Village Underground – 20 November 2018

I’d never heard of 65daysofstatic until my mate Mudge had messaged me to say he’d bought me a ticket. They were doing some sort of multimedia performance where the music was generated via algorithms or some such computer generations.

This was going to be a night of laptop music.

Now, it’s not that I’m against laptop music, I’ve frequented quite a few gigs like Plaid, Flying Lotus and Autechre, but let’s face it, it’s not much of a spectacle and with a venue like the Village Underground, there’s nowhere to escape if the music’s not doing it for you and you want to have a conversation.

That pretty much summed up this gig. All the artists including opener Johanna Bramli stared at their screens, a sold out room full of fans tried to appear interested, many fidgeting and I watched a number of disgruntled partners tugging at the sleeves of their lovers and then leaving early.

I don’t like leaving any performance early, even when it’s snowing and Palace are losing 4-0 to Birmingham, but on this evening I’d given it my all. I tried to get into it, I tried to like the somewhat ordinary graphics, but I was waiting for something to happen which never really came. If I was comfortably seated in the Barbican watching this it might have been a different story.

Like the catch up I had with Mudge on the sofa of citizenM hotel bar after we left. That was worth the admission alone.