Giddy joy from dance pioneers LCD Soundsystem
Rather than play a one-off festival or two nights at the 20,000-capacity O2 Arena, New York dance music pioneers LCD Soundsystem have taken a different approach to entertaining their UK fans this summer: an eight-night residency at the relatively intimate 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy in south London. The numbers work out the same: eight Brixtons equal two O2s or one muddy field. And the cosy setting worked a treat (as it should have done with the cheapest tickets costing upwards of £60). This was a broiling two-hour set of scrupulously constructed and life-affirming music.
The band have always felt like a cult concern, even when they're playing Glastonbury 's Pyramid stage or Victoria Park's All Points East festival (both of which they did last year). The 18 indie-synth anthems that they played here provoked a giddy sense of up-close-and-personal joy among the raving faithful, who ranged from middle-aged down to Gen Z (with a fair few of the former's teenage offspring brought along for the ride).
Led by record label boss and producer James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem and their stage set-up were a sight to behold. Eight musicians, including Hot Chip's wonderfully frenzied Al Doyle on guitar, were surrounded by a cornucopia of vintage equipment – consoles, percussion, synths, glockenspiels and speakers. It looked like the madcap secret lair of sonic pioneers Bob Moog and Jim Marshall.
Songs like Get Innocuous, Dance Yrself Clean and Someone Great are built on feet-shuffling polyrhythms and addictive hooks, and here – as with every track – they incrementally and almost imperceptibly came to the boil, like the proverbial frog in the pan, until Brixton erupted. Talking of boiling, it was a sweatbox in there. 'Wear shorts!' a friend said before. I should have listened.
Murphy has said he formed LCD in 2002 as 'kind of a lark'. Genre-agnostic, they rose to prominence as Napster culture blew apart music's silos, allowing them to combine punk and indie with dance music and bone-dry lyrics, just as New York's music scene was itself exploding with bands like The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Debut single Losing My Edge – sadly not played here – was about the transience of pick 'n' mix culture (or it was a dig at scenesters, still not sure). We got flashes of these influences here – Kraftwerk's The Model segued into a stunning I Can Change, while punky Movement could have come out of CBGB in 1976.
This fantastic gig was only let down by some surprise omissions (All I Want, Daft Punk Is Playing at My House) and sound that wasn't always as crystal clear as this music demanded. But as final track All My Friends, a song built around a repetitive piano motif, reached its blistering crescendo, none of this mattered. It was electrifying.
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