Lithium Magazine

Review and photos by Mike Bax

www.theglitchmob.com
www.myspace.com/theglitchmob

Earlier this year, I was sent an advance copy of the Glitch Mob’s Drink The Sea album. Something about this album really resonates with me. Their music utilizes a sound similar to acts like The Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk, but with a dirtier, less organic sound than the aforementioned knob-twirlers.

Recently, The Glitch Mob released Drink The Sea Part 2: The Mixtape for free on their website. Essentially, it’s a thirty-minute continuous mix that integrates much of their Drink The Sea album, with clever samples from La Roux; Daft Punk; The Game; Lil Wayne; Jay-Z and M.I.A. To say this Mixtape is innovative would be doing it a disservice as I play it more than I play Drink The Sea. It’s still available for free on their website; just scroll a few pages into their cascading news section on their landing page and pull it down for the price of a measley email address – it’s excellent stuff.

This performance really could have sucked. The Glitch Mob are primarily a band that comprises their material with loops, decks and machinery, so I wasn’t sure if the show would be the equivalent of a Paul Van Dyk show (essentially, a bobbing DJ’s head behind a lot of machinery – rave style) or if the band was going to shoot for something a bit more organic, like Underworld manage to pull off when they play live.

The posted start time of 8:00pm on the interweb was a bit of a fail, as there was a line-up of fans behind a red velvet partition at 10:00pm who hadn’t been allowed into the venue yet. At 10:30pm, the doors were finally opened and fans were allowed in.

Marty Party took the stage at around 11:15pm. Marty Party is one dude behind a deck sporting a baseball hat and what had to be a tonne of Red Bull in his system. He managed to get the crowd nicely warmed up, but he did nothing for me, personally. I enjoyed his takes on the Police (Roxanne) and an almost indiscernible scratchy remix of The XX, but overall, all he did was gyrate his hips in front of his deck… which ultimately looked like he was making slow love to his machinery – porno style. It got quickly became tiresome.  Marty Party left his deck and bounced around the stage during all of his songs like he had a hot-foot - overall I found myself over him pretty quickly.

As the three members of The Glitch Mob strutted on stage at around 12:40am, The Mod Club was impressively full. There was a part of me that wondered just who would attend this evening's live show. With TIFF in full swing, and Kiss and Slash both in town playing shows at different venues, there was lots going on in Toronto to distract potential music fans from an under-the-radar electronic act at the Mod Club.

Utilizing a mixture of live drumming, integrated samples, programmed loops and three Lemur Input Devices, The Glitch Mob delivered one of the coolest live electronic performances I have seen in a while. Their Lemurs were aimed towards the audience so we could all watch the band serve up their material as the Lemur’s lit up their finger tips as they played. Much of the samples found on the free Mixtape were utilized during the bands live show.

The Glitch Mob performed in front of a circular arrangement of LED lighting set up just behind two angled pillars of tubular lighting. They performed as silhouettes, often completely washed out in multi-coloured lighting that washed over top of them and into the audience to dramatic effect.

I can’t say this show would please everyone. I saw a few people leaving the venue early into their set, disinterested in what the Mob was doing after less than half an hour. These people were few and far between, however, and as The Mob was winding down their energetic performance, the Mod Club was still packed to the back doors.

The bottom line: they were really entertaining. See them if you can.