Birmingham Academy 2
The nights are closing in, and so it is time to wipe the sleep from my eyes and emerge blinking into the strobe lights. Yes, it’s gig season again, and not before time. Every year, over the summer, my desire for live music goes into a sharp decline. It just doesn’t feel right to pootle on down to a grubby, windowless venue on bright summer evenings that could be much more profitably (in a spiritual sense) spent in beer gardens and bright, airy rooms. Now the equinox is passed, I know I can hole myself up in a smoke-free den of music without fear of missing stuff outside.
So after dark on Monday I pottered down to the Academy. I was a little disoriented by having to go in through the side entrance, into the back of the room, but the feeling soon passed as Scanners took to the stage. They have an interesting brand of erratic electro with a broad soft streak – lots of offbeats, lots of dirty synth, but also a lot of slower, more meaningful songs. They seemed to have a knack for turning things around; a number of tracks started a bit oddly but drew you in as they went along. I’d say the best tracks were ‘Sick Love’ and ‘Raw’. I was going to find last.fm players for both of these, but I could only find ‘Raw’, it’s not the best bit, and the player won’t embed. Tits. Here’s the link, not as good but it’ll have to do.
There were some gems of tracks in their set, but there were a few which were well outside the electro aesthete I was anticipating from the night. I would hesitate to draw any major conclusions from the resources I have available to me, but I’m definitely verging on the positive side of things.
And now to the crux of the evening. I discovered IAMX quite by chance, listening to last.fm radio. On the strength of a song, I bought the album ‘The Alternative’ from an online shop in Germany. I liked it a lot – dark, scuzzy electro is never going to go far wrong for me – and was satisfied with my purchase. Last week, playing around on iLike.com, I discovered this gig, which had somehow escaped my attention from my regular perusal of the listings sites. Yes, I do still peruse them, I just don’t do anything about it. Soz! I devoted two lunchbreaks to the hike across town to the box office (it was closed for lunch the first day, the monstrous sods.) And boy was it worth it.
I couldn’t have hoped for a better recorded-to-live translation than this. On the one hand, there was the physical presence. From the attention to detail (Adam Ant stripes, feathered hats, and impossibly tight shirts) to the naked self-confidence (the swaggers, the posing, the ‘I’m Chris Corner, who wants to touch me?’ moments), the whole show was a feast for the eyes. Including the porn-esque backdrop to ‘Nightlife’, which seemed to go down quite well with the section of the audience I could overhear.
On the other hand, there was the music. Recorded, it’s quite a subtle, dark affair, enervated by some wonderfully dangerous edginess. Live, it’s amplified into a jagged, almost industrial sound that seems to owe more to Rammstein than Sneaker Pimps. It was mouth-wateringly good. Slap on some synth just this side of painful, throw down a pounding, insistent rhythm and just let it run. Superb.
To be fair, the only criticism I heard raised was exactly that – there was that distinct formula being used. Happily, that formula coincides almost exactly with my tastes, and so I can afford to dismiss the criticism out of hand. Especially as he who raised this criticism also complained that the danse macabre of ‘President’, while diverging from this formula, was too obviously diverging from this formula and thus seemed contrived. Ha. It’s a blooy good song, and to prove it, here’s the link for you:
Aside from some rather sacrilegious ponderings (was he really singing those pure, high notes in ‘The Alternative’ live or was there some trickery involved?), I was stupidly pleased with this gig the whole way through. It’s so nice when a band plays live and blows their recorded selves out of the water, but in such a different way to the record that it doesn’t affect enjoyment of it. It’s making me really look forward to their previous album (‘Kiss and Swallow’) dropping through my letterbox, and the German electro compilation album that I just ordered off amazon.de purely for one remix.
Hello obsessive Laura. Nice to see you again. 
I would highly recommend this band to anyone who stood still long enough for me to pronounce forth about them. If I were forced to pick out a best track for the evening, I think it would be ‘Bring Me Back A Dog’. I’m not sure why, but it was awe-inspiring. Go listen.
