Live Review from 21st Anniversary Festival Day 1:
CUCKOO
BELL-END
CLICKBAIT
ON YER BIKE
FREE-DUMB
WAR
WANT
The joy of wandering from one room to the next, seamlessly transitioning from one musical paradigm to another: we walk from Discovery Bay teenager with acoustic guitar back into the Dairy where the stage is now festooned with cables, keyboards and mixers with two gentlemen stand on stage. I am later told they almost didn’t make the gig because trying to bring a full size keyboard on the Lantau ferry elicits a big Cannot from the Man…
One of these guys might be responsible for some albums of magical, dreamy and transportive dub music inspired by Hong Kong locations and culture. The other might be one of the organisers of Clockenflap. Right now they are ELEKTRO MÜLL, and they set about blasting any lethargy out of the growing crowd as they file into the room.
It is a pumping melange of electro beats, washes of synth and the sound of angry British rapping laced with eyebrow-arched humour that comes across a little bit Ian Dury and a little bit Sleaford Mods.
The crowd shout their encouragement after the first tune and then it’s in to BELL-END, a song of simmering rage at billionaire space dweebs launching phalluses into space while the planet descends into oligarchy and chaos.
The simmering rage continues with the dub-infused CLICKBAIT, alternately pondering the direction of society and castigating those who profit from the algorithms destroying it, while there’s an energy in the tune ON YER BIKE that has people visibly nodding their heads and some early indications of dancing on the spot, including the classic lyric: “I’d rather be woke than a born again Nazi – on yer bike!”
The duo launch into the agit-prop anti-American gun culture rant of FREE-DUMB and I’m certain they’ve hacked the source code of New Order’s Blue Monday and remade it with TV news samples, gunfire and lyrics targeting those who think guns bring freedom. The pumping bassline is relentless, The room is comfortable full, the three girls next to me have stopped taking selfies, the energy is self-evident as people bop and groove.
After a dark venture into an apocalyptic sounding lyrical weather report on the state of the world in WAR, the band brings it home with the infectious dance beats of WANT, a reflection on self-interest and desires set to a pumping drum and bass style beat with old school synth riffs.
We are left with the lyric “I act like a child but I’m antique”, but the passion and energy of the music are ageless, nimbly dancing in the foundation sounds of electronic music from the 80s and 90s while lyrically lashing the latest era of end times here in 2025.
– Jarrod Watt
