Lindstrøm & Glass Candy, London Koko

Italians Do It Better

June 11th 2009

Koko is unusually empty tonight. There’s a lot to be said for being able to move around relatively unimpeded but it doesn’t bode too well for atmosphere in a venue with notoriously patchy acoustics. Unfortunately for tonight’s Italians Do It Better showcase, there could certainly have been a better choice of location. Whilst the ornate surroundings lend themselves to music this decadent, without the sheer volume of bodies to soak it up the overall effect is to strip away its energy, leaving echoes ricocheting off Koko’s walls and galleries.

Glass Candy are the first act I catch, and whilst it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s something ever so slightly contrived about their hipster persona – he’s wearing a scarf onstage in June ferchrissakes! – it’s also hard to deny that there’s something quite addictive about the music itself. Deceptively simple, built from the bottom up from tinny programmed beats and a chugging motorik synth backline, the real gem here is Ida No; she is a whirl of loose limbed energy, delivering coolly deadpan imagery in a curious blend of frosty Kim Gordon-isms and the acrobatic abandon of Karen O circa Fever To Tell. As soon as they finish the already limited crowd diminishes by at least half; by the looks of things most were only here for keyboard abuse rather than psychedelic Norwegian disco-house. Their loss.

I could write for an age about dance music’s transcendent qualities, the way that the best of it takes people above and beyond what simple repeated rhythmic figures should, chemically enhanced or otherwise. But spanning genres and times, from early house music through Detroit and Berlin to garage, dubstep and beyond, the true art lies in the skilful control of tension – the subtle or not-so-subtle build-and-shift dynamic leading to release. The kind of euphoria experienced on a dark, packed floor at 4am when a teased out build finally drops beneath clubbers’ feet to a crunching bassline can be hard to replicate outside that environment; perhaps one of the reasons why it can be difficult to listen with the same devotion elsewhere.

Hans-Peter Lindstrøm stretches these euphoric points until they break and beyond, and in doing so creates waves of sound which don’t so much ebb and flow as much as swell, ever higher, to tsunami proportions. It’s sonically overwhelming – or rather it would be were the venue choice more appropriate – but never messy, as each rippling melody gradually subsides beneath the weight of the next peak. The overuse of tunefulness in cheesy Ibiza house may be one of the reasons for the recent trend towards monster bass, but here it feels less like overuse and more like reclamation, refreshingly free of irony – and doesn’t require the volume and distortion only possible through a serious rig. It’s also one of the reasons why headphones are as appropriate an environment for Lindstrøm’s mini-epics as a massive speaker stack.

Nonetheless, tonight still feels a little like too much like right music, wrong time; I find myself wishing I was stood in the middle of a packed tent at four in the morning, instead of a conspicuously quiet room on a Thursday night. When the stargazing pulse of ‘Where You Go I Go Too’ suddenly heads skyward, a thousand minds should be rushing into space with it. Instead a couple of hundred souls smile, head in the clouds but feet still planted firmly on the ground.