Squarepusher - live at Parkteateret
A bass guitar enters the stage – Squarepusher live
The first thing one notices when coming to the venue is the lack of facilities. A sold-out gig, in not too hot Norway, and the host for the evening has decided to not to have a cloakroom. Needless to say, a dense space is a bit hotter then what is confortable with a winter jacket. And hanging onto a jacket in a sold-out venue can be both tiring and annoying.
When mister Thomas Jenkinson, a.k.a. Squarepusher, entered the stage these inconveniences were forgotten for a while. The music became the focal point. Or so I hoped that the music would become the focal point. For some odd reason it was decided that the two big screens that were placed at the edges of the stage should not show visual art that could be associated with the music that would be played, but have a separate life of its own. Artistic freedom, I guess, and kudos for severing the visual from the audio. But why the need to provoke epileptic seizures? The intensely flashing lights were extremely distractive and boring. If I knew that they would be a sign of things to come I should have left the concert there and then.
The first couple of songs were a lackluster performance. It was a bland and quite frankly boring start. This was not what I had expected from the man who gave us “Red Hot Car” or the lovely “Iambic 5 Poetry”. Worst was yet to come.
After these tedious songs came a very short interval. A new musician came on stage. It was a drummer. I was hoping that we might see a performance worth remembering, and memories flew back to a concert in London a few years back where drumfunk virtuous Macc showed just how fast and funky a drummer can be. Maybe I was hoping for too much. Maybe I should have read about other Squarepusher gigs before I went to this one. But after a few seconds I knew this would not be a good gig.
The drummer wasn’t funky. The music wasn’t funky.
It was pointless, clutter of sound that was drab and colourless. It was repetitive, it was unimaginative and meaningless. The Squarepusher concert at Parkteateret was one of the worst concerts I have ever been to, and the one which dissapointed me the most. As I listen to “Go Plastic” I cannot understand how mister Jenkinson could allow himself to play such a gig. I am still flabbergasted.
And I should also add that the sound should have been better. But then again, with the music on display, who’d care?
