Cloud Control, Edinburgh, Electric Circus
Cloud Control, by Kenny McMurtrie
By Kenny McMurtrie
October 5, 2011
Safe to say this was the best gig I’ve seen in the last twelve months, helped in no small part by the fact that the venue have sorted out the soundsystem and it no longer induces head pain. All praise to Cloud Control though for a loose and thoroughly engaging set that easily showed them and their material at their best. Totally lacking in pretension, the dynamic they displayed was like a psychy Dandy Warhols fronted by Gruff Rhys with excellently realised renditions of the bulk of album Bliss Release plus an equally good (unnamed) new song.
Crowd reaction was oddly limited to clapping and cheering (albeit very enthusiastically) despite such numbers as ‘Death Cloud’ and ‘My Fear’ being great invitations to fling oneself about if ever there were any. The turn out though was a lot larger than I’d personally expected so hopefully that’ll be the case on the remainder of the tour. T-shirt sales had clearly gone well elsewhere as it was just my luck that the first time in eons that I feel inspired to buy one at a show all they have left in blokes sizes is obese. Luckily it turns out I’m still (just) svelte enough to get into a ladies size small. Go and see them – the resulting glow may just keep you going through the Winter, like musical Ready Brek.
Support tonight comes, initially, from local girl Kerrie Lynch who opens to not more than about ten folk but has the stage presence & banter (not to mention good songs and a Neko Case-like delivery) to make you glad you came along right at the start of the night. She made the schoolboy error of not bringing any copies of her EP along to flog but you could do a lot worse than looking her up on Facebook and making a purchase of one.
Following Kerrie are Big Deal, a guitars only boy/girl duo who, such is their lack of intelligible chat, could be from anywhere but the internet reveals to be from somewhere in the UK. Whether they’re nervy performers or what is unclear but they make practically no attempt to engage with the audience (by this time larger and containing a fair smattering of folk who seem to know who this pair are) and musically they’re largely pretty dull. A drum machine would do wonders for their sound. Or some more interesting chord changes. One can only hope that their name is supposed to be ironic.
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