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EXPOSURE SO SO MODERN
They’re hard men to pin down, are So So Modern. In the middle of a 28-date European tour over 31 days when The List tries and fails to collar them for a chat (somewhere over France, in fact), the quartet from Wellington, New Zealand are clearly adherents to the ‘go hard or go home’ school of touring. In their absence, here’s what you need to know. Who are they?
Mark Leong (synth/guitar/vocals), Grayson Gilmour (synth/guitar/vocals), Daniel Nagels (drums) and Aidan Leong (synth/vocals) started playing together as SSM in 2004. They’ve been stuck in ‘going to be big’ limbo for much of the past half decade, but that’s allowed them to build up a vibrant back catalogue of indie EPs and a wealth of live experience. 2007 alone saw them play more than 200 shows around the world. So why should we care about them now?
Following a limited release compilation of their EPs in 2008, their first album proper is out next month. Crude Futures, as it’s so appropriately called, is a record which lives up to SSM’s reputation for eclectic excitement – among its standout tracks are ‘Berlin’, a proto-electro instrumental shuffle which exhumes the ghost of Death in Vegas, and ‘Dendrons’, a noisy thrust of angular, synth- tinged punk which calls to mind These New Puritans and Scotland’s own Errors. The latter bunch, in fact, have already made a connection with SSM, and will be playing alongside them on the final dates of this tour – if the Kiwis are still standing, that is. (David Pollock) ■ Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Wed 24 Feb; Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Thu 25 Feb.
REVIEW MINI FESTIVAL HIDDEN DOOR The Roxy Art House, Sat 30-Sun 31 Jan ●●●●●
An all-you-can-eat weekend-long festival of multi-disciplinary art designed to get Edinburgh’s cells of creative activity talking to each other. It was an admirable ethos, and certainly experiencing the unmistakable festival sensation in January while being warm and inside is a great thing. In practical terms though, as a
punter, the laws of physics restrict your intake of the 40 artists, 30 bands, 10 poets and 10 filmmakers on the bill to something more like three bands, a quick squint round the labyrinthine art and a bit of a poet on the way to the bar during any of the the four £10, six-hour sessions. And, given that most of these are Edinburgh bands you can see three of at Limbo weekly for £4, a tenner door tax starts to look quite steep. Also, whereas events such as KYTN, Bloc or Celtic Connections present art with some shared quality, the only thing uniting what’s on show here it that it is ‘local’. And who wants to restrict their cultural intake to the strictly local?
Thank god for The Pineapple Chunks (pictured) then, who made up for dull efforts from North Atlantic Oscillation and The Jo Acheson Quartet with an absolutely brilliant Sunday night set. (Hamish Brown)
REVIEW ART-PUNK THESE NEW PURITANS Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Thu 4 Feb ●●●●● REVIEW ELECTRO POP HOT CHIP Picture House, Edinburgh, Sat 13 Feb ●●●●●
REVIEW TECHNO POP JEANS TEAM Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 4 Feb ●●●●●
Puritanical? Maybe. This Southend- On-Sea quartet certainly give the impression they aren’t here to compromise, play the game or do what they’re told in order to eke out a little more media coverage, and we can only appreciate them for it. Jack Barnett shouts the lyrics of every song like it’s the next instalment in his manifesto, his brother George hides behind his drums in the background, and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson and Thomas Hein prod away at keyboards and samplers like they’d rather be at the bar. They’ve got that winning rock star insouciance down to a fine art. And they’ve got some great songs
too, which benefit from not being entirely honed to perfection in their live incarnations. Alongside the mechanical grind of ‘Numbers’ and the minimal bass thump of ‘Hologram’ sit the implicitly confrontational ‘We Want War’ and ‘Attack Music’. Although this bunch aren’t in the same league as either yet, the music and their confrontation-baiting approach brings to mind Throbbing Gristle or early Fall. The set’s mostly drawn from the new, Domino-released album Hidden, but the mighty ‘Elvis’ still stands out as this fine group’s most attention-grabbing contribution so far. (David Pollock)
You get the feeling that everyone who’s anyone in Edinburgh was out for this show. It wasn’t just a big gig, it was one by a band whose new album One Life Stand has set the benchmark for crossover electronic pop style in ‘10, half a decade after the band initally unified the appeal of Prince-inspired, cerebral geekcore with debut album Coming On Strong. Did it live up to its own billing? Probably not. It goes without saying that Hot Chip are a fabulous and unique band, and that their finest moments will be on the defining soundtrack of the last half decade or so. Yet not everything they do is touched by greatness, and the set’s definitive moments were over pretty early. Did anyone else wonder, once ‘Ready For the Floor’, ‘One Life Stand’ and ‘Over and Over’ had been played back-to-back and the set was barely half over, where the modishly geeked-out sextet could go from there? A first public live play for the gorgeous ‘Brothers’ was appreciated, and ‘Take It In’, ‘I Feel Better’ and ‘No Fit State’ are all vintage samples of loafer-wearing techno. But this is a band who are only occasionally perfect, rather than routinely so. Which, in all fairness, is better than most. (David Pollock)
Berlin duo Jeans Team have been doing the thing they do better than most and for longer too, both predating and outliving the electroclash scene during which they came to prominence, after originally emerging from Berlin’s art and music scene a decade ago.
Their trademark use of simple, dry, vocal phrases in their native German over expertly constructed and infectious electronic tracks makes their live show occupy a rare and fantastic hinterland somewhere between live gig, performance art and all-night dance party. No strangers to Scotland, having done shows for Glasgow’s Optimo and Dolly Mixture recently, they satisfy devoted fans with their unconventional approach, and tracks such as ‘Baby 3+1+2’ and ‘Keine Melodien’ are, as ever, überfantastic.
Appearing as part of German Night – an evening of German culture put together by Scottish music industry scene-energiser Born To Be Wide, and including an earlier seminar aimed to act as a catalyst for Scottish bands to tour and release records in Germany – Jeans Team's live set is preceeded by a brilliant DJ set from the German Consul. It really was that type of evening. (Hamish Brown)
62 THE LIST 18 Feb–4 Mar 2010