As far as I can recall, I have never heard anything by this band before. The reason I turned up was because of the little bit of Gauche featured on the new Deepchild album, and the little blurb written up about them and their show tonight.
The main set up appears to be one girl on vox, and various guys on keys and technologies, an electric bass, a double bass (lovely), and quite a wiz on drums. For tonight's big production show, there was also an accordion, three piece horn section, half of Sydney string quartet Fourplay, plus one more violinist, an extra person on percussion, an aerial performer with hoops and "tissue" dangling from the ceiling doing all kinds of swinging and twirling to the music, a lady with hula hoops and live visuals jamming. And a big fluffy bed on the side of stage. Nice.
Guess this is an example of where too many is just enough. For though it may look on paper like a bit of a mess, it sound perfect. It was a highly impressive, spot on performance tonight.
The turnout was surprisingly healthy, though not exactly sold out. I still can't figure out how the Studio keeps getting the word out, cos I personally didn't see this show being advertised anywhere. I was the youngest person in the audience.
The core members came on first, starting with a slower trip hop number. The singer's voice didn't win me over at first. It was too much on the ethereal side of things. But the music was really solid, a post-Portishead style trip hop with a strong genre clashing sensibility, dishing up surprising elements from drum'n bass to hip hop to tango to jazz/lounge to circus music. For someone unfamiliar with their back-catalogue, the swoops and dives the band took through a world of disparate genres kept me, figuratively speaking, at the edge of my seat. And literally speaking, in moments it brought out the kid raver in me and had me uncontrollably head banging to the faster rhythms. Something seemingly totally uncool and perhaps even frown upon by this quiet and reserved audience tonight. Shame.
Unexpectedly brilliant.