- I'd love to know who approached who to put on this series of gigs. The promoters: über cool electronica/weird shit collective Eat Your Own Ears. The venue: The Millennium Dome, owned by telecommunications multinational 02. The plan was that EYOE would do a series of events over a week at the IndigO2, a club inside the Dome, featuring sets from the likes of Junior Boys, Four Tet and a Kompakt Records party. But every EYOE night I've been to in the past has been mostly in warehouse type joints with an achingly hipster crowd, so what was going on here?
Well, I'd really like to say it didn't feel like a big corporation throwing lots of money at something to try and look cool, but unfortunately that's exactly what it felt like. Personally, I don't have a problem with that if the music is good: Vitalic played an amazing set at 02's Wireless festival in London's Hyde Park in 2005. However in this case the right-after-midnight 'curfew' and the feel of the place (think Premiership footballer's dream crossed with a lapdance club) seemed to get to the bands and rendered their performances underwhelming. The all-round lack of integrity seemed infectious.
The exception was Kelley Polar. On record he comes across as glacial, but here it was surprising to see how much soul he put into his performance. Throughout the too-short set of songs from his two albums, he matched and harmonised over the synths with his own voice. It was no mean feat. Tracks like 'We Live in an Expanding Universe' soar between airless cosmic highs and glittery plateaus. So keen was he to impress that he rendered himself almost hoarse by the end.
Polar may not have moved around much, but he did have a definite stage presence and goaded the crowd into the longest spell of limb-twisting all night. His band, which included Escort's Ben Herson on drums, also deserved full marks for dressing up. Polar was clad in all-white while his keyboardist and bassist wore oversized dressing gowns with lights attached to the trim. They resembled galactic starfish, which was utterly appropriate for their idiosyncratic futuristic electro-pop.
Before all this, though, the first band to come on was Prinzhorn Dance School who appeared at 7.45pm to a mostly empty hall. For the few who had rushed from work, the band's yelp/bass/drumkick ditties fell flat. Junior Boys, who were supposed to be headlining, were mysteriously relegated to a pre-10pm slot. They played classics such as 'Like a Child' and 'Double Shadow' but when the crowd wanted to rave, they wanted to ballad, and the mood remained far too restrained throughout. Singer Jeremy Greenspan is usually detached in an earnest, heartfelt way but here he just seemed uninterested. In between all of this, Morgan Geist DJ'd some great disco/nu disco but his excellent sets felt like sticking plaster.
I'm told the Four Tet gig earlier in the week rocked, but on this night Metronomy singer Joseph Mount, in spite of his hateable sneering irony, summed it up best: "How does everyone feel about being in the Millennium Dome?"