From Greg Clow Sent Sun, Aug 2nd 1998, 20:20
From Greg Clow Sent Sun, Aug 2nd 1998, 20:20
On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Jeremy Axon wrote: > uh, just got back from the OPera House. Nice set by Autechre. Feh. I found last night's Ae show in Toronto to be one of the worst live events I've ever experienced. The evening started out OK (albeit an hour late) with a half-decent set of minimal techno spun by Algorhythm. But then the sound system cacked out, and the only sound for a good 20 minutes was from the stage monitor. And when they finally got it back, it sounded even worse than I imagined it would be. Theorem did a pretty nice set, but by the time he played, the place had filled up, and some of his sounds were so subtle that I could barely hear it over the crowd noise. And then more people arrived. And then even more. And by the time Autechre started, the place was packed to probably 2 times legal capacity. Between the heat, the crowd, the smoke (cigarette, pot & never-ending smoke machines), the crappy sound, and the generally innapproriate atmosphere for an event of this sort, I just got crankier and crankier, and ended up leaving about an hour into Ae's set (which was OK, but not nearly as good as their '96 show). Let this be a lesson to all Toronto promoters - The Opera House is fine for live bands or more "party" oriented gigs like the Ninja shows. But for an event like last night's that was supposed to be "dark & minimal", it was a very, very bad choice. Greg