Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

A couple of mates had picked this one out and suggested I might like it, and, as my diary was looking pretty sparse at the time, I thought ‘why not?’ Some brief scanning of releases led me to expect a night of electro-based post punk, some synth-pop of a darker persuasion. The reality was considerably darker than that, and pretty much straight-up goth, even if the majority of the crowd didn’t recognise it as such – by which I mean, they looked more like they’d be into Gary Numan than The Sisters of Mercy. So where are we at? Goth by stealth? Said crowd was an interesting mix, an almost even split of old sods, and lanky buggers young enough to be their kids – or mine, I suppose.

The Sick Man of Europe – raved about by a mate who’s more of an indie persuasion – are in some respects reminiscent of early Depeche Mode but darker, heavier, more industrial. They bring the pulsating repetition on Suicide, with a heavy leaning towards DAF. For the second song, they segue ‘Movement’ and ‘Obsolete’. The studio versions are tight slices of Krautrock, and nice enough. Live, everything is amped up and the result is something more like covers of ‘Ghostrider’ as performed by The Sisters of Mercy, or even Foetus. The flat baritone monotone of the studio recording takes on a new dimension live, too, at times reminiscent of the booming grave-and-gravel drawl of Chris Reed of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. The sick singer spends considerable time charging back and forth in front of the stage and occasionally ventures further into the crowd. They take things up a good couple of notches live in comparison to the studio recordings, the clinical sterility converted to crackling energy. They’re tight, tense, and gothy as hell.

The Sick Man of Europe

The same is true of TVAM, an act I’d always taken as being a bit 6Music electro-indie. Again, the difference between their studio work and live show is the key here. The work of just one guy in the studio, the live act is transformative, with live drums and guitar. They play the new album, Ruins, in full and in sequence. It takes confidence in an album to do this, but it’s an album to have confidence in, without a weak track. The song titles and lyrics flash on the screen at the back of the stage in real time, with striking images projected during instrumental passages. In combination with the lighting and smoke, it makes for a strong visual performance. The sound, too, is fantastic, the swirling guitars hazy, the drums crisp and bright.

TVAM

On the bass-led ‘Real Life’ they perfectly replicate the drums from ‘Lucretia My Reflection’, and ‘Powder Blue’ is indisputably a dark pop gem with a dense shoegaze feel.

The final segment of the set piles into the depths of the back catalogue with relish, hitting us with ‘Porsche Majeure’ and ‘Double Lucifer’, before closing with ‘Total Immersion’, the last track from their 2021 debut Psychic Data.

TVAM

Oftentimes, studio-based projects can lose something in the translation to the live setting, but by taking a completely different approach to the format, TVAM show different aspects of the songs and imbue them with new depth and energy.

As a lineup, the two acts compliment one another well, and in both delivering punchy sets (Sick Man’s set was bang on half an hour, TVAM played for 45 minutes), they gave us an exhilarating night.