Hand Claps. Dirty Beats. Clean Heart.

(The guy from) Yesterday’s Pupil grabs the mic as he thrusts his guitar to one side and shouts “Fuck Yeah!” before he gets behind the drum kit and totally rocks out. He plays with (recordings of) himself doing the bass line, throwing in bits of Beat It. He is multilayer’d working with multiple parts, past, presents himself alone, as full band. Yesterday’s Pupil is the kind of band that sucks you in because you are blown away by the sheer audacity of his technical skills and cunning instrument switches until you realise that you are digging this music. Grooving, even.

Yesterday’s Pupil is not a one man band. Yesterday’s Pupil is a band made up of a man who can Multiply himself, morph into different forms while other pieces of him are still playing other instruments, like some kind of strange superhero, or maybe villain, he slowly coerces you into seeing his point of view. Musically that is.

What I know about electronic music is dangerous; so let me talk on a personal level. I used to like house music (as everyone says, “back in the beginning”), until it became formulaic. I enjoy anything that explores and subverts boundaries, redefines. This is why I enjoy Yesterday’s Pupil on a theoretical level. I also catch myself dancing internally in a white-guy-at-the-rave kinda way. Yesterday’s Pupil evokes multiple Musical pasts. Nine Inch Nails through feeling of Joy Division to the black Michael Jackson. And the slightly scattered group is being won over. Except for the large Goth next to me, who says, “You need to be on drugs for this music”.

“And now moving on to the experimental part of my set” is almost a warning, but (the guy from) Yesterdays Pupil is just so darn Pretoria Cute, you want to chuck him on gently on the electronic chin. He sets to work on one of his three electronic gizmos, then smiling he grabs the mic and there are actual muffled, distorted, yes, lyrics. This is when the crowd start to get into it. He pulls out a guitar to, believe it or not, a cheer. It’s his enthusiasm that cuts through, his internal loving it himself-ness, his technicality being the instrument and not something to be bogged down with, make errors on. He makes no mistakes, heard or otherwise, he is always going with it. Going someplace else. The large guy next to me is dancing.

Look, musically, it’s almost like early Brian Eno with a Speak & Spell beat and Ian Curtis on vocals, with handclaps. If you don’t understand what I’m telling you, you might never get Yesterday’s Pupil. He moves from being a guy with a laptop to a full band, and while I can honestly say, I could only remember the bass lines on the way home, it was these bass lines that sent me online to get as much of his music as possible.

I would like to wrap this up with a concise summation, a neat packaging, but Yesterday’s Pupil are still learning, evolving and the only thing, really to do, is go along for the ride.

I Can't Hate Lark

In terms of popular culture, watching the audience at Burn, watching Lark, is the same kind of fascination I feel driving past a car crash. Lark and the Audience are two different things though. “She’s creepy in a hot kinda, I mean, Hot in a creepy kinda way” says my temporary sidekick, but I can’t hear her, I’m being hit by successive shockwaves of clean treble, curving bass riffs, thinking “Why won’t Inge look at me?”

There are three words I have sworn to avoid when talking about Lark. Aural, Cinematic, Operatic. Also I have sworn to not use any puns on the word ear, like eargasm. Can you tell, building up to this gig, I have been silently prejudging them?

All of these ideas are over used in this context and not entirely accurate about the battering ram force of them live. On your sound system, in your car, at home, in the garden, in the Goth crack den, Lark can get a backgroundy, a bit, sorta, progressive electronic rock, Lark Live are a total experience. Greater than the sum of its parts. One of those parts is Inge throwing hand shapes, so very Elizabeth Frazer, in a Slayer t-shirt. Another part is Fuzzy rocking out the bass, the guy with the long hands flipping switches, flipping to percussion. Another part is drums under the force of the sounds, Inge rocking her hips as she holds gently her hands on her chest, forcing out operatic scatting, making the emo boys stop questioning their sexuality, to backing tracks. There is something cinematic in the experience. Scanning the full crowd, sweat is dripping down from the ceiling under the low beams. Crisp sound you can feel driving through you make for a more physical than aural performance. If only Lark had melodies, they would be the water shed in electronic Goth, and who would want that.

It’s easy to maintain an Ironic distance. The crowd takes four songs to warm up to them; most of the pre-gig chatter has been on Inge’s hotness. But Lark take no prisoners, you either join or you die (well, leave the room, really). Sure enough there are many takers on the join option and the force of Lark moves through the crowd, moving the crowd. I am standing on the side, close at the speakers, feeling it physically, watching the performance, somehow thinking this is more like a play than a live band, so into it, yet some how not drawn totally in, overtaken by the blast and complexity of pure sounds, standing outside the fourth wall. And then it breaks. Lark leave the stage and the crowd, distant, are now asking, shouting, actually breaking their Goth personas and screaming for more. It makes you wonder why Lark are not reforming permanently. Almost shyly they re-take the stage, the performance it seems is over and Lark relax into just rocking out and they proceed to tear me a new ear hole.

Apples and Oranges

This is not a review on Gazelle's performance in Durban over the weekend. This is a query into the nature of whether Gazelle qualify to be reviewed in this space. Unfortunately, mentioning them merely gives them credence, but they have found their way into this code and must be discussed.

I have often been told that the purpose of this forum, Levi's Original Live Music, is to build up (not to tear down) new and evolving live music in our country. Discussing the nature of anyone's motives in writing, however questionable or self congratulatory they sometimes are, or even why some forms of music are more successful than others, is moot. The point about Levi's Original Live music mag is to write and inform about exciting and original live music. Point stated.

This is why I wonder why Gazelle has even come up in this context. Their instruments are cheap Idi Amin dictator suits, a laptop, djembes and repetitive shouting. I have no problem with electronica, don't misunderstand me. Fifteen years ago I was very into manufactured house music - computer beats, like Gazelle do now. But as a medium I feel it has become lazy and, confined to a solid listenership of white people with no rhythm. I might be wrong. But again I digress.

Before Gazelle come on, an hour and a half late (maybe instrument problems), the venue is filled with banging top-twenty house music, and the crowd is dressed up for a birthday party and bouncing up and down on the dance-floor. When Gazelle start, the only difference is that there is now a guy on stage looking like a b-grade P-Funk cast off, at least thirty years late.

Gazelle are fun, they are jokey and they entertain like the clown at a children's party. Sure, they are fun. I don't even notice when they finish, can't tell the difference
between their music and the repetitive beats that follow.

People I speak to afterward tell me they really liked that middle set from that DJ who was wearing a suit. My compadre that evening says, "This kind of music does nothing to quell the anger in my heart". I think, "I have to get another review in to get paid."

We all have different motives and different tastes. I know, that to my mind, whatever you want to say about the fun factor, the bounce in Gazelle's step, they just don't qualify as original. Come back Felix Laband, all is forgiven.


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