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.