IAMX, Fratelli Studios, 1st of October, Bucharest, Romania.
An IAMX concert is always more than just a live show, and anyone who had the chance to see Chris Corner on stage will agree on this matter. This explains the impatience and expectations I had when it came to this concert (let's not mention the fact that I am a huge IAMX fan).
When I got to Fratelli, they were only a few people and I feared the band won't have a proper audience. Fortunately, as time passed by, more and more people showed up. I guess it was a little difficult for them to find the location. That shouldn't be surprising, as "I bought my ticket to IAMX, hooray... where's Fratelli?" was a very used phrase on Internet in the last two days before the concert.
The warm-up act was DJ Marika. At the beginning it was okay; it wasn't some kind of an extraordinary performance, but it was nice – I recognized fragments of Placebo, Klaxons and White Lies tunes in his mix. As time passed, people became more and more impatient. Look, I know what a warm-up means. But when the audience starts booing, then you know something is wrong. And at this concert it was more than wrong.
After this annoyingly long warm-up, came the sound check. Another delay. Of course sound check had been made for hours before the concert, but well, I guess they just wanted to make sure everything will be perfect (at least that was what I was thinking then). When IAMX finally came on stage, people started to scream like the roof was on fire. It was a crazy atmosphere, and I cannot say the band didn't like it. On the contrary, they encouraged the crowd. And after these greetings, they started to play. And Chris started to sing. I'm not sure when he started to sing, as I couldn't hear his voice very well. It was covered by the instrumental part. Great. I wonder why that damn sound check was made for.
Except this "little" problem (which reappeared several times during the concert), everything was great. Anyone in the crowd would agree that the band did its just impeccably and the moments when members of the group tried to crowd surf or just got off the stage and went into the crowd were an experience few will forget too soon. They played most of the songs from their third album (including here Tear Garden and My Secret Friend), but also some well known songs from their previous ones, such as Spit It Out (of course), Nightlife, Kiss And Swallow and President (this one was played as an encore). Chris was in his best shape, and managed to show us all why an IAMX concert is so much more than a simple live musical show. It was a wild, almost sexual experience, dark, primitive and sophisticated at the same time.
I left pleased by the show as a whole, but also a little disappointed, due to the sound problem. The concert would have been perfect without it. Even so, it remains one of the best musical experiences I had on this year.
OMG, I loved the concert !
ReplyDeleteI got there a bit early, because i had no idea where fratelli was and i didn't expect to find it as fast as i did. I was also worried when i saw there weren't many people around, but thankfully, as you said, they showed up later.
I didn't mind the dj, and i thought that boo-ing him was really rude, although he was slightly boring.
You're right about the sound problem, but i just thought they sing more aggressively when in concert, so it didn't affect me much.
I was sitting up front, and i was really annoyed by some stupid girls, who did nothing during the concert but stand there and smoke and make a scene if you accidentally touched their shoulder while jumping around.
Anyway, i loved chris & the rest and i would really really really want to see more of them.
Nice review, keep up the good work.
The concert was teh shit. Yeah, the warm up sort of sucked, the sound checking took too long and we couldn't wait to see IAMX on stage. I really hope they'll come back next year (even if i'd like to see them pretty soon but...). So yeah...it was fucking orgasmic.
ReplyDeleteanaenervoasa: yeah, booing him was really rude, and i didn't do that. however, i understood why that happened. thanks for your kind words.
ReplyDeleteterminalyoungthings: apparently, they said it was unexpecting for them to see so many people at this concert and that they'll like to come back.