2009-05-01: Malta, MFCC Ta Qali

[Champiness]

Disappointed at first at the lack of new tracks, but judging by the music during the "Inflatable Assembly" vid, we're in for a lot of surprises veeery veeeeeery soon.
Also very impressed with the new visuals. Looking forward to some powerful stuff when they get into a groove with what appears on the screen for each track.

[TheBang]

Uh. They did play BB.

[Champiness]

Originally Posted by TheBang

Uh. They did play BB.

*looks at setlist*
Oh.

[Dunwho]

Originally Posted by TheBang

That's NUXX

Damn those fine details!

[DaddyAdv]

so, here's my full report,
first of all the updated setlist with the improvs

Crocodile
New Train
Can you feel this bass Jam
Rez / Cowgirl
Pearl's Girl Intro Jam ("1996 Reminiscent")
Pearl's Girl
Pearl's Girl Shifted Groove Outro Jam
Long TMO Ambient and Drone Intro
TMO
KOS
Beautiful Burnout
Long Ambient Drone Jam
You Do Scribble
Air Siren and Bits of Monkey Wink
Nuxx
Rowla
Everybody Jack straight into
Moaner
Jumbo (Encore)

And yes, it took 2.5 hours to play that setlist, most track were 10 minutes and more.



The venue was a permanent tent acting as a convention center next to Malta's National Stadium on an old WWII airfield.
It was not as large as festival tents, but definately larger than a club atmosphere.
There were two "VIP" areas left and right elevated about one meter from the ground.
I arrived at about 20:45 and it was quite empty yet.
Some local DJs were warming up, the tent got quite packed around 23:30 when french DJ BBE was dropping some hard club stuff for the final warm up, while Malcolm fired up the UW gear hidden behind a small curtain (and annoying BBE with Kick Drum test runs that unintendedly went over the PA *g*)

Just before 01:00 the stage crew carried away the DJ desk and Malcolm pulled off the curtain, firing up the pre-show dub.
The tent was packed now and the crowd went loud.
I managed to get a quite comfortable front row spot.
The inflatables came up behind the gear as a wall of 12 pillars, lighting up now and then, while Malcolm mixed over to the "Bungalow" background music.
I instantly spotted that all mac screens were showing Ableton Live and there were three little Controllers placed on the old Midas mixing desk (I think they are Kenton Killamix) left, rigt, and middle.
What was Pricey's desk during the OWB shows to the right was a bit smaller, Karl had that little Guitar Amp he put up on the diary recently hidden behind his desk.
Apart from that, the main gear looked mainly the same.

Rick, Karl and Darren entered the stage, Karl happily jumping and then opening with a poem about the travel and Malta which was perfectly timed with Rick kicking off Crocodile.
The visuals were projected on the screen of inflatables and were quite amazing. A bit more abstract than during the OWB shows.
They were combined with the feeds of of the three movable cameras around the desk.
Those images of Karl singing superimposed with the graphics all on the inflatables was really impressive.
Crocodile ended with the loop that carries it over to BB on the album.
Pricey was working on the right part of the desk and released the kick drum again.
The tempo increased during a little jam with the remaining Crocodile grooves and we ended in the Dark Train choir.
Rick took his time to build up New Train.
Visuals were now the inflatables as running lights changing to reflections of Karls glitter shirt captured by the camera.
During the break Rick used the new controllers to tweaks the bassline a bit I think, before hit them to trigger the infamous riff chord that made Karl dance like crazy.
At the end, Rick filtered out the chord nicely and again, Pricey continued the jam before doing his tech stuff and setting up the next song.

What sounded like a new track to me at first was Rick jamming on Can you feel this bass, which went into the Cowgirl opening arp.
Rick then dropped Rez and the crowd went nuts, so he went along and grooved around the desk.
Karl jumped up on his dancing spot behind the macs and stayed there to do Cowgirl, which looked absolutely stunning against the inflatable wall and his camera image behind him.

Rick and Darren jammed some Cowgirl stuff and the Pearl's Girl intro ("reminiscent of 1996") with the Pong game on the screen.
Pearl's Girl then went down great as usual.
The intro stab sound came back and went on as an outro Jam.
If I spotted right, Rick used his controller to shift the grooves of the drum and bass loops of PG, was a nice jam.

Next was the ambient intro of TMO mixed with some bass drone, they really took some time and gave the audience a moment to rest, Karl was doing some guitar stuff, but I couldn't really hear it.
When the TMO chords came up, the sound a bit different first, maybe the were filtered via the controllers.
The crowd went wild, Rick had his look at the audience and looked really moved and gave a thumbs up.
TMO went pretty well with abstract graphic in the back mixed again with camara stuff.

After the end of TMO, the inflatables fell down and revealed a circular screen that was pulled up behind them.
Karls jammed a bit on his guitar, strange high tones, but somehow it didn't work out and he asked Pricey for help.
Rick fired up the "old" KOS loop and jammed on this for a bit.
Then it went into the regular KOS, except the screeching sound was a bit different and longer, sounded like Rick was manipulating it live.
Karl had his face cam out, which looked absolutely spooky on the circular screen, like peeking throug a keyhole.

KOS ended without a jam, the ambient intro of Beautiful Burnout came up which was quite extended before the beats kicked in.
Rick was easy going and had a smoke, he didn't play the Nord Lead live as during the OWB tour, but triggerd the sound via the new controllers.
It was a bit disappointing to me, and the synth sound was not as impressive as during the OWB gigs.
The visual very great, but in my opinion much to small as they were just projected on the small circle screen.
Maybe it was due to the size of the stage, but with the "old" screen or even the inflatables I guess it could have been much more impressive.
During the last part of BB Karl was on the tambourine while Rick grooved at the desk.

Next was some extended ambient drone jamming of Rick.
During this, Malcolm approached from the back, showed Rick a paper note and grinned.
Rick turned away in laughter, gave Malcolm thumbs up and they all smiled. Dunno what it could have been, maybe the approval to go 2.5 hours ?

Rick then wanted to drop in the YDS drums, but somehow didn't find the right button on the little controller. So we has 20 seconds of just a few crash cymbals, before he found the right one and the drums rocked us away.
This was the only hiccup I spotted during the entire show!
Karl did his YDS lyrics and the stage crew prepared to release the ballons.
The crowd was I bit lost during this I think, but when the baloons were kicked out and the end of YDS, they were back on track.

YDS faded out, Karl did the Air Siren sample with heavy delays, while Rick had some bit of Monky Wink running.
Then the Nuxx bass drum came up, but it sounded a bit different, first I though it was slowed down to 135, but it was not.
When the chords came up the whole place was jumping and singing along.
Nuxx faded out and Rowla came up immedeately.
The Maltese were singing some football (soccer) style song, couldnt make out what it was.
Karl went offstage and Rick had his Nord Lead tweaking fest of Rowla.
It was jammed nicely into Everybody Jack and quite abruptly Moaner was on.
The inflatables came up again in the "old" style around the stage and then tumbled over each other.
And i must say, Moaner looked really stunning with the flashing tubes.
After the usual Moaner ending the three took a bow went off.
They came back on and looked really happy, especially Rick went around and gave thumbs up and bows.
The crowd was now in football mood again and cheered in song.
We got a pleasing Jumbo encore with some nice, subtle Guitar work by Karl.
Finally, the inflatables were erected again and lit very colourful.
Karl thanked the UW team and local crew and the happily went off.
It was then I realised it was 03:30 already, which meant that we got a 2.5 hour show.

To conclude, it was a great show.
I think the setlist was chosen since it was their first show in Malta and they wanted to give them the crowd pleasers instead of dropping new stuff,
the slight boredom of the crowd during YDS might support this.
Also, the tour is currently festival gigs, so I think it was a test run for the new setup to check it with festival tracks.
I have to say it all went extremely well, except that little confusion at the start of YDS and the bit unimpressiveness of BB concering the small circular screen.
I think we got a glimpse of what the new Ableton Live setup is capable off: constant running jam without the sync problems some of the OWB gigs had.
I really hope that they'll use the festivals to proof the setup, I can only imagine what this might allow them to do if the drop some of the older stuff like they did after the break in the OWB tour.
I think the flow between Pricey and Rick was better with the focus of controlling everything from the central mixing desk with the little controllers sitting on it.
Rick was switching between the left part (main track) and right part (improv, interludes, Pricey tracks) with Darren preparing and helping out, I think he is even allowed to push the kick drum button now

When I moved out I passed the front of house desk and took the picture a John Newsham. He looked at me with a paper in his hand, I looked at him and he just gave me the setlist.
We had a short chat about the new speaker system, but the after show DJ was already making noise and I didn't understand a thing.

ok, enough writing, I've emptied my mind now, but the body is still buzzing.
There are some moving pictures I will put up on the place of the Really Tough Stuff Rockers, some time soon.

[TheBang]

Thank you for the full report!

Originally Posted by DaddyAdv

the slight boredom of the crowd during YDS might support this.

I can't understand how you could be bored with YDS, even if you don't know it.

[DwarfeD]

Thanks 4 this greatly detailed review! Most of the time when I go to a gig, I already have difficulties with remembering the setlist correctly. So many thanks

[Dirty0900]

Originally Posted by TheBang

That's NUXX


And it took 2.5 hours to play that setlist? That's kind of surprising. Looking forward to the full report. Nice pics! Oh yeah, and I'm surprised that the mixer strips seem to be typed out. And the setlist is typed too!

Were the songs in the set done in the lumps there were in the setlist? The hand written ones just had them listed with no indication of breaks etc.

[DaddyAdv]

Mmmh, i won't say there was a connection between the style of the setlist and the way it was played.
Maybe the "breaks" were for the lightning and visual guys.

[Mike]

Updated here:

http://uwlive.rowla.com/gigs/view/332