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Necroluxe
Devonshire Arms, London
Friday February 22 2008
At first glance, it doesn't look good. A pub full of alternorockers. Anonymous heavy metal grumbling through the PA. Somehow, Necroluxe have to take this unpreposessing situation and turn it into a cool electropop experience.
What's more, they've got to do this without a proper live sound system (at the Dev, the bands just plug into the DJ's microphone socket, or something) and without any stage lighting. While the Dev does have a minimal but effective lighting rig, this ain't no kind of use if, as happens tonight, no bugger remembers to turn it on.
Against the odds, the band pulls a rather nifty show out of the hat, with absolutely no help from the venue. Hesitant but humourous, obviously aware of the less than ideal conditons but admirably disinclined to throw a rock star strop about it, the band's vocalist paces the tiny stage area with equal parts caution and cool, sporting an array of Girl Guide badges (I wonder if she's passed the Synthpop test?) and a resigned lets-get-this-sorted attitude.
She sings songs of after-dark strangeness, whimsical bad-dream pop trilled in an evil version of Marilyn Monroe's cutesey croon. Behind a table laden with electronic hardware, her beat-controller colleague divides his time between his laptop and his pint of Guinness, as fine an example of multi-tasking as I've ever witnessed.
It's
difficult to assess the music, because one more interesting feature
of the makeshift live PA at the Devonshire Arms is its near total inability
to reproduce anything beyond high frequencies, with the result that
the Necroluxe sound like they're playing through a small transistor
radio. Still, somewhere in the hi-end mish-mash there lurks a neat collision
of rhythm 'n' melody, and, perhaps recognising the band's struggle against
the odds, the audience responds with an appreciative ripple of applause.
A win on points, then, in the face of hassles which, while never quite amounting to a fatal error, would certainly have stymied a less determined band. It wasn't the greatest gig they've ever played, I'll bet, but they got through it.
As soon as Necroluxe finish, the anonymous heavy metal starts grumbling through the PA once again, and the alternorockers busy themselves with their pints. Within minutes, it's business as usual - as if the band had never played at all. That in itself is faintly surreal. We certainly saw Necroluxe out of context tonight.
Essential links:
For more photos from this gig, find Necroluxe by name here.
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Page credits: Review,
photos and construction by Uncle Nemesis.
Nemesis
logo by Antony Johnston,
Red N version by Mark Rimmell.