| #642 |
|
2003 |
Perilous 642 I don’t think I’ve yet met anyone who saw Kraftwerk at the Enmore Theatre who has immediately said it was a ‘great show’. Instead people tend to say things like ‘it’s great to have finally seen Kraftwerk’, or ‘it was goo to hear them loud’. The problem with Kraftwerk was that coming back for what is essentially a series of ‘comeback’ shows is that they don’t have anything new to say or do. Their live set is now a series of laptops with keyboards attached running Cubase – pretty much the standard setup for any home producer, and their video accompaniment was limited to some pretty run of the mill visuals and edits of old video clips. Certainly Kraftwerk’s influence cannot be understated but their Enmore show was akin to visiting a museum. Predictable and overly reverential, Kraftwerk seem incapable of restating their relevance nowadays – their one new track, a pretty abysmal trance number. Still, Autobahn, Neon Lights, Pocket Calculator, it was certainly good to hear these ‘live’ and loud but, like the general trend towards finding excitement in old music rather than new music, it was a pretty regressive experience. Moving things forward then, it is great to hear some interesting producers starting to work with 5.1 surround sound – and not just at the experimental/academic sound art end of things. Whilst surround sound listening facilities aren’t everywhere and many homes that have DVD players don’t have a surround speaker array, some venues are starting to experiment with surround set ups. Melbourne producer Qua, who records for Surgery Records, runs an irregular surround sound night at the Rob Roy hotel, whilst Tipper is about to drop a surround sound album on DVD titled Surrounded on his label Fuel. Not only that, but as DVD pressing costs drop and the major labels start to try to attract the ‘convergence’ generation with ‘bonus DVDs’ with the releases (like the Aaliyah best of compilation which comes with a free DVD of her video clips), DVD releases are becoming more of a reality. Warp has set up a film production unit and their first non-theatre release is a short DVD film from Chris ‘Blue Jam/Brasseye’ Morris, whilst Manchester’s Skam has also put out a DVD/CD EP from Maum with the DVD containing video cutups. What makes these releases interesting is that they are long awaited departure from the generic ‘live’ DVD releases and instead start to exploit the interactive, surround sound, and multiple playback options of DVD as a format. In Frigid news, on Sunday February 23,Ubin make a return to doing a few live shows having recently played at Fu Man Chunes, and will be playing some of their new fractured pop material, alongside Adelaide’s electro-hip hop duo The New Pollutants who are in town with Curse Ov Dialect for The Herd album launch on the Saturday. On March 2, its Andrew Pekler in his only Sydney show alongside Ollo who have recently returned from a 6 date tour of West Coast USA. Andrew Pekler put out a stunning debut release for Pole’s ~scape label last year having previously released work as Sad Rockets on Source Records. Think laptop dub with subtle inflections. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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