Clock Opera @ Electrowerkz, Islington, London. December 01 2011
Clock Opera are, without any shadow of doubt, the most exciting thing happening in music at the moment. I say this not as my opinion, but as an unequivocal statement of fact. Strong words, I know, but this is what I want to say to every single person I know. I want to stop people on the streets and say it, sending them home immediately to look the band up. Actually, scratch that, I want to plug strangers into my iPod and have them listen straight away, watching their faces as ‘White Noise’ drops; searching for signs of the same wonder and excitement I feel every time I hear it.
In this age of X Factor finalists recording banal covers of classic songs in a bid to claim the no-longer-coveted Christmas No 1 crown; when middle-of-the-road indie bands are being hyped beyond all sense of proportion by faux-controversial music magazines which sadly still seem to command a shocking amount of influence, I fail to understand why the independent music world isn’t gushing over Clock Opera in the same way I am, isn’t putting them on a pedestal, grabbing music fans by the shoulders and shouting “Look! Listen! Learn! This is how it should be done. This is what’s possible”.
I’m sorry. I realise I am in danger of drowning you all in a sea of hyperbole, but simply put, Clock Opera are something else.
I have seen them perform many, many times over the past few years, but every single time they manage to lift me out of the suffocating mudanity of the daily grind, move me beyond coherent expression and lose me in a realm of emotion-laden electronic perfection, full of densely textured wonderfulness, climaxes, drops, poignant vocals and gorgeous harmonies.
I’m afraid there is a limit to how much I can actually speak about the gig, in this..erm…gig review, but Clock Opera are one of those too-few bands who I can lose myself in utterly when I see them live, and so I do. I close my eyes, I forget about my surroundings and I just let the music wash through me, restoring my faith in possibilities. But seeing as this is a gig review and that’s assumedly why you’re here, I will do my best.
Opening to a great reception with 11th Hour, it was clear from the start that this was going to be a great night. A good crowd of people were packed into Electrowerkz, and there was excitement and anticipation in the air. I was expecting Clock Opera to move from this into one of their more well known tunes, but instead they played ‘Lost Buoys’ – another relatively new track that’s possibly less ‘explosive’ than some of the others but has an incredible understated beauty – before knocking everyone away with ‘Man Made’ and ‘A Piece Of String’, by which time everyone in the room was well and truly buzzing.
Electrowerkz provided the perfect backdrop to a band of this nature; from the thick black paint on the walls and the bare metal struts on the ceiling to the small pieces of fluff stapled to the walls and lit with UV light to look like stars to the bare light bulbs strung across the back of the stage which made it look as though it went on forever, every aspect of the venue seemed designed to heighten the experience of watching Clock Opera perform.
‘Move To The Mountains’ came next, which I absolutely adored when hearing it for the first time at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen recently, and again it blew me away, before ‘Once And For All’ truly made everyone go wild. Clock Opera seem relatively shy in terms of between-song-banter, but Guy is a very funny man, and when someone shouted out “I love you Guy” during a period of relative quiet, immediately shot back “Thanks, Dad” before going on to thank the people who had bought t-shirts and weren’t his parents (“I’ve been informed we’ve sold four, so there must be some of you out there”).
They brought the set to a thundering conclusion with ‘White Noise’ (which has utterly astounded me in its brilliance ever since I first heard it), ‘Belongings’ and closing with the fantastic ‘Lesson Number 7’, their current single. Leaving the stage to a wall of cheers, they came back on to play their second ever encore: the first, apparently, being in Luxembourg where a woman threatened to attack Guy unless they played something else; they didn’t have any other songs so repeated their last song again. Tonight, however, we were treated to ‘Fail Better’ – a brand new song that had never been performed live before, and which I can’t really find the words to describe, except to say: go and listen to this band. You will not be disappointed.
Words & pictures by Hannah
