Review: Excepter

Sorry not much time but nonetheless a short review from the Excepter show at West Germany:

Through a state of tiredness and weariness I forced myself to head for West Germany that night, because I just really, really wanted to see Excepter. So my willingness to deal with the support bands wasn't exactly very high... the first one sounded a bit like a not so exciting copy of John Maus. The second one was some sort of dark drone something... anyway, let's just say I spent some considerable amount of time on the balcony, enjoying fresh air and the view of Kottbusser Tor before Excepter finally began to play.

I've never seen them live before. They have released a huge bunch of different records since they started in 2002, some on Load Records and on Paw Tracks, the Animal Collective record label, and a couple of them I like a lot! Also they're pretty diverse and range from drony ambient stuff to experimental more dub influenced music. So I wasn't sure at all what to expect from this, but I had a feeling it's going to be good.

Turned out my feeling was right. They were four people on stage using various synthies and electronic devices plus some more "traditional" instruments like harmonica and tambourine and also massive reverb on the vocals. Their music was an awesome and intriguing mixture of ritualistic chanting and broken beats somewhere between danceable music and total amorphousness. For a good amount of the concert I, and probably some more people, had no idea how to react appropriately, so you could watch interesting variations of dancing, confused nodding or plain staring... I really loved the fact that they managed to challenge peoples attention by not resting on certain beats and moments but instead by constantly adding breaks in their structures, if there were any at all. West Germany was hot and packed and although it got a bit emptier towards the end of the show a good part of the audience didn't want this to stop.

I definitely don't regret having forced myself to go there. Hope Excepter will be back sometime soon!