aesthetic perfection – Fooyah

February 23 2020February 23 2020

Aesthetic Perfection – The Lounge, Archway

Took my lovely niece and Smith to see Aesthetic Perfection last night at The Lounge 666 or whatever it’s called near Archway tube in London. Before the show we were just about to go to get food when I checked where the venue was and spotted Daniel Graves on his way out of the venue. I, very politely, asked if he would meet my niece because she loves him. I think I even used the phrase “I don’t mean to impose but would you mind . . . .”, jesus, what a british twat I can be. Anyway, he came over and met my niece and they had a photo taken. She was very happy.

The first band we saw, but second on the bill, was Jadu. Biomechanimal were on first but we missed them. That’s not a bad thing, we’ve seen them before a few times. Jadu are a German band who I quite enjoyed. There were four of them, a female singer and a drummer, guitarist and keyboard person. It was quite slow stuff but perfectly good. I quite enjoyed it. I did note that the sound of the kick drum was pretty good and didn’t over power the rest of the sound. I’m probably going to get a Jadu album, it was good enough for that.

Shortly after that Aesthetic Perfection came on stage and this is now the about 9th time I have seen Joe Letz. This makes him the artist I have seen most. I don’t mind. His on stage persona is brilliant and I enjoy his antics.

Aesthetic Perfection put on an amazing show. It was probably the best I have seen them and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The crowd was nice and pleasant. Even the six foot six female pair allowed those of us shorted than them in front. I spent the whole gig about three rows back from the front, which didn’t even have a barrier.

The band played for a decent length of time and I have to say I enjoyed it all. There was a moment when Joe Letz tapped Daniel in the penis and it was pretty funny. There’s a good camaraderie between them all. It’s nice to see a theremin being used at a concert, they’ve probably used them before I just didn’t notice it.

This was a bloody good gig. Probably the best I have seen them and I really enjoyed it. My niece managed to sweet talk one of the roadies and got a Joe Letz drum stick at the end of the gig. This will now go with her stick from a Combichrist gig a few years back. I am a little jealous.

Joe Letz's Knackered Drumstick — Joe Letz’s Knackered Drumstick

Well done AP and I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon.

April 15 2019April 15 2019

Aesthetic Perfection – O2 Islington

Last night I went to the O2 Academy in Islington with my niece to see Aesthetic Perfection. We drove into town as it just makes it easier to get home and not worry about running to get the last train. After arriving we had burritos for dinner and then headed to the venue.

Machine Rox were playing, this was a slight surprise as they weren’t on the bill as far as I knew but we watched them anyway.

I didn’t mind them. The singer owned the dress she was wearing and that was excellent. I couldn’t understand what she was singing though and that seems to be a bit of a flaw. The drummer doesn’t really do much and the guitarist is pretty cool in his silver outfit and lights on his head. They were OK.

Next up was Amelia Arsenic. I hadn’t heard of her before this series of concerts and so was curious. She came on stage and explained that her band were stuck in Cincinnati and she’d been hit by a car the day before. She had a computer set up to play the music and her performance was really good. I could understand what she was singing and really enjoyed the show.

I can’t remember how many tracks she sang but I was impressed. On my next pay day I think I’ll be buying some of her work. I don’t think there are enough female artists in this genre and it’s good to see more. She had a wonderful confidence and even came and sang the last verse in the crowd.

Priest were up next. I’m still not sure what to make of this band. I enjoyed it for a while and his signing impressed me but the songs didn’t vary much and were built around his seemingly classically trained voice. I thought I detected a slight French accent but I may have been wrong there. Apart from the outfits there didn’t seem to be much going on stage.

I’ve just checked and the band are from Sweden, so that explains why I thought they were French. I did like that the singer called themselves:

The Cybernetic Trinity known as Priest

It was a nice touch. I don’t think I’d need to see more of them though.

The headliners were Aesthetic Perfection. I’ve seen this band a few times and have always enjoyed the show. They were the second EBM type band that I started listening to and so are one of my original favourites along with Combichrist. Also, now that Joe Letz plays with AP I think that means I have seen him perform more times than any other musician.

I was curious to see how the band handled the new guitar influences on the new album but the keyboardist played the guitar on two songs and I think it worked. I like the new album a lot and so to hear the songs live was very exciting.

The band played a solid set and it was very enjoyable. It’s nice to be part of a crowd that really sings along and joins in. These guys are excellent showmen and the addition of Joe Letz brings the album sounds to life. I always think that live drummers add more to the sound than they cost. I really like it when electronic bands do that.

This gig was good fun and I enjoyed it immensely. AP are still one of my favourite bands and I will continue to see them when they come over. A good solid evening of music.

October 3 2016October 13 2018

Aesthetic Perfection – The Garage

Last night I took a little journey to The Garage in Islington to watch Aesthetic Perfection. Now, Mesh were the headline band and I had listened to them in advance and I didn’t like it or find it particularly interesting. I was primarily there to see Aesthetic Perfection and to take my niece out for her birthday. It is a good thing that AP tend to tour once a year because that makes her presents easy to organise. This is the second time she has seen AP and my fourth.

The first band on were called Empathy Test, which I have a suspicion is a reference to Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? However, they weren’t much to my liking. There was a singer, two keyboard – programmer types and a drummer. All their songs were well constructed and perfectly fine but not enough to get me going.

Next up were Aesthetic Perfection. I like the Garage as a venue, the roof is nicely curved and I remember seeing Front Line Assembly here a few years ago. The sound was impressive and clear with a stage and rig more suited to music production than Electrowerkz, although Electrowerkz wins in coolness of a venue.

Because this was an acoustic set there wasn’t a drummer and I missed that a bit. I do think that a live drummer adds quite a bit of organic sound to a set. Now, I know they started with Antibody and played more songs but I can’t remember what all the songs were. I should have written them down as they played. The set was good, but missed Spit It Out and Motherfucker, which are songs I do enjoy.

What was nice about AP being second on the bill was that I could get home at a sensible time, but not sensible for a Sunday. It was a very good gig, not quite as good as at M’Era Luna last year but still pretty good. The rest of the Garage seemed to appreciate it also. Especially as I think AP’s music is a little more harsh industrial that the electronic of Empathy Test and Mesh.

Final band on last night were Mesh. Obviously many of the crowd had come to see this band, there were lots of Mesh t-shirts being worn. I decided to listen to a couple of songs. The first was OK and the second was just OK. I didn’t think it was anything special but I did like the stage set up. They had four 1m square LED screens made to look like a mesh of wires which was quite clever. It wasn’t enough to keep me there. We left.

In the picture you can see two of the large LED mesh based displays.

It was a very nice evening. We will hopefully see Aesthetic Perfection again next year.

August 18 2014August 22 2014

Aesthetic Perfection – Electrowerkz

So, Alt-Fest got cancelled. Rather gutted about that. I was looking forward to a weekend seeing some favourite bands and also discovering new music and bands along the way. I guess a number of bands had already organised travel to the UK as a (much) smaller festival turned up at Electrowerkz in Angel.

The SOS Festival played over this weekend and many of the bands who were booked to appear at Alt-Fest played here instead. One of my favourite bands played on Sunday 17 August and I travelled there to see them. I also took my niece as I was going to take her to Alt Fest for her birthday.

Here’s the timings sheet from the front door of the entrance. It’s blurry because I took it in a hurry.

This bothered me slightly! The last train home was at 23:43 from St Pancras, just over a mile from the venue. It wouldn’t be worth it to leave early, or to get the tube, the quickest method to get to the mainline would be to run. We decided that was what we would do.

Jared Louch and Mark Plastic were good fun. Mark Plastic was a guitarist and he played along to a backing track while Jared Louch sang. The songs were reasonable but it was the segways what were great. Jared Louch was an older man of rock and didn’t care. He was funny.

Next up were Global Citizen. As a band they were good but the music didn’t do a great deal for me. There were two keyboardists, a drummer and the singer. The structure of the songs didn’t really have any bass lines. The bass sounds were created using a chord progression on the keyboards with a choral sound. It just didn’t work for me.

XP8 were playing their last ever gig. This is a shame as they were really good. According to Wikipedia they are from Rome, which surprised me somewhat as they sounded perfectly English, but then, what do I know? There songs had pumping bass lines and a good fast and hard dance beat over the top. They had a video show in the background to which I didn’t really pay attention. Their songs were interesting, well structured and both of them seemed to be having a really good time. A minor thing is that the not-singer seemed to look a lot like Greg Wallace from Masterchef and this was a little off-putting, although more my problem than his. I’m not sure what they are going to do now, but I was pretty impressed with their set. They did over-run by about 20 minutes!

Finally Aesthetic Perfection were on. This was causing me slight problems as they were due to do a seventy minute set and they were late. I didn’t want to miss any AP but then again, I didn’t want to spend the night in St Pancras station waiting for the first train home [I’d done that plenty as a teenager].

Aesthetic Perfection were excellent. All of their songs were good and they had great energy. I do have a problem with their live sound. This is the second time I have seen them and some of the best bits of their songs are the high pitched “twiddly” bits. When playing live these seem incredibly quiet in the mix. A lot of the timings in the songs come from these sections and I feel that something is a little lacking. This *could* be my problem, maybe my ears are too old, but my niece also couldn’t really hear those bits. She had a great time, and even got to hold the singer’s hand.

There was slight confusion on stage as they played a song and then announced that it was their last one. I’m pretty sure the club has a curfew and so the band had to finish. I was starting to get worried that we wouldn’t see all of the AP set. They had about ten minutes before we had to leave. AP left the stage, we called for an encore and then they played two more songs.

After the last song, which conveniently was “Spit It Out”, I say conveniently because I think it’s their standard set finisher, my niece and I ran out the door, down the steps and then the mile and a bit to St Pancras station. We got there with just enough time to buy a bottle of water and get on the train before we departed.

Here’s how far we moved over the entire day:

May 18 2013May 15 2013

Close To Human – Aesthetic Perfection

This album is quite clearly the product of a band who are finding their ground. It’s good but unfortunately it’s not as good as their later stuff. This was the last album by this band that I downloaded and probably just as well. Had I got this one first I wouldn’t have carried on. As it is I consider Combichrist and Aesthetic Perfection to be at the peak of their music genre.

As this is a recent purchase and I’ve only really listened to it on runs I can’t be sure about stand out tracks. Just having a look at the titles doesn’t help apart from noticing that the second song on the album is missing. How does that happen?

April 29 2013April 29 2013

All Beauty Destroyed – Aesthetic Perfection

There are two bands I consider to be the lead players in the aggrotech / hellectro sound. Combichrist and Aesthetic Perfection. One of the saddest things about me finding this style of music is that I started with the best two bands and the rest just don’t quite match up. More in later editions of album review.

All Beauty Destroyed is an awesome album. The beat is perfect for running. The tunes are memorable and the lyrics freak me out. It’s perfect. Favourite songs are:

A Nice Place To Visit
Hit The Streets
Mother*

If you don’t want to kill yourself before listening then this could help you on your way. It’s a fresh approach to dance music with catchy upbeat tunes and samples and then some sick and gravely vocals over the top. It’s all rather over the top and brilliant. It’s emotional gone crazy.