Releases/
 |
New single
MELANCHOLY SKY
8 Jan 2012
|
 |
New album
THE SINGLES
6 Feb 2012 |
..................................
Live dates/
..................................
Latest updates/
Disco Dec 21
Video May 28
Gigo Nov 01
Press Apr 03
Pictures Jul 08
Bootleg May 04
..................................
Our Myspace/
..................................
Official site
Official forum
Official Myspace
.................................. |
|
| Date |
December 2003 |
| Type |
Mag |
| Source |
Q, issue 209 |
| Title |
Q reviews lives :
Goth disco siren gets randy.
San Francisco gets scared. |
| Country |
UK |
| Journalist/Photographer |
Nick Duerden / |
| Pix |
    |
| Text |
Goldfrapp
Fillmore auditorium, San Francisco
Saturday 4 October 2003
Goth disco siren gets randy. San Francisco gets scared.
Before a typically San Franciscan crowd-turtle-necked music aficionados mixing with heavily tattooed women and a bald chap wearing crocodile skin glasses - Goldfrapp's roadies go quietly about their business. They assemble the drum kit, then position around it the guitar and microphone stands, two keyboards and, on the drum riser, so small you can barely see it, a theremin. By the end of the night, most of the assembled instruments will have been tortured, compressed and constricted in pursuit of the vigorously hedonistic Goldfrapp sound. The two keyboards, for example, will do two quite separate things. The first will sound like the kind Nik Kershaw used to play, while the other will recreate noises from the black lagoon as singer Alison Goldfrapp screeches like a banshee. But it is the theremin that will come in for the most abuse. By the time she's finished with it, the aerial will bend slightly to the left.
IT IS EARLY OCTOBER, and Goldfrapp are three weeks into their first major US tour. An acquired taste here, much as they are in the UK, their second album Black Cherry has nevertheless made an impact within self-consciously avant-garde circles. San Francisco, therefore, could well go on to become a spiritual second home. To date, the American shows have been a success, with one notable exception. "Chicago was weird." Goldfrapp says preshow. She sits before her make-up mirror, hair dryer in hand. "The audience was very pofaced, middle class and serious. Old. boring bastards, basically. I'm hoping tonight's crowd will be a little more receptive. Things have been a bit tense in the band recently." She smiles mischievously. "We need some kind of release." The problem, it transpires, is a rather base, but unignorable, one: lust "We've been suffering cabin fever." she admits, "and it's got to the point where we are all feeling a bit, you know, horny. People need to go home and see their wives, lovers, whatever, but unfortunately that's not possible. And so instead, we all get drunk in dodgy bars and do weird things." What weird things exactly? "Oh, like... like eating our clothes." She laughs loudly, having cracked a joke only she understands. "I've been feeling very impulsive lately, but I think I've found an outlet." She declines to say how but an hour later, during Train, a song whose driving, pulsating rhythm escalates into something wildly sexual, Goldfrapp - dressed in a mini skirt and thigh-high leather boots-transforms herself into a cackling S&M queen. Two expressions dominate her face: firstly abandonment, then, latterly, satisfaction. The only thing that's missing is the whip.
GOLDFRAPP THE BAND - comprising singer Alison and largely studio-based technician Will Gregory (who will be present tonight, watching from the sound desk) - formed four years ago. She had been a backing singer for Orbital and Tricky, while he'd paid his dues playing with,among others, Tears For Fears, Peter Gabriel and Michael Nyman. Neither likes to reveal their age, but an educated guess places her at 33, him around 45. Their debut album. 2000' s Felt Mountain, was gorgeous. Half of it sounded like a conglomeration of Portishead and Cocteau Twins, the other like an imagined soundtrack to '60s thriller The Ipcress File, Two years of word-of-mouth recommendations, along with nationwide exposure after some of its songs were used on TV adverts, and it became a chill-out, dinner party classic. "I got very bored of that record," Goldfrapp says now. "And the last thing Will and I wanted to establish was some kind of formula, which is why we had to make sure the next album was completely different." It was certainly that. If Felt Mountain sounded French, then Black Cherry was belligerently Soho. Gone was the soporific wonder and in came harsh, metallic disco, glam rock stomps and David Bowie glitter. It was wilful, provocative and undeniably filthy. "Things in my personal life had changed quite a lot at that time." she says. "I'd just broken up with someone and as a result I immediately started having more fun. I became more experimental... and so did the music." By then, Alison Goldfrapp had - unwittingly, she claims - carved out quite a reputation for herself. Loathing the limelight, she dealt with the ensuing attention in her own bullish manner. When piqued, she responds promptly. like the time a photographer annoyed her (she punched him) and an audience member swore at her (she threw a glass of wine over him). 'That was just me reacting to new situations," she reasons. "Although I admit I can be rude and a little arsey from time to time. But I hate intrusions. Somebody once asked me whether I used a strap-on! And an Australian journalist recently asked me if I fucked to my music. Stupid, thick bastard. How offensive!" She shrugs her shoulders. "People often have the wrong impression of me. I'm not terrifying at all, you know."
HER STAGE PERSONA, however, clearly thrives on a form of terror, mostly sexual. She arrives on stage trussed up in suitably kinky fashion, looking like one of those French resistance waifs from rubbish '80s sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! Twist, with its lyrics that run, "Put your dirty angel face/Between my legs and knicker lace", is exquisite. Goldfrapp straddling the mic stand until she practically consumes it whole, while on Strict Machine, a libidinous highlight, she sticks her tongue out to form the "I" of "love" much further than necessary. Occasionally the mood does change and, during Utopia and a glistening Lovely Head. the singer looksboth melancholic and utterly chaste. Throughout the show's entirety, however, she does what Sinead O'Connor always used to do and points furiously at the poor man behind the offstage monitors, forever complaining about the level of volume. Post gig, she will continue to grumble, insisting it hampered her performance. But the audience knows nothing of this. Tonight she is a glorious dominatrix, and one Gregory will later applaud. "She's a magnet, isn't she?" he says. "You cannot take your eyes from her." Moments before the band's deeply angular cover version of Baccara's Yes Sir, I Can Boogie they play Slippage, Black Cherry's most sinister song. Live, it's even more comprising no real words, just Goldfrapp's lipsticked mouth bleeding all over the microphone in a lupine howl before she focuses on the theremin. She strokes it, deep-throats it, then falls to her knees and slides the instrument along her inner thighs before thrusting it between her legs repeatedly. Its response is a high-pitched scream that pours from the speakers like lava, "You liked that, did you?" she asks the crowd afterwards, in her finest Madam-like manner. The man with the crocodile skin glasses takes out a handkerchief and mops his brow. |
|
|
|
|
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
