I should admit I sometimes feel a bit out of my depth reviewing bands like Plaid. Despite being slightly obsessed since 2001’s Double Figure album. Maybe it’s because I can never remember what tracks are called or maybe it’s because that sort of stuff doesn’t seem important for a live review. I last saw them supporting Orbital about 5 years ago, so tonight feels long overdue. I’m excited! That was a much bigger venue, but I’ve often said I prefer smaller rooms and hearing them in Gorilla tonight is a bit special. I’m not sure this venue gets enough credit for its sound. Bunkered under a railway arch, the sound is wonderfully trapped. You do want to be careful where you stand though. It’s definitely mixed tonight for the middle of the room, if you’re at the front it sounds a bit muddy and you don’t want that for Plaid. Sometimes it can get uncomfortably cramped in here, but tonight there’s room and even though this might make me sound dull, it’s more more pleasant. Plaid are after all, for me at least a mood band. Twisting through experimental electronica, it’s all about how it weaves it’s way through you and takes you off to someplace else entirely. Their sound is unmistakably them, with definitive elements that you can easily recognise through songs and albums over now three decades. What I’m getting at is they’re not just another electronic duo with laptops. This is a band with identity. It’s slightly baffling they’re not bigger, but despite several dancier bangers, they’re not big beat raveheads, relying on samples and hooks to draw in the masses. They are, dare I say, much cleverer. For starters there’s four on stage tonight, with two additions joining Andy and Ed. Yes there’s lots of laptops, but also guitar, not to mention some wonderfully trippy sci-fi video projection. There’s a lot going on. They lean heavy on the newer stuff, but that’s fine. It’s warm, melodic, meaty. The last time I saw them, I was taken with how dark they came over, but that’s been stripped away by a wave of positivity tonight. The beats are bouncy, but still do all those crafty time signature switches that somehow just sound effortlessly silky. I can’t tell you who’s orchestrating what, but split into two banks of personnel flanking the stage, there’s a lot of eye contact as songs develop, mould and shift as much as the rather stunning video spanning the stage behind them. I go to a lot of gigs and I’m an editor and animator by trade. I know quality work when I see it and whoever has done the visuals for this tour has done a stellar job. That said, I am guilty on occasion of closing my eyes in the dreamier sequences. Letting the colours bounce over my eyelids and the fluid sounds fill my ears. It’s stuff like this that makes live music special, whatever the genre. Time often flys for me at gigs, but honestly 70 minutes tonight passes in a blink. For a moment there, nothing mattered. My heart swollen with blissful beauty, poured by four unassuming humans, soundtracking what utopia could be. Plaid create sublimely complex music, but live they strip your soul bare and leave you floating. I think I had unreasonably high expectations coming in tonight and that’s always dangerous, but they’ve honestly floored me with a set that captured every emotion, before distilling it into pure euphoria.
