Nils Petter Molvær @ Cargo

Met up with James (and his friend James) and Jan (and his friends) outside Cargo, Shoreditch this evening. Spent a couple of hours in the restaurant then sauntered along to the furthest arch for an all too short set from Molvaer. Nice to have comps to get in and nice to get paid by Jazzwise to write the review, but this would have been worth full price admission: air-displacing bass, stutterclick rhythms, pounding beats semi-desolidified by angular Jan Bang and bare-chested DJ Strangefruit, corruscating flamethrower guitarstorms from Eivind Aarset, polyrhythmic shadowing from an unnamed drummer and Molvaer floating over the top of it, but also engaging with a deal of energy, looking fit and on the one. The beats were more (hard/tech) house-oriented, which was something of a relief as the two step/mostly slightly too polite breakbeat rhythms he’s been using until recently were getting a bit long in the tooth. Strangefruit and Bang were clearly the beat scientists, clinical and merciless in their visceral surgery on the audience’s rhythmcentres. Though James disagreed and favoured the melodic intervals, my thirst was for the cerebellum hits and I got a good enough dose to please me for at least for a little while. As mentioned in previous posts, the cds always seem too polite and I’d still like for the right producer to ruff things up finestyle, but at the least Streamer should – but doesn’t – bear an order to PLAY LOUD!

Jazzwise review here. (Tough squeezing the experience into 300 words, so the foregoing comprises the overflow.)