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Half Year: Your Favourite Gigs of 2012 (So Far...)
Another one of these... I dunno about you, but I'm finding these really interesting... and hard it's nice to have an excuse to delve back and to discover some stuff you lot are into. Anyway, I'll go for three gigs, all of which will probably be predictable if you know my taste...
1. Chromatics at White Heat
Went full prepared to be let down, but bloody hell does Johnny Jewel know how to do a live show. I interviewed him the morning after and discovered he does some interesting things with sound to have a desired impact on people, and I don't care if science was involved, this was truly special. Every ebbing emotion seemed bigger and brighter than on the record, but nothing seemed wrong our disappointing, far from it. In fact, 'These Streets Will Never Look the Same' was some immense that I felt like I'd been meditating for a week when it finished, and had this big dumb grin on my face as I listened to the song repeatedly on the way home. I'm addicted to this band/album/'thing' and I don't care who knows it.
2. Antlers at Shepherd's Bush Empire
Yeah, yeah... I know, I know, but shitting crikey was this good. My sixth time seeing the band and everything seemed to fall into place, and soar and swoop and explode, and be fragile, and agile and soft and stormy... I joked on Twitter that I was clapping so hard that my hands were bleeding, but in all honesty, I thought if I'd had a whisky or two I may well have done my self some damage reacting to that show.
3. Nicolas Jaar at Mutek
Space is Only Noise should be a gentle, soft, late-night, not really registering, trickling and sensual experience live, right? No, not in the slightest. Jaar has re-invented the album into this extravaganza of sound that thrusts and womps and delivers delicious anti-climaxes. The lighting at Mutek festival is incredible but the sound system, for this especially, where everything was in surround sound, and the bass seemed more like a massage than music, was something else. I've never experienced music like that before, and pretty much everything sonic experience for the rest of my life going to be a let down (probably what it's like to do heroine for the first time or something).
Your turn...