The Star & Garter's grimy vortex of black and red stands in a thick, pasty smoke of ashen haze, tentatively awaiting those stately, measured figures belonging to iLiKETRAiNS to saunter majestically towards the stage, affix the rolls of film into the projector and strike up their sound with a silent, grave nod.
Slowly, slowly it seeps out like oozing, coagulating tar from each pinprick in the speakers, spreading out its oily tentacles to coat
each and every spectator in a shroud of glimmering dark designs. Those spectral, echoing guitars and softly-billowing, fluctuating drumrolls grow stronger and heavier until they solidify into one vast black void around your body, at which point you become lost in a divine space of pure atmosphere. All this and with National Rail uniforms, lyrics about kitchen knives and a smoulderingly attractive beard. Sensory overload? Yes, nearly.
Unfortunately, tonight we witness only the evolving splendour and
blade-edged gothicism of four songs (I say songs but perhaps that should read 'spiralling, marble-walled masterpieces' of course; but you knew that already, right?). This bittersweet set comes in truncated form due to being part of the whole In The City "Quick! Get your asses onstage! Show the businessmen what you've
got! Get off! Leave! And shut the door behind you!" weekend and also thanks to the ridiculously long and tedious swirl of morbid statue music that was the band playing beforehand; all of whose members gaped vacantly at their keyboards and triggered samples with all the studied enthusiasm of zombies in the final stages of rigor mortis.
|
However, the four panoramas we are lucky and grateful enough to receive drip sparkling venom all over the floor. New single 'A Rook House For Bobby' melts lightly (as far as this is physically possible for Leeds' finest murder-maestros) out of the funeral pyres of 'BEFORETHECURTAiNSCLOSE Part ii' and into the glinting culinary desire and poison of 'Stainless Steel'.
Dave's cavernous intonations leer gently above and below the bubbling, rising depths of steel strings wracked with violin horsehair bows, basslines stalking the midnight castle's corridors and the infrequent drone of a prowling trumpet. Exquisite.
As we emerge, blinking in the mist of grey rain, out under the arches beneath Piccadilly station, the building transforms itself into a glowing, glowering beast churning out silently-chugging locomotives, the pale faces at the windows gazing blindly into the night air. Snippets of the band's blurred, jolting footage slide across your vision as you squint through the torrents, hunting for ways home, accompanied by the apocalyptic buzz of the past half hour. In the belly of the city, something deep and beautiful is
spawning.
|
