PLAID | LIVE REVIEW
Electric Soup @ Cathays Community Centre, Cardiff, Sat 5 Oct
As part of an Arts Council Of Wales scheme to get the city’s music public moving around beyond the same worn three or four streets in the centre, Plaid’s latest album tour hit up Cardiff’s student land. Not that the student population noticed: most of the crowd would have been digging into Plaid’s stuff when they signed to Warp Records back in the late 90s.
The event was sold out before doors even opened, more than a few rejected hopefuls huddled smoking against sheets of rain outside and casting moody eyes as the crowd kept trouping in and they figured out how they were going to salvage their Saturday night. Local acts Boris A Bono and Jaxson Payne [below] opened, the latter a great live jungle drummer plugged into a MIDI kit and a whole plethora of effects pedals. A full gymnasium of IDM-heads were present by the time final opener Alfie Swan was finishing off: an interesting Cardiff artist with a sprawl of electronic influences and fusions, his own visuals sprawled blearily between the polystyrene ceiling panels and separating wall as he meshed organic grooves with spits of garage and jazz.
Plaid’s newer identity comes up hard on the danceable end of the alternative electronic spectrum. New album Polymer threads these big, pulsing, abrasive musical ideas through a melody in a way that builds to biting percussive grooves in every stretch of the dynamic range, until you’re either stepping and nodding without any say in the matter or hypnotised and drooling. With the crest of the track and the descent into the next, the trance was broken, everyone realised they were standing much too close to each other, and then fired back with a great chorus of whoops. The band worked through the Polymer album, probably some of the strongest work they’ve accomplished to date, with some of the juiciest stuff from albums past (Yu Mountain was involved in building the gig’s climax) with a live violin to smooth out those mixes and layer those melody builds, threading their set through organically.
words JASON MACHLAB photos PETER DARETH EVANS
