Saturday 26/11/05 To My Boy, The Delta Fiasco @ Korova, Liverpool

Having listened to largely derivative rock and roll for the past 6 days of Liverpool Music Week 2005, it’s refreshing to be stepping away tonight from the main venues and heading instead to über-nightspot Korova to take a peek into future.  And guess what, kids? The future’s tight, the future’s denim. Skinny jeans are very much the order of the night, leading Gigwise’s testicles to retract in fear at the very sight of these washed-indigo hazards to fertility. Let’s hope the music’s as tight as the pants…

     

To the sound of Dave McCabe’s brother’s laptop crashing - bringing a premature end to an intriguing if a little Nathan Barley-esque techno collage from Otaku No Denki – the Delta-ettes swan icily to the front of Korova’s basement live music room to lend vocal support (unfortunately they have real human girl voices and therefore cannot be genuine electro-groupies) to tonight’s penultimate act The Delta Fiasco. Alas, no amount of encouragement from their die-hards can rescue the two-piece from a set ravaged by problems with microphones and their software (computers proving no more reliable tonight than vintage valve amplifiers). When they do manage to complete a few tracks, the results vary, careering from moody synth washes and full-on DFA 1979 style wig-outs to somewhat uninspiring indie-disco in the vein of The Bravery or The Kills. That said, it’s hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for the apologetic boys tonight, though it’s certain that they won’t let one problematic gig disturb the momentum they’ve been building in recent months.

 

And so on to another, more unlikely pair of lads who are currently harnessing the powers of technology to eliminate the necessity of sharing a rider with a drummer: the unique To My Boy.  The Delta Fiasco must be cursing their luck as Jack and Sam fire shot after shot of punked-up synth-pop into the audience without so much as a binary blip.   It’s a bizarre sight as they swing their guitars around the stage with automaton motion, whacking out robotic riffs over metronomic bleeps and beats.  That’s not to say we’re watching some kind of robo-freak show – there’s definitely a charm and sense of abandon onstage that often goes missing once a drum machine is roped into a band’s set-up. The eccentricity of Thomas Dolby and the pop ingenuity of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark infuse tracks such as ‘Mono’, while Helen Love and Chemikal Underground favourites Bis stylings drive ‘I Am X-Ray’.