Groove Armada + Retro Grade @ Birmingham Academy, 14th October 2010.

Openers, Retro Grade, comprised of two deck-meister djs who occupied a sort of letter-box apertured hotdog trailer booth with projected geometric humanoids strutting their stuff. It was stun-grenade, bass-bin bunker bombardment for the discerningly wasted and was enthusiastically received.

The tectonics plates beneath a, by then, capacity rammed O2 Academy surely shifted position soon in to Groove Armada’s atomic Dance attack that featured six numbers from their current album, Black Light. From a strobe-soaked medley of vocal samples the alchemist of sound segued in to ‘Look Me In The Eyes Sister’. Pointless providing an analytical deconstruction:

if you know your Groove Armada, that’s what was cooking in the inferno of founders Andy Cato/Tom Findlay’s Mega beat crucible. But it wasn’t just the music that caught our attention. From the smoke-machine, laser beamed seas of blue came forth an alt Aphrodite, the dance/trance enchantress, vocalist SaintSaviour. The girls gritted teeth in jealous adulation; the blokes? Well, they were very attentive. She held us all in the charm of her sinuous sorcery, weaving exotic visual cyphers with her subtle arm gyrations like Saraswati, the multi armed Indian goddess of music. As moths to the eternal flame she brought the song to its climax and the crowd to her in abeyance: scrutinizing them with a fist held torch they – were deemed worthy.

We needed time to catch breath but on came MC MAD whose seismic reggae/ragga/rapping loops and call and response choruses had the O2 heaving in critical mass, laser beamed nuclear ecstasy (the emotion, not the potion, that is).

SaintSaviour returned with a wardrobe make-over. Imagine Cabaret’s Sally Bowles had morphed with Barbarella. Seductively sequined, she later wore star-spangled baggy trousers demurely taming the feral beats with vocals recalling Cocteau’s Elizabeth Fraser, Kate Bush, Siouxsie and Lisa Gerrard. This is one spectacular, enigmatic trance-dance diva, a 21st century uber vox femme fatale. But at the same time she’s divinely sweet with the audience. Encores ensued with GA’s signature trombone slow solo parping riff, ‘At The River.’ But that was far too sedate and the closing ‘Superstylin’ shimmered with a staccato, funky chopping guitar intro. Enter MC MAD to a Cubistic light wall and geometric infinity point lasers. And yea, unto a man and a woman, the house goes ballistic. A swarming, floodlit bouncy castle of white-heat, big-beat brilliance. An uplifting and life-affirming gig.

Set list ( approximately!)
Look Me In The Eyes Sister
I Won’t Kneel
Fogma
Warsaw
My Friend/Mutya
Paper Romance
History
Lightsonic
Easy
Go/Get Down
At The River
Cards To Your Heart
Chigargo
Superstylin’

Review – John Kennedy
Photos – Ian Dunn

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