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Fanfarlo / El Guincho / Munch Munch
London, Madame Jo Jo's
Article written by
Paul M - Apr 3, 2008
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The aperitifs tonight are the brilliantly named Munch Munch, four young pups from Bristol. With two drummers and two keyboardists, they’re like a good tapas; tasty electro nibbles here and there with discordant key meats and full on clattering drum sauces, bringing to mind Deerhoof, and maybe Islands and Animal Collective. While it’s not all totally digestible (there’s the odd undercooked prog sprout and the vocals certainly lacked seasoning) they still left me hungry enough for another visit.
Hang on, there’s a tramp on the stage! Oh it’s, El Guincho. He’s clipping the rim of a drum while twiddling knobs to no obvious effect on a sampler. Interesting though! And the looped Latin and African rhythms have some of us twitching along to the beat. Now he’s shouting stuff. It’s indecipherable, gibberish, he’s insane… no hang on, he’s Spanish so it’s his native tongue. Is he yelling about huge tomato fights and chucking donkeys out of church windows? Only if he’s some sort of national stereotype, you bigoted fool! But some people are dancing! At an indie pop gig! One old fella at the front is like a demented idiot, his bird’s nest hairdo complete with gleaming pate in the middle is dazzling us all. That barnet just longs to house a brooding pair of chaffinches! And to be honest he’s now more entertaining than the scamp on stage who’s fast turning into the hippy with the bongos outside your tent at Glasto at 4am. What seemed lively and joyous at first has now turned into a repetitive techno irritation and the twee folk around me seem to agree as they pull distractedly at threads on their cardies and sip their juice noisily. After what seems like 27 hours of solid electro noise pollution, Senor El Twiddlo is gone.
Fanfarlo
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Aaah the sound of sweet soul music… but in the absence of Marvin, Aretha and Otis we’re more than happy with the indie equivalent; the melancholic brooding loveliness of Fanfarlo. Half an hour in their company is like being lapped by a thousand soft kisses, their tunes gentle and tender, caressing the lobes violated by the beastly beatboxed Iberian who preceded them. Not everyone here agrees though, with some, presumably possessing the attention spans of aquatic lifeforms, chattering... Toby’s got a new tattoo... Sophie’s got a humanities exam on Thursday... I can only guess they’re here for the after gig disco, the rude middle class ballbags. Still, the classics are played, none lovelier than the singles Fire Escape and the current effort, Harold T Wilkins, both achingly accompanied by strings and mournful trumpet, and some of us go home blissfully happy.
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