Sunday 6 April 2008

PREVIEW: The Dirty Projectors, Cabaret Voltaire, Fri 25th April

Dave Longstreth is nothing if not obscure. A Yale school dropout with a history of voluptuous sonic conceptualisations, Dirty Projectors’ 2007 release, Rise Above, was a stirring reprisal of its awkward spearhead’s favourite Black Flag LP Damaged. Littered with wiggling melodies and three part harmonies, it’s challenging rhythmic twirls corroded the grey matter of hypnotised listeners and scuffled almost unnoticed into every on-the-pulse critic’s end of year hitlist. Live, the band encapsulate the record’s intricate components with remarkable ease, adding to it a depth that fingers the African spindling of Peter Gabriel and slivers across the rarely chartered canyon of avant-garde jazz. Such labyrinthical arrangements can, of course, mystify at times but so resolute is Longstreth’s dedication to his art it’s difficult not to be swept away in the sea of on stage aural mastery. Obsure? Certainly. Breathtaking? Absolutely.

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