Hydrozagadka Club, Warsaw
A year has passed since I’ve been to Warsaw when I went to a Killing Joke concert. So now it was a time to repeat my concert journey to the capital and this time it’s for Drab Majesty.
I have seen them in 2017 in Toronto supporting Cold Cave and my admiration for the band only grew since then as well as my desire to see a proper solo show. They have a new record out this year and even though it’s slightly weaker (more different I guess) than the previous one, I still enjoy it quite a lot.
Hydrozagadka club is located on the right bank of Vistula in the historic Praga district. It used to be a rather neglected and rundown communist area, that is now becoming a hip new thing. I must admit I enjoyed staying there. The area has everything you need and is actually not that far from the magnificent city centre. The club is named after a famous Polish science-fiction movie of the 70s and is similar to many other establishments nowadays. It’s in some kind of abandoned factory workshop and has a hostel and a burger place in the same site.
Now Drab majesty are famous enough to have a support band of their own. The night was opened by
Body of Light who also released a new record this year. Imagine Depeche Mode never recorded anything after Construction Time Again. Imagine wanting to sound like all those 80s Depeche Mode imitators a-la Red Flag, Camouflage, Celebrate the Nun and others. Imagine doing that using the most conventional samples and sounds of the era. In fact, Body of Light is the most 80s band I have ever seen or heard. It’s a duo consisting of two brothers, one of them sings, the other plays keyboards and electronics. Their look is complete with leather gloves, retro Reebok white sneakers and a moustache. Their album cover has an image of old 80s keypad telephone. It sounds like I’m criticizing the band but it’s far from truth. I actually admire the dedication and quite enjoy their music. It’s very catchy, energetic and makes you move. The songs are very good. In fact, a few of their tunes should have definitely been dance floor hits not just in the 80s, but even now. Body of Light would sound just perfect in the middle of a gothic party set. I heard a faint EBM element in their live show but overall they are more to the pop side, more Pet Shop Boys than DAF. Anyway, I wholeheartedly recommend the band and their new record. I know quite a few people who will definitely enjoy it.
The crowd was very gothic with lots of painted faces and weird costumes. I guess a lot of it was to do
with coming Halloween. And then I saw members of Drab Majesty in their common clothes with no
disguise. At first I thought that the cool idea was to switch with the audience so that musicians would be dressed as regular people. But alas, the duo just tuned their instruments and went back to apply the makeup and put on their impressive stage clothes.
There were quite a few Russian speakers in the crowd. No wonder, this kind of music is very popular
anywhere in Eastern Europe and the band played in several cities of the former ussr. Among the
audience were two middle-aged and rather gruff looking women from russia who donned futuristic
glasses and glistering costumes similar to Drab Majesty. Apparently these two travel to see the band. It looked strange as they resembled more Luba Uspenskaya fans than those of a darkwave band.
I’m on the fence about the show itself. The sound was simply awful, just pure loud mud. It was really
unpleasant. I stepped further away and it became just slightly better. I can’t also say that Drab Majesty is a good live band as most of the music is prerecorded. I am not even sure I would want to see them again for this tour. The duo played a lot from their new record Modern Mirror and just a few songs from the other two LPs. I was a bit underwhelmed by that. But overall it was a very decent show and they seemed to like it a lot. Deb even said that they had performed in Warsaw about 5 times and it keeps just keeps getting better.
getting better.
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