Casiokids, London Camden Proud

Casiokids

October 10, 2009

The name Casiokids is fun, isn’t it? It gives me an image of hyperactive children running around with 32-key, feather-light keyboards in a field. Carefree youthful exuberance, if you will. And by Jove, is their moniker apt! I never use exclamation marks either, please note this.

At Camden’s former horse stables Proud, Casiokids are megafun. They’re constantly swapping instruments, they’ve brought some toy farmyard animals with to make the stage look as megafun as them, and hell they out-perform even the most idiotic of drunk idiots who comprise tonight’s crowd.

These Norwegian scamps aren’t annoyingly quirky either, and their tunes mean business. ‘Finn Bikkjen‘ isn’t so much cheeky as a massive stormer, and as for eventual set-closer ‘Fot I Hose’… well, just well. The milieu needs to be pitch-black-and-in-a-forest to meet the boundless excitement of the song. The beats are pretty drum ‘n’ bass on ‘Fot I Hose’, and the synth line at the front is deep and dirty – imagine if The Rapture got silly, essentially. It’s a party-compeller with devastating changes in texture to set up each climax.

Scandinavia has thrown the UK a curveball recently in its fun output, and intricately put together pop has rarely sounded so bubblegum as here tonight. Proud is a poor choice for the music-loving contingent of the crowd tonight as the sound escapes into the stables just off the main room, but the pogoing dancefest luckily overtakes the technical shortcomings.

I don’t even think it’s brave that they sing in Norwegian. It makes absolutely more sense, in fact, if purely so that they can ask us all to sing along at one point (without a hint of sarcasm) even though we haven’t the foggiest what sounds to make and what they mean.

If you can’t correlate all this talk of joy with a sound, take this: they’re like a supergroup comprising Metronomy, St. Etienne and The Whitest Boy Alive on a white-market hallucinogen of choice and remixed by Sarah Records.