Went to see an awesome show by Massive Attack and Young fathers on Friday. Lots of images of the refugee crisis by a photographer they've been working with book ended the show, a barrage of statistics and statements about the state of the world ran throughout...it was hard hitting and took the audience on a pretty emotional journey. A bit too hard hitting for some people who I chatted to afterwards, but I personally found it extremely refreshing to see a big gig setting being used as a political platform - there is a lot of power in that unity of big audiences and emotionally transformative music. From a couple of the negative comments I overheard it felt like people weren't used to having the society they belong to challenged on a Friday night out, which I can sympathise with but didn't empathise with. I think it could be a great thing if the general public weren't so depressed by knowledge of the difficulties in the world we are responsible for and could hear and see it and determine to engage with it without being 'sunk' and responding angrily to those unnerving feelings of guilt and fear. And that comes with a bit of resilience - a resilience I don't think English audiences have right now. Or perhaps that's asking too much of fragile humans in general - who knows what everyone in the audience had been dealing with that week. My final response to that was : well if you want mindless dancing then go to a rave not to a Massive Attack and Young Fathers gig - both bands well known for being politically overt. Some laughs in there too though as well as great musicianship though I do find it a bit dull and dated musically at times. Contrasting news of Kim Kardashian's arse with terrifying war headlines was a stroke of genius. I'd last seen MA in a huge aeroplane bunker at Sonar festival in Barcelona and the visuals were similar. But this time I was a bit more sober and was just as, if not more, astounded by the time, effort and artistry put into their set not to mention the sheer boldness of their political approach. The most incredible moment for myself and Alice, however, was not the bluntly written statements or the use of horrific statistics or the copy taken from transcripts of soldiers about to fire strikes at targets (excruciating to read). It came nearly half way into their set. The LED screens silhouetting the band began to show noughts and ones in sequences that whirred faster and faster making you feel like you were watching the atoms of the world in digital form (this reminded me a lot of Adam Curtis' "All watched over by machines of love and grace" doc series) an insurmountable chaos of potential patterns surging through you alongside the bands delivery of heavy bass, synths, and melancholic melodies delivering brilliantly on point lyrics. Suddenly at the peak of this the circles and stripes disintegrated into just a few white noughts and a single laser that shone out of the blackness like a starry night - returning the audience to a sense of calm and hope, the peace intrinsic in that symbol of nature and also the simplicity of the single pin pointed line reaching out to individuals in the audience bringing us all back to ourselves and the power of one.
jbbartram-illu
tangentwithtanner
dededos
areudirty
