skinnywhiteboy

Monade, Komedia, Brighton 29 Feb 08

Went to see Monade. From Bordeaux, they include Laeticia Sadier, singer and lyricist for the mighty Stereolab. The name is presumably a French play on Le Monade = Lemonade…but there was sadly no fizz.

I tried to say hello to Laeticia once, at a gig about 10 years ago. She looked at me like I was a piece of shit on her shoe, and jogged on. Tonight she still had the same air of scary haughtiness - so much so that no-one dared approach the stage, creating a ’sea’, as she put it, between them and us.

There wasn’t much of us. Maybe 60 people, one of those crowds with a 1:3 head to haircut ratio. And by the end of the night only 4 people had dared cross the sea to approach the Marquise de Sadier, and those at the back had decided to sit down, lean against the wall, and generally talk amongst themselves. Unfortunately Tottenham was in bed with a snapped leg, and the Hymers were tucked up with the flu, so it left Hairy and me to, well, stand quietly, ever aware of our aching backs.

Trouble was the lack of excitement. Monade do intellectual pop, a brain workout with little to no soul, passion, drive…oomph, for god’s sake. It’s as if Sadier told the other 3 ‘let’s aim for Stereolab-lite, chuck in some difficult words, and see if anyone notices that I play my guitar upside down (she does), and the bassist plays a de-tuned guitar (she does), and the keyboardist mimics a waxwork (he does), and the drummer pretends he plays for Tortoise’. The drummer David Loquier was the best thing no doubt, but could never get into a groove as ‘jazz’ or ‘reggae’ style changes in time signature and other pseudomuso moments kept disrupting the flow.

When they stopped trying so hard they did better - songs ‘about a lunatic asylum’ and ‘beauty’ showed some potential to be more than decaff post-rock. Sure, people clapped and one guy announced he had travelled 500 miles to see them, but I’m afraid they left me rather cold.

In support were a band with the silliest name around, ‘It hugs back‘, who were good fun in a shoegazing, fringe shaking, pedal stomping, my bloody valentine fashion. They’re from Kent but don’t let that put you off checking them out.

Check out stuff white people like’s analysis of why whitey likes Mos Def. They have a point…a Vilage Voice article suggests a sales mix of up to 90 per cent white, and gigs of 70 to 95 per cent white for well known artists.

There are some problems with these simplistic analyses though:

1 - do these figures represent a true picture? Doubt it - I bet a dubstep night in holloway has a predominantly black audience, because it was created there by local people…a probably doesn’t register on the radar of audience surveys and CD sales.

2 - hip-hop lost an African American majority audience years ago. Does it matter? Black people have created many musical styles for whites to follow when eventually they pick up on it. Blues, jazz, funk, disco, reggae, hip hop, grime…

3 - interesting things happen when so called ‘black’ and ‘white’ musics come together. This happened in the foundations of hip-hop (Kraftwerk vs 808 on Bambaata’s ‘Planet Rock’, Mos Def himself sampling the Chilli Peppers on ‘Brooklyn’) and reggae (African drums and rythms vs European melody) in the first place, as well as whole new genres like drum and bass. Check out the sample libraries on Hip-Hop is Read.

This, surely, is the point. Music’s oxygen is cultural closeness as well as difference. One feeds off the other…and makes our little world go round.

An example - Tupac Shakur & Thom Yorke get mixed up. Download it here.

Search and enjoy.