Mostly, this one's up as a gallery for 120 Days, but since this was a very highly-anticipated show for me, I will speak about it to a degree. First of all, Despot - weird. The ironic hip-hop thing is twisting my brain. I guess people do actually like this. It was a tiny red-headed white dude in poofy skate shoes, an American-themed ski sweater (really, it had a skier on it!), and a giant Ratatat foamy finger, and he was rapping. Rapping! To nearly the same damn beats for way too long. He talked like a gangster. I don't know, maybe he did grow up in the ghetto. I honestly don't know anything about this guy but I also don't really care to bother looking because ironic hip-hop pisses me off. To be fair, the stuff on his Myspace strikes me as better than what I heard live. Maybe because you aren't watching a tiny white redhead wander around with a foam finger while listening.













120 Days was sandwiched on this bill. I've had an aural love affair with these Norsemen since the second I heard their CD. It's delicious and sexy-dark dance-o-rama, and if you haven't heard it, I urge you to do so. Live - was different. Not in a bad way really. They sounded great - loud, clear, not much deviation from the CD, but that's okay. But jesushellfuck did they ever come across as pretentious. Maybe it's European disaffectedness, or maybe it's just part of their persona, but they really seemed snotty. The singer posed and postured his way back and forth across the stage, climbing speakers, heading over to his drummer (stand-up drummer! Cool) to co-drum for a bit, that sort of thing. Very very cool sounding band, but most certainly looked like they really could care less if anyone was paying attention to them. I still wanted to dance.













Ratatat, I have little to say about. I wasn't so familiar with them to begin with, and actually had no idea they were an instrumental band. While the sound they projected was cool and indeed dancey, it just got homogenous before too long. Maybe as dance club background noise, I'd be cool with it, but as it stood - this just went on too long and too similarly for my liking.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : April, 2007.