Imbalance

Gigs, over last six weeks: The Go! Team, Arcade Fire, Karlheinz Stockhausen, LCD Soundsystem, Laurie Anderson, The Earlies (sup. Micah P. Hinson), Joey Beltram, The Go! Team (!), The Raveonettes.

Coming soon & worth checking if they're showing near you: Antony and the Johnsons, Magnolia Electric Co., Vetiver (sup. Micah P. Hinson), The Magic Band.

All excellent, 'cept the Dublin Go! Team gig, which was marred by that sound engineer Simon mentioned, and the LCD Soundsystem one which was just too full too enjoy. Standouts were Arcade Fire, Laurie Anderson, The Earlies & Micah P., and the second Go! Team show — the sound engineer was still imperfect (the balance on the opening track is critical and was pretty shit at both gigs), but better this time around.

Have to say Go! Team's roadies are mad impressive: they taped setlists to the floor for every band member. In pink flourescent tape. On all four edges of the paper. They laid out towels and water bottles. Then they pre-opened the water bottles just in case. The Team's show is short but fab: extremely energetic and cheery, had everyone jumping around & being enthusiastic. Owes a lot to lead vocalist Ninja's egging on the crowd. Drummer Chi ("Kai") came up front for an excellently cheesy cover of something-I-didn't-quite-catch at the Edinburgh gig. Their support is pretty varied but always appropriately energetic or upbeat: The Pipettes and DJ Scotch Egg in Dublin, and The Research and (Swedish) prog/psychedelic Dungen in Edinburgh. The Pipettes and The Research, neither of which I heard enough of, both seem to have that Raveonettes-esque lovely retro harmony thing going for them. Wanna hear more.

The Arcade Fire were opened by Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett, co-writer of the strings arrangements on AF's album Funeral), who used tape loops to build up his (all-violin-based) songs live on stage. One of AF drummed with him for a bit and he returned the favour by playing with AF throughout their set. Was very good. Picked up AF's EP, which isn't anywhere near as bad as people say it is — singing sounds like Björk sometimes, so maybe that's what upset them — not me though. Gig was insane however: I've never been to one where the audience were clapping along to all the songs, singing along to most of them, waving hands (and lighters) in the air, etc. Maybe all pop gigs are like that. Very freaky, and only occasionally caused frustration (Stop clapping — it's a quiet bit…) at what was otherwise a truly excellent show.

Laurie Anderson's new piece, The End of the Moon, was fantastic. Not much more to say. A mixture of spoken word, instrumental and visual art springing out of her two years as NASA's artist-in-residence, ranging from intimate personal stories all the way to technology, art and war, and all with that lovely voice. Yum.

LCD Soundsystem's drummer had to leave the hall part way through their set in order to cool down. There was so little room between me and the person in front of me that I couldn't tilt my cup to drink. The show was probably as good as ever but I was just too distracted by the sweaty sauna thing going on in the audience pit.

The Earlies & Micah P. were both great as usual, have gone on about them at length already though, so no more than to confirm that the goodness is consistent.

Went to Stockhausen on spec without knowing anything except that he's famous, influential, and has been around for a while (born 1928). Played two pieces (this is pre-recorded electronic “space” music), Kontakte (1960) and Oktophonie (1991). Kontakte is quadrophonic, and Oktophonie octophonic — and sure enough they had eight sets of speakers arranged around the hall. Knowing nothing of this beforehand, I'd chosen a seat in the middle of the central area out of sheer randomness without realising that it'd be the best place to listen — audience members in the permanent seating were outside the cuboid of speakers and hence probably lost out. He'd had immense difficulty setting up because the Queen's Hall isn't tall enough and the balcony running around the entire space really messed up the octophonic effect on him. Ideal theatre for the piece is apparently a fourteen metre cube (!). The pieces are 35 and 69 minutes long respectively, and despite my being tired and our listening to them in the dark I didn't once feel their length. Kontakte is mad stuff, things careening and whizzing around you, bouncing around and crashing off into the distance — Pink Floyd eat your heart out.. Not so much music (in the sense "musical") as sonic experiment though. Really enjoyed it. Oktophonie less so — the vertical dimension wasn't sufficiently apparent, and the music was too multilayered and complex for me to get much of a handle on coming to it unprepared. Emotional tone seemed more ominous too, as opposed to what I felt was quite a playful feeling coming from Kontakte. If you get a chance to hear this stuff in a proper environment, seize it.