Legendary Pink Dots / ChopChop (live at The Moth Club)

London
29 February 2020

ChopChop’s music snakes round its orator like a slippery thing, cymbals replaced by the clatter of hubcaps on toms, cutlery-jammed guitars – there’s an itchy jazzy vibe to the melodics, fuelled by a fertile imagination full of bruised shapes and punkish angles.

Performance artist Xelís de Toro dances the jagged edges superbly in an urgent, jerky Giacometti centrepiece that has a David Byrne-like drive to his contortions, enraptured in a stream of consciousness simplicity and a razor-sharp intellect.

The sounds that surround him are tensive, built up on darting dynamics, eerie keys and smeared trumpet that Schaumburg your head with surprise. A mosaic whole, crawling and crackling, mining mantra-like to vocal abstracts that punch out their confines. Their last track is a beautiful contraction that secures a well deserved applause.

If a band ever suited the glittery interior of The Moth Club it would be the Legendary Pink Dots; the tinselly antiquity of it all a superb conduit, a wooden-panelled rabbit hole of a place that could easily be the backdrop to any of Edward Ka-Spel’s shadowy tales. The opportunity to see these dudes live has always slipped through my grasp somehow, and this surreal time capsule of a venue seems the ideal setting to finally taste the band in the flesh.

While the band is forty years young, songs from their latest LP Angel In The Detail are the order of the day. “Happy Birthday Mr President” is a blast, and “Junkyard”‘s comical candour is like a shining beacon, getting up close and personal with injustice, Edward’s warm and flavoursome vox savouring the words as he wanders the front of the stage, all gestural fingers and staring eyes; then the hearth-side flames of “Itchycoo Shark” hit (which I foolishly mistook for “Golden Dawn” at first). Its Suspirial glow is full of lush, sleepy glints and Edward’s soft delivery leaves you closed-eyed, hopelessly adrift, until it’s all thrown onto a circuit-bent fire of wayward noise, Edward slamming plenty of thunderous rumble, device meister The Silverman (Phil Knight) accenting plenty of Kaoscillatory goodness.

This mutating jigsaw of blurry diamonds The Dots are plying is certainly putting a smile on my face, and the oriental onyx of one of the tracks gets me wondering where my ancient copy of The Maria Dimension has got to, as the guitar wah rubs its silky contours and the structure gets gloriously heated, buckling with twisted bounty. Suddenly, The Silverman runs out of juice, sneaks off the stage in search of a fresh power pack. While he’s gone, Edward flashes a cheeky grin at Erik Drost before manoeuvring the musical mischief. Most bands would share a nervous joke with the audience at this point, but Edward and company go straight into an off-the-cuff improv booming with drama, documenting the band’s journey down dark, storm-addled French roads to Calais with destructive verve.

Returning recharged, The Silverman steeps the stage with darkened hues. Edward nods over in approval, narrowing the focus with synthy spiderwebs before wandering the front of the stage miming to a sample, calling the spirits, his hands full of esoteric gestures for the front row, eyes manically infused.

Really liking the electro-disco slant of a lot of these new tracks, and the Giorgio Moroder romp of “Neon Calculators” hits a dance-floor high, Drost’s guitar obliques biting the addictive thump, Edward’s arms akimbo, the cups of his hands grasping invisible globes, theatrically bending into his words. The way he holds the audience on those flourished finites is incredible, an unfurling tapestry of dreams / disappointments jaguaring the jaunt, questioning and incising, shoaling the metaphorical, something that’s held me true to their output for so long.

The energy flicking between the three tightens, then sprays out in delicious chaos, a stumbling flamenco that Drost’s frets shard and shiver. Suddenly, spiralling tendrils of tribalism flow on through and a voice floats out. “Sign along the dotted line” calls Edward. “Free yourself of all your possessions”, he urges, the word “free” repeating, dissipating on heatstroke synths, his voice swept up, withering into this gorgeous Chemical Playschool-esque showdown.

It’s an eerie ambience that I just lap up, terminating on a sing-song conclusion which has me swaying like a sapling in a gale. “It’s a long way to Andromeeeedaaaaa”, goes Edward; and I’m grinning at the realisation that this was a contracted version of “The Andromeda Suite”. The crowd go crazy on this ditty’s demise, promoting The Dots to quickly return to the stage to supply a final encore. “Hellsville” is a track full of clamorous claws and notes that bounce like bullets, strange Islamic sounds purring on over as the Monotron wolf-whistles the tangle, at its centre a howling Edward, his vocals mirroring the maul to an evil Bond villain laugh of an ending. Bloody superb!

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-