I wrote this on my BBC collective site a few months back in praise of the unknown support band. It happened again last night. Went to Thekla Social (a live venue on a moored boat), Bristol to see James Chapman's Mercury-nominated Maps.
As I arrived the stage was set for a support act consisting of one keyboard on a table with a sequencer and a laptop. A slightly overweight guy in dark jeans and T-short ambled on and pressed 'play' on a pre-programmed VJ sequence (which was excellent).
He began to play his keys, layering simple chords and bringing up a backing track which was in turns melodic and steam-hammer heavy wall-of-sound stuff. The music evolved from this one man Underworld following hypnotic patterns (two geeky guys at the front were completely away with the fairies on the music and perhaps other things) and developing amazing depth and breadth. Got quite loud too.
After 30 minutes he left the pulsing reverb to entertain us as he shambled back off without a glance at the audience who were enthusiastically cheering. He gave a vague single hand wave back to us.
Who was he? No drums to have a name on. No mic to announce his presence.
Later Chapman said he felt privileged and honoured to have wgahumphtermnuff open for him. Sounded like that. Not a clue. Chapman didn't speak clearly all night. So, anyone any ideas or will I have to research?
4 comments:
I love the honest journaling of your life.
Hi. Pretty much must be Ulrich Schnauss from Germany I should imagine. Try his page and see if that is him:
http://www.myspace.com/ulrichschnauss
(no, I've never heard of him before, just looked the maps myspace page. like the sound though).
Cheers Chris. Direct hit. See I knew it was worth waiting a few days before doing my own research.
Good judgement. In my case they key was that you made him sound so good I needed to know who it was!
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