COLDCUT - SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE - FEBRUARY 26TH 2006
March 3rd, 2006 by rui
To be perfectly honest, I really wasn’t sure what to expect from Coldcut this time around. After learning of the mishaps at the Cargo gig as reported by Mach V only the day before their Shepherd’s Bush Empire date, I was hoping they’d ironed out all the kinks.
One of my most enduring Big Chill memories was seeing ‘Timber’ at an Enchanted Garden long, long ago. Their ‘Journeys by DJ’ still gets bigged up by an astonishing range of people, more than a decade after its release - how many mix CDs can you say that about?
It’s fair to say Coldcut can be described as pioneering, wilfully eclectic, and innovative - particularly on the AV front. Combined, this is a sure-fire recipe for something very tasty indeed - but if things go wrong, there’s much more scope for things to end up burnt and messy. To be honest I really wanted Messrs Moore and Black to deliver - but it’s always going to be hard to live up to expectations with a pedigree like theirs.
Sure, there were a few teething problems early on - one of the displays early in the set read ‘Are Here’ (sans ‘You’), the twin projector arrangement didn’t always work (and so sometimes reverted to a single larger display), but as a Sad Video Gimp ™ you can’t help but notice these things. But more to the point, you notice how the recovery takes place - like hearing a beatmatch DJ correct an error within a bar, being aware of how something gets corrected on the fly can add to the enjoyment of the live experience.
Take ‘Timber’, for example. Introduced as being performed live, not without some minor niggles, and if my ever-failing memory serves me well for a change, quite a different beast to the EG performance that made such a deep impression. But that’s live performances for you. If you’re after a flawlessly rendered version of a studio-produced track, gigs aren’t usually the place for it.
But what a decent gig usually has in its favour is an opportunity for something memorable. Such as a riotous breakbeat-fuelled political AV frenzy, from Blair saying ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’, through guitars, a George W. monster, crashing trucks, soviet imagery, subvertising, Bono and Thatcher popping in and out of the mix - the gang’s all here. And the crowd are going right off to it, with John Prescott remarking ‘what a powerful video, eh?’ at its end, to a roar of approval.
It’s just a pity the energy wasn’t sustained for when Robert Owens and Mpho Skeef took to the stage - from both sides of the stage, it seemed. The paying punters didn’t seem to give much of a reception to one of dance music’s greatest talents and collaborators (when he and Photek joined forces to bring the world ‘mine to give’, 4/4 and breaks folk alike sat up and took notice). Maybe it was more of a generational thing. I, for one, loved hearing one of the defining voices of late 20th century dance music perform an inspired version of ‘People Hold On’, jacked up a notch, with a gorgeous bassline to match - even though I distinctly heard some younger fans loudly ask what the hell were Coldcut doing playing this rubbish? Perhaps the spirit of eclecticism in which their debut ‘What’s That Noise’ album arrived in has since evolved, and perhaps there lies the rub.
Another thing that struck me by now was how, sadly, the visuals were decidedly lacking in comparison to the rest of the show. Are we to infer things from a housier angle don’t warrant an equal degree of visual effort and sophistication as breaks? That’s not to say they weren’t effective - in spite of dual projector issues making it harder for a minimal image to make its impact - but there was an annoying feeling of inconsistency (or, if you felt less charitable, double standards).
The inconsistency didn’t stop there. Like the new album, I found myself loving some parts, underwhelmed by others, and at some points downright irritated. But I’m sure what floated my boat, turned off others. I think one of the MCs summarised it best, when they yelled ‘are you under control or out of control?’ Truth is, it’s a bit of both. Like the crowd.
When we were at the front, Dearie and I noted how civilised folk were being to each other, on the whole - although sadly, towards the end, as the music degenerated into what felt like cock-rock-hop, with more than enough punter testosterone overflowing to drown the stalls down front. Sadly, even when we headed back to the relative calm of the sound desk area, some painfully loud and lairy young men seemed to be doing their level best to annoy men and women alike within their reach. Yet, back around the bar, polite beards and babes supped pints while the gig wrapped up.
Bgpz
