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Anyway I arrive to catch the three chaps and one lady of The Chap do the final half of their set (or at least about 15 minutes). However this seems to take the form of the kind of grooves Stereolab used to set up on ‘Transient Random Ambient etc‘. The sound in the ICA is ideal for this sort of music, the bass absolutely humming around the room but not overpowering the keyboards and guitar melodies being picked out, and the PWG (people with glasses) are lapping it up. Their copies of The Wire doubtless moving rhythmically in their navy blue record bags - as indeed am I (moving rhythmically, not in their bags though). They have the look of librarians just off work, particularly the drummer and a-line skirt wearing keyboard player, but the exuberance that they gave to their mildly formulaic kraut rock raised it to a notch marked influenced by rather than slavishly copying. A notch sadly not attained by Klang, despite having a very nice guitar and stealing one of my friends haircuts*, Donna Matthew's new band couldn't raise it past the level of “trying to slavishly copy but missing the point entirely”, like Elastica without Justine Frischmann and I hated them anyway. Laika on the other hand were bloody great. Margaret Fielder is still the only proper famous musician I have interviewed (for an old ATP almost programme we did, for that one that got cancelled!), and jolly nice she was too. And Jolly nice her band is as well - although that's possibly not the most appropriate description. Busy almost drum and bass percussion, great big fat bass lines, again shaking the walls of the place without drowning Margaret's definitely sexy American accent and her moody guitar lines. No wonder her day job as PJ Harvey's axe wielder of choice keeps her busy - and a good job that she took the time to do this instead. Some of the most obviously inhibited people in the world are even dancing (or at least doing something that looks like dancing), to it - which is nice - for them. Maybe not for the people who keep getting their bloody expensive beer spilt by irritating art students, but hey, let's not fuss. One of the main thrusts of the interview that I did with Margaret was that Laika were not a “post rock” band as they were in fact the first band that Simon Reynolds tagged with that dreaded moniker back in the day. She is undeniably correct, this is just good groovy, interesting music, there's very little po faced “post” anything about it. Their new ‘Greatest Hits’ on Too Pure maybe a little premature, but a worthy investment if you like atmospheric, sensuous music, made by clever folk. * Luke Younger's for those that know him. Ian Unpeeled (the zine that covers the John Peel shows, info from shane@unpeeled.freeserve.co.uk) |