Thievery Corporation @ Enmore,Sydney (1/08/11)

Mon 8th Aug, 2011 in Gig Reviews

During the late 90s and early 00s the rise in popularity for sleek lounge bars brought about the rise of a certain type of ambient house music, an innocuous amalgamation of trip hop, house and jazz that as Brian Eno once said of ambient music in general was “as ignorable as it was interesting”. It could drift in and out of focus and provide mood; no more was required of it. Artistic content was negligible and almost unnecessary. Amongst the beige milieu of artists and Ninja Tune devotees a few stars shone through. One in particular was a pair of Washington DC bar owners who went by the name Thievery Corporation, and they brought a deft intuition for world music and exotic instrumentation as well as neat production chops to a crowded table and made a name for themselves.

Their MO is a slick infusion of Indian, Brazilian, African, Spanish and American sounds and they lay them on a foundation of straightforward hip hop beats. The trick in translating it to a live performance is firstly to wrangle the different instruments and elements under one sound system and make them work together and secondly (and most importantly) to create focus and intent in what is fundamentally background music. Their Splendour side-show at the Enmore certainly succeeded in the first part, but didn’t quite pull of the second part to a memorable degree. Volume doesn’t necessarily create interest.

Melbourne space cadets Cumbia Cosmonauts defied Monday night conventions and decided to faff about in alfoil suits instead of staying home and watching the 7:30 report, and it was a good thing they did – they were great! A really catchy mess of Cuban influenced laptop tomfoolery raised the temperature and proved an intelligent way to start a Thievery set. Their jittery light hearted sound lowered our guard a little, ensuring that we didn’t expect something too lofty or groundbreaking. Not to say low expectations were the key to enjoying the evening, but a sense of context was important. This was music to have fun with on a surface level, not to be dived into hoping to uncover intellectual pearls.

The Corporation brought with them a full backing band, leaving only a few elements to be manipulated electronically. Wise move. A saxophone will beat a synthesizer any day of the week in a live venue, and a live sitar can only be beaten by, um, another bigger, louder sitar.

They opened with a couple of fairly relaxed tunes, but the surprisingly early rendition of their break-out hit Lebanese Blonde was a bit of a let-down. Everyone responded on cue but it didn’t have much juice; it sounded pretty but it didn’t really go anywhere. It was a classic example of style over substance, being a case in point of the issue of performing lounge music for a live audience, and it exposed the inherent challenges of creating vitality and urgency out of a relatively inert piece of music. From there the set could only get stronger and quickly built steam, moving through the more melodic numbers from their classic Mirror Conspiracy and Richest Man In Babylon records and transitioning smoothly through several shifts in tone and tempo.

They had a whole caravan of vocal talent waiting in the wings to be deployed at will. Their voices sounded nice, although the mixing wasn’t as sharp as it could be, leaving the singers to be drowned out by the bass a number of times. Still, aside from the overtly political Vampires, the ability to understand the lyrics wasn’t paramount. All we needed was to find a groove, and that was easy.

After a lengthy set the encore finished with a dozen local gals being invited on stage to party with the band. It was a nice touch, and it finished off the night on a high note. Or at least it should’ve finished. Instead, they came on for a second encore of a single song, Heaven’s Gonna Burn Your Eyes, a sleepy track that should’ve been slotted in somewhere in the middle to offer mid-set relief. It felt forced where it should’ve felt syrupy. Despite that, no one left the Enmore disappointed, and it was a good gig for a Monday night. The perfect method of translating lounge music to a large venue like that still eludes us, but it was a mighty effort nonetheless.