AkA/Oogan/Kinga
Janicka/AEjix
Dublin Castle, London - 23 November 2023
"A
truly surreal immersive experience - another wildly successful
Lucida Records night"
If it's a
Thursday night in Camden at the Dublin Castle, it's most likely to
be another in the reliably good Lucida Records nights. As usually
happens, there was plenty of opportunity to discover new acts and
new music. This evening all three support acts were new to me.
(I'd call that a result.) Headliners AkA very much a known and
admire entity. Had not heard any of the support acts before
walking through the door so a night of discovery lie ahead. But
would they be discoveries I'd want to revisit, or forget?
Solo male
act AEjix got proceedings
underway as hoped. The unpredictability and shear bonkersness of
not having a clue, what was coming next, either timing wise, sound
wise, tempo wise or genre wise, kept a smile on my face and my
feet tapping throughout. I couldn't have asked for more. Ragged
around the edges it may have been, but not only was that endearing
but entirely in keeping with AEjix's entire performance. His set
concluded with dnb cover of Lady Gaga's Applause - which
was pure karaoke and by some margin the most conventional track in
the set but blended in pretty well.
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Photos
[L-R]: AEjix, Kinga Janicka x 2
Kinga Janicka quickly turned
out to the the perfect support act for headliners AkA. Another solo electronic musician, this time from
Poland, currently living in London, their style combines
aspects of hardstyle, dark techno and NRG in what they call "aggressive
beats to rave to", with a focus on improvisation.
I
was instantly very impressed in how they created the live
sound with the array of colourful gear. And, in keeping with
AkA, there were some superb sounds and textures emerging from
the stage. Some dubby pulsing of which Richard Kirk would have
approved were evident throughout. Every minute was jam packed
with different elements tumbling, cascading down in glorious
fashion. It has been a while since I've heard anything so
complex and groovy at the same time. It's usually one or the
other dominating, here though they worked in harmony with each
other. Impressive.
Masked
two piece Oogan hail from the village
of Akākaz, which was burned and destroyed by The
Kalkazar Tribes, who in turn sacrificed villagers at the
stake. The survivors fleeing after a curse was put upon
the land. After hibernating in the forest for two years,
Oogan are ready to rise. Either that, or (spoiler
alert!) Leg Puppy's Darren Laurence and Dicepeople's
Matt Brock don cloaks and masks and get together on
stage to touch an glowing orb and see what happens. Had
they found and deciphered an ancient manuscript and chosen
the medium of electronic music as the carrier of its
message to the modern world?
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Tongue firmly in cheek this may have been,
but it's a sign of the qualities of the members that
this instantly created an absorbing mood and
atmosphere. It's gradual evolution of sound drew you
deeper and deeper into their dark void. And the void
was good. A primordial soup of ambient drones turned
into percussion and thumping bass. At its most
effective when at its most minimal, when melody
replaced the drones it lost its edge for me. I would
have been happy listening to the opening ten minutes
of their set for a full forty-five. Fortunately it did
come full circle to return to the guttural droning but
not before the a glowing orb was shared among those
gathered in the audience, allowing those of us who
touched the Oogan orb to be a part of the happening.
Porto-based experimental electronic scientist
Henri Sizaret, AkA, favours
perfoming tracks from a single release, rather than
going with the convention of presenting a selection
from his every-growing back catalogue. Tonight's focus
was the turn of this year's excellent Mondo
Atomico album. This was the most animated I've
seen Henri on stage - resplendent in his trademark
shorts. (Though thankfully he wasn't recklessly
barefooted as last time he
played here back in January.)
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For the first time in AkA's performance
history, he was assisted by two go-go dancers who, it
turned out, were actually more tame than Henri
himself. There was as much, if not more, fun being had
on stage as there was in the audience. AkA make some
magnificent sounds. It makes you wonder why Kraftwerk
can't still do the same anymore. The combination of
such precisely crafted electronics, apocalyptic atomic
projections, swaying go-go dancers and Sizaret
(sporting a radioative symbol t-shirt) loosing himself
in the music created a truly surreal immersive
experience.
Setlist: Mondo Atomico, Bipolar (Beam Mix), Alpha Decay, Angel of Destruction, Meet the Minutemen, Elton the Electron (You should be dancing Mix), Clean Your Ears
Setlist: Mondo Atomico, Bipolar (Beam Mix), Alpha Decay, Angel of Destruction, Meet the Minutemen, Elton the Electron (You should be dancing Mix), Clean Your Ears
Review
+ Photos: Rob
Dyer
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