At the risk of sounding like a little old lady in
one of those see thru pink plastic macs (as opposed to just looking like one that is), what
the chuff’s up with the weather again? A joke’s a joke and all that but unless
we get some sun over here soon we’re all going to go down with a serious case
of the rickets. Jeez. Anyway, despite the almost continuous drizzle ‘n’ gloom
(hmmm...great name for a band there) there was a decent crowd in tonight in
time for opening act NZCA/Lines (hmmm...possibly not such a great name for a
band). How the hell are you supposed to pronounce this one? EnZedSeeEhSlashLines?
NeZeeSeeAhforwardslashlines? Nzedseeyaslahelines? Whilst it don’t exactly slip
off the tongue the band’s (normally one guy, Michael Lovett, but bolstered by a
funky bassist and stand up drummer tonight) music’s a pleasingly easy listen, with
echoes of prime pop era Scritti Politti in the mix.
One of the few joys about living in 2012 is the vast
wealth of music that’s just sitting there waiting for us to gobble it all up.
Within seconds we can all access everything from Mongolian throat singing
through to experimental death jazz. FOR FREE. Unsurprisingly therefore there are
bands out there who’ve presumably been munching away at all this free music
since birth, creating some truly genre-less groups. Django Django seem to be one
such band. There’s the twangy spaghetti western of WOR, the trippy harmony
heavy Waveforms, the Egyptian prog (yes, really) of Skies Over Cairo and the
Beta Band meets 60’s beat bands of Default. They’ve yet to perfect the throat
singing but hey, it’s early days eh?
There was a decent crowd in tonight for the band’s
first Birmingham gig and they got a better than average reception too, possibly
bolstered by the hip factor currently buzzing around ‘em. Speaking of
buzzing...well chirruping in this case...the gig kicked off with the sound of
crickets. This somewhat unusual beginning heralds (yes, heralds, I’ve been
listening to Radio 4 again) the start of the mainly instrumental track
Introduction. I’m assuming the crickets are all pre recorded and not part of
the band. How cool would that be though eh? You could give them all little
microphones and miniature bottles of water and a tiny little towel. On second
thoughts they’d probably overdo it on the free booze and end up copping off
with a cockroach, crickets are notorious for it. I saw one glass a ladybird
once...terrible business. Anyway, Introduction is a curious track. It sounds
like someone’s dropped the Human League Mk1 in a jungle and if that sounds like
an oddly appealing proposition to you then the rest of the set would be right
up your street. There’s a bit of everything in there and, whilst the biggest
cheers of the night were reserved for the big singles, Storm and Default, pretty
much every track had something for everyone. Given the mercurial nature of the
music the band’s performance was spot on too with everyone bar the drummer sweatily swapping
instruments. There are one or two quirky ones in there as well, including the
world’s biggest tambourine (well, almost), some coconut shells and a twangy
thing...no idea what it’s really called but ‘twangy thing’ (you bash it and it
makes a twangy sound) seems an accurate enough description. If you’re looking for reference
points the Beta Band have to be a major influence on the Djangs (I believe that one of the
band’s big bros was actually in the Betas) but, to be honest you could pick out
anyone from Link Wray to Kraftwerk and no one could disagree. Proof perhaps
that pop has finally well and truly eaten itself?
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