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Live Review from Underground electronica:
Setlist:
- 1. Mime
- 2. de-
- 3. 26, 52, 78, 104…
- 4. O
Before I say anything more about what happened further during the show, I feel obligated to point out that I am a certified non-expert in fields of the various types of electronic music that exist- I’m not good at differentiating between them, and I’m almost sure that there’s hundreds of things that I’m unable to appreciate about it. So, if the reviews that follow lack in detail or informativeness, the trouble’s likely at this end.
That said, A.O.S. set began, with the deceptively pop-ey opening to Mime, which soon grew into a cavalcade of distortion and feedback, set against many different sounds you may have heard emanating from computers at some point of time. This was a pattern that continued throughout his set, with very atmospheric sound effects combined with computer sounds, the classic hoover, and even some piano set, clearly, with great care at points. 26, 52, 78, 104… had some traffic-like sounds to start with, and involved a somewhat vocodered female voice which spoke well into the wah-ed breakdown, while O slowed down to almost purely backing track pace, but with the many effects arranged well through the track, and dying down into a looping spinning disc sound.
I, for one, didn’t enjoy this set much. To start with, A.O.S.’ mostly stationary presence on stage with just his gear, without any visuals is in conducive to a live show. It follows logically that you should fill your sound to make up for it. The effects were few and far between, so that the songs ended up being mostly ambient, continuous sounds without much activity, taking much too much time to build up to what little crescendo there was. The overt deliberateness of the arrangements seemed to be lost on the crowd as well, as they looked confused and hesitant through most of the set. Perhaps A.O.S.’ sound is a bit too minimalistic, and too pointed at the few listeners who will have the patience and knowledge to appreciate what he’s doing, and needs something to done about the blankness of the show. I hope that the next time I see him play, this will have been taken care of.
– Shashwati
