Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.04.2014
Attendance: 1000
Ticket price: €16.00 (advance) / €18.00 (day of show)
For the third time, Slovenian fans in Katedrala got a healthy dose of post-rock antibiotics, even if the effect was a bit weaker this time around. The night ran without any big parades or swaps: God Is An Astronaut, and that’s that. No pointless launching of support acts, no verbal diarrhea between songs — the space-faring Irishmen conjured up a distinctly dynamic and varied set.
The setlist took the hall through both the band’s »historic« side and its more modern sounds. You can’t argue with the astronauts’ sonic richness; despite an occasionally playful sound tech, who did a bit of exploring of their own into the limits of Kino Šiška’s sound capacity, the show held together as a solid, coherent sonic sphere. Most of the spotlight here went to the two members of the rhythm section, who dragged the whole band forward without compromise. The sound mix helped too, as those lower frequencies at times filled the belly cavity and vibrated relentlessly under the baton of the masters of the groove. As a result, the spacey guitar parts had more room to maneuver and stretch out without restraint. In the fuller arrangement passages, Katedrala drowned in the sound of piercing, almost »white noise« guitars. The Irish post-rockers wrapped up this winning combination and well-sorted sound with sparsely scattered vocal bits. Not traditional singing in the sense of clear, clean lines, of course, but intervals of robot-tinged voices.
Sadly, God Is An Astronaut lose points when it comes to dynamics in the delivery. Fair enough, the web of space psychedelia that GIAA weave so tightly demands a very specific approach to playing live. You also have to keep in mind that playing on top of »samples« and delays isn’t easy, since even the tiniest mistakes and lags wreck the framework of the sound effects. Again, we’re not expecting some Iggy Pop on stage, as the stage dynamics would clash with the dynamics of the music. It’s mostly that the band wavered in dynamics from time to time, that missing element in an otherwise excellent show, which of course didn’t do much to dampen the crowd’s overall mood. Every song was met with thunderous applause, which only fired up GIAA even more. This was especially noticeable with the older cuts on the setlist; Echoes got one of the best reactions of the night. Route 666 from the album The End Of The Beginning , played in the encore, then walked the listeners out to the end of the evening at Kino Šiška.
With the show over, it’s clear the Irish post-rockers will be back. The Slovenian crowd had a soothing effect on their mood and, as a result, on their playing. The high quality of the performance was constantly matched by a relatively good response from the audience, spilling over into a positive output for the band as a collective. No needless words, no needless fuss; a soberly conceived event that will stay in the memory exactly that way. Sober.
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