REVIEW: Cicada Live
- Posted on July 3, 2007 10:19 AM
- 0 comments
Cicada Live
Platform 12 at Canvas
By Matt Killeen
Dance music is an archetypal smoke and mirrors business. By its very nature a repetitious affair even by the standards of Western popular music, the illusion of something bigger, grander and more important is vital. Without it you are left with someone hitting a trash can with a stick, and then it’s just Stomp. The reason most DJs are so utterly obnoxious is that it just isn’t in anyone’s interest for people to realise that the emperor is in fact naked.
I’m a musician, I’ve been a DJ, I’ve managed a night-club and I am, as a result, a curmudgeonly uber-cynic about the whole thing. Nothing kills that Saturday night fever quicker than having to clean up at 4am on Sunday, or going knee deep in a skip of broken glass looking for a bottle that some drunken idiot hit someone with. I yearn for something to blow my mind but all I can see is the small man with the levers behind the curtain.
So I was bearing all this in mind as I approached Platform 12 at Canvas to see a bunch of the residents and the band Cicada. A clean slate, I thought. A good night out is a universal concept surely. Actually I was thinking this as I approached Fabric, but that’s a different story. When, finally, I got to Canvas I couldn’t help but be impressed by how much better things seem to than I remember.
Sitting in a weird warehouse community, Canvas has forceful but polite security, orderly queuing and the kind of flock wallpaper that was, up until recently, confined to brothels. The floors are sanded, the sofas leather – and despite the scaffolding that lurks behind the thick curtains, it’s actually quite genteel. Of course this is an electronica crowd who are supposed to be more intelligent and sophisticated so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. A vague sense of superiority is in the air but despite the expensive clothes, leftfield music tastes and the couple snogging in an extravagant cinematic manner somewhere between 9 and a Half Weeks and Last Tango in Paris, this is just clubbing. Everyone is dressed the same for a start. Then there are the same set club types: There is the woman who is beautiful and knows it who is strutting haughtily in a way that will guarantee that she won’t ever meet anyone pleasant. There is the pair of girls, one big, one small, each jealous of the other and validating each other like mad. There is the man with the energetic and scantily clad girlfriend. She is exuding a lust for life and he is leaking anxiety and fear. He desperately wishes that she would wear more clothes and calm down, the irony being that these were exactly the things that attracted him to her in the first place. Like a Victorian who marries the actress and then wants her to leave the stage, he worries about her leaving so much that he’s forgetting to enjoy any of it.
I am being needlessly harsh and critical, of course. It is the point of view of the man who is, at Midnight, sober and unmedicated. The club is well run, the staff polite and eager to please, the crowd pleasant. Water is not just available from taps but available over the bar, with ice, free of charge. I was even given preferential treatment as a non drinker. In fact it is by far the best clubbing experience of recent memory, possibly because I don’t usually remember going to clubs in the first place. I am not drinking because I’m there to review Cicada and I don’t know how long I might have to wait. This is not the fault of the house, so I endeavour to make the best of it.
I position myself by a wall in the corner and I watch Ladykilla on the decks. From my vantage point behind him I notice with a savage glee that he isn’t mixing vinyl at all. He’s kicking ass and taking names but that holy grail of superstar DJ exclusivity has been happily jettisoned. He uses effects, he smiles at people, he is polite and he isn’t drunk or speeding his tits off. He makes me love the club with the warmth of a long lost friend. I’m confused but amused people keep coming up to shake my hand. It’s a good few hours before I realise that they think I’m a drug dealer and my suspicions are confirmed when one guy greeting me for the third time yells “you going to sell me something or what?”
It is the early hours before Cicada arrive on stage but I am still wedged in my corner, still prepared to be wowed. Anyone trying to make live dance music needs encouragement and support. Playing live to an audience the majority of which has never seen you can be tough. Live music takes no prisoners, gives no quarter. If you’re rubbish, you will be found out. You can’t rely on a Daft Punk tune to win back an audience. Generally they’re not there to have a good time and make the best of it – most live audiences are there to witness your catastrophic demise. This is especially true of live electronica. If you play with DJs you risk either disappearing into the sonic fog or alienating the dancefloor, stuck between rock and a hard core, as it were.
Tonight, however, Cicada get a free pass – the crowd is receptive and tolerant, the disinterested drifting silently into the other room to be replaced by the adventurous. They cannot fail, and of course they do not. The assembled throng sways in a smiley way but am I blown away? Am I moved?
I am not threatened, I am not wooed. I have a little trouble remembering a melody line. What I do feel is the same clawing need to jig gently from side to side that I got from Ladykilla’s set. If Cicada’s purpose was to provide a seamless section of a good DJ set then they did that. They do it well. The assembled throng are happy. What nags at me is the belief that Cicada are not. They want to be a band. Cicada have stormed the Emerald City, pulled back the curtain and have demanded a brain, a heart and some courage. Do they turn out to have these things all along?
The problem, I think, is one of identification. What are Cicada? Are they meant to be an extended dance track? Are they a backing to a rising singing star? According to the hype they have been compared to Blondie, which does not mean that they sound like Blondie. It means that their singer is blonde, has cheekbones and wears clothes like Debbie Harry did back in the late seventies. She does this because clothes like the mohair poncho that she was sporting tonight are back in fashion, not because she’s a punk diva. People are bound to be confused. She does that Cardigans slash Dido thing pretty well, but does the world need another? You can feel a better singer in there, a better band in fact, waiting to get out just as soon as they know what it should sound like. They have a brain, but they are not pushing it because they lack the courage. The question has now to be asked, have they the heart to make the change? Time will tell.
An hour later I am surrounded by tramps and drunk clubbers on the night bus. I click my heels mumbling “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…”
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