News / / 26.03.13

Brant Brauer Frick

XOYO | March 21st

Tonight, Brandt Brauer Frick’s famous live show is subsidised by Om’Mas Keith, the diverse, Grammy-winning producer who’s one of many guest vocalists present on the Berlin trio’s latest album Miami. And for some, the polarising new tricks on Miami threatened to undermine the groups’ reputation as such an exciting acoustic techno project.

Within seconds of taking to the stage, Om’Mas Keith was bleating ‘cheers to you’ over and over with a delay on his mic, as if discovering the novelty of an effect on his voice for the first time. After this odd episode was over, they ploughed through the various tracks of Miami and beyond, where it was revealed that Om’Mas Keith’s substitution for Jamie Lidell’s vocals could in fact pass off. Without being too familiar with the content of Miami, this gig was a chance to become ensnared by the album. Recent talk of Brandt, Brauer, and Frick’s latest offering is of a new direction, but therein lies a fundamental flaw – the direction. While the arrangements drew the listener in at first, they employed a naïve use of effects, and it just seemed in and too often the performance broke out into some sort of self-gratificatory jazzy jam with lip biting to match.

Overall, however, Brandt, Brauer, and Frick did manage to recite their music in a way that was as live as it could possibly be, and their hands-in-the-air gesticulating never failed to inspire an energy surge amongst the crowd. To their credit, if you like Miami, then you would have liked the isomorphic reproduction of it that the group presented. But for many, this new material failed to inspire.

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Words: Gareth Thomas

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