gabedouglas

first, let me start out by pointing out that i’ve been a fan forever. and i like many bands in this genre that i like to classify as downtempo. some of these bands don’t really translate well to a live concert setting, (*cough* thievery corporation), or do so in an amazing manner (*cough* brazilian girls).. brazilian girls are way more dancey than downtempo though, i’ll give you that. but what made their live show so great, was how organic and unelectronic their live sound was.

zero 7 had jose gonzalez open up (and perform with them). i am now officially a jose gonzalez solo fan. i got his cd and thought it was … eh. i heard a few live interviews/songs and thought he sounded good in that setting and seeing him live, officially moved him into a good singer/songwriter category. very refined and stripped down live show, i really enjoyed it.

the stage set-up for zero 7 was drums to stage left, two center vocals, stage right guitar, bass set up behind the drums and in the back a giant spaceship module of computer screens, keyboards, and other various electronic sample activators. also buried underneath was a beautiful rhodes. this worried me a bit, as it seemed that they were going to get WAY high-tech. as it turns out they even brought another keyboardist/synth/programmer on the road with them, so 3 guys were back in the NASA-endorsed groove machine. this turned out to be okay though because usually one of z7 would play the rhodes at the beginning of a song, or add the rhodes to the outros of songs. the other two would play percussion or start samplers whenever they felt compelled too. the rest of the time all three guys would do their best ‘dj in germany during the love parade’ impression, or at least what i think a dj from there would look like.
it would include all of these:
- a white male
- hands in the air, occassionally clapping hands over head
- the rhythm of said white male in the 90s
and yet always, in the nick of time, right on cue, they would go and dabble on the keyboards/triggers and do whatever needed to be done.

very organic sound. they all fed off of each other. having never seen them live, they could have just practiced all the extended bridges and outros, but they felt really moving to me. very fluid.
everyone was on board, whether jose was out there with them, sia was out there with them, or it was an instrumental jam.

for the encore they played sia’s ‘breathe’ , as well as an acoustic version of ’sommersault’ which was also great, as sia brought up a lively crowd member and slow-danced, or “slow-grinded” as she said, during the piano solo.

great concert.