The Borderline, London
9th November 1999
A night at The Borderline, a night for Americanism. We arrived too late to hear the first set, a band called Kenny Process Team, so no insights there apart from the appropriate(d) soundtrack feeling their last couple of songs gave me as I took in the setting. This venue is a strange place for my impressions of London. Done up in 1970’s Tex-Mex sort of decor, disturbingly orderly, little comedy cowboy motifs everywhere, The Borderline could have easier been stuck out in the California high desert as in the middle of London. I felt relieved to notice the very punk-rock bartenders and hoped against all that no one was going to line-dance.
So then came Rothko, their short set of woeful bass-based tunes rang romantic and sweet, completely instrumental, basstrumental. One, two, three bass guitars to accompany the other sort of electronica, but with a lot of bass too. I found I quite liked the American southwestern kind of bass slide sounds, not unmatched with this setting. Rothko thankfully had none of the twangy country irritants that could so easily become a part of a set like this, but more the feel of Honeywater, with longing, and very melodic. When one of Rothko spoke, I became aware that they were probably less American than the music would make one think, but I still found myself reminiscing a drive out of the Yuma Arizona hills, enhanced by the local plant life, of course.
Next up was Ui, so put together and slick and immediately enjoyable. More Americana, anthems practically in fact. Ui drove in Minneapolis funk right from the start, almost preaching soul to rolling hips and a crowd too thick to dance in. I often wonder about seeing live performances with no vocals, and anticipate boredom, and sometimes that happens. Ui induced me to shut eyes and tranced bliss, or would have, if there weren’t so many stranger’s hands finding my shoulder, pushing me aside for passage. And even I might have found a groove if I could’ve stopped looking around so for the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Wilbo Wright calmed my vexations about shows with no singing with his Memphis-ish harmonica lacing “Green of the Melon” and I got it that often times, the voice of instruments is as important and sonorous as any human sung lyrics can be.
Several songs took us further south to Florida state and a sort of rocking that only comes from there, and back out to California for surf tune by-lines running sunny between the kraut-splashed electroniques. I wonder if one were to make map points of all the cities covered that night by Ui, would one then have a replication of the star pattern of the Big Dipper or some such, and would it all match up point to point on some certain date in 10,500 B.C.? And it would all prove what exactly? No matter, the overwhelming and most used term of endearment going on for Ui at the Borderline was Funk, and funk and funque. Sasha Frere-Jones fairly attacked dramatic, beginning every song with posture and form like I didn’t know American boys could do. And after the last song, the going offstage manners were assumingly polite as they left a loop on, in anticipation of their call-back, which would have been a little embarrassing had no one called them back. The 20-some minute encore version of “The Long Egg” more than excused the rock-star waving salutes. Ui earned their adulation, and well rounded a representation of American style music, coast to coast, groove to groove.
-LN99-
