Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Elodie A. Roy enjoys a night of kinetic and transporting machine-made sounds
As always, it is terribly dark inside The Lubber Fiend. There are a few red lights morosely hanging from the ceiling and, although it is much too dark to try and count them, the venue is almost full; a feat for a Tuesday night. The opening performance is by Newcastle-based electronic act Burnthouse Lane, featuring 45 minutes of deafening, uninterrupted white noise.
By the time Clock DVA appear on stage, my ears are ringing. The Sheffield band have changed shapes many times since they self-released their first cassette in 1978. Only Adi Newton, the founding member, has remained. He stands behind a laptop, clad in a suitably grim boiler suit, resonating with the industrial aesthetic associated with the band. Newton’s two current bandmates – Maurizio Martinucci and Gabriel Edvy – are behind their computers too. It is an unusual set-up. There are three people behind their computers, and the band themselves appear behind a screen – a thin, semi-transparent veil where images, most of them black and white, are continually projected. Visions of cities, trains, clocks, ecstatic bodies. A reflection on spectatorship, consumption and voyeurism. I hear the music but mostly I experience it kinetically. Every song becomes a spectacle. And there is joyful, paradoxical warmth in these machine-made sounds. People start dancing and I notice how we keep moving closer to the screen – closer to what feels real.
