. We never want to see Orbital
again.
/// One of THE TWO PURE \\\
/// Joep : pjoe@grafix.xs4all.nl \\\
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