gotan project

I remember once back when I was in school, probably around 1990, my friend and I got into a massive debate with her brother about the point of going to concerts. My friends and I were quite into going to concerts at the time, while the brother argued that it was cheaper and more practical just to buy the CDs. At the time, CDs were about 1USD (and you could listen to them over and over, it was pointed out), while going to a concert was a one-off experience and cost at least 50USD. Furthermore, the sound quality are almost invariably better on a CD than in a sweaty, crowded stadium, where you can barely see the stage and are always somehow next to a drunken/high fool screaming exactly into your ear. Few acts do manage to produce a level of quality live that they can manage in a studio, aided by equipment. Despite that, Gotan Project put on a rather good show last night at the Roundhouse in Camden. From the very first second, the sound quality was phenomenal, partly thanks to the Roundhouse improved acoustics, but also their amazing skills. The beginning was a bit odd, with the band behind a screen onto which evocative images were being projected. Later, the positions reversed (thank god), so we could see the band in front and the images of the pampas and various tango dancers, behind. In songs, notably Mi confession, which have a rap, this was also project in super larger than life form in the background, which looked pretty cool.

We had front row seats on the circle level, which gave us a spectacular view of the rather odd audience. There were a fair number of Southern Cone expats, but in general it was more English than I might have imagined. Horrifically, there was a group of English people trying to tango in one isolated corner. With the exception of one or two couples (ok, one) none of them seemed to know what they were doing, and the whole spectacle looked more like a secondary school slow dance two step than anything else. Barring that, and the annoying people who kept trying to steal our seats every time we moved ever so slightly, it was a good show.