CYRIL HAHN + MARIBOU STATE
NQ Live, Manchester | March 4th
The last time Crack was at NQ Live (formerly Moho Live), the venue welcomed Underground Rebel Bingo Club, which by all intents and purposes was a physical incarnation of peak-era Myspace.
Bright colours and felt tip pens were everywhere, there were a team of HD photographers trying their best to snap as many fluorescent-faced fiends as they could, and the hosts’ attempts to give the night some kind of direction fell hopelessly short thanks to a combination of pretentious on-stage musings and audience disinterest. Fast-forward three years, and NQ Live is under new management, hosting the likes of Cyril Hahn in the middle of an international tour. How times have changed.
Or do they? The atmosphere is wild by all definitions of the word when we arrive. It’s a Monday night, so there’s no surprise the event is largely populated by the city’s abundant student population – the man himself isn’t even billed to start until 2.15am, and it’s clear nobody is of the opinion they should take it easy tonight because there’s work to be done in the morning. Not in the slightest.
The club is swelling with starry-eyed young adults, the bar is in full flow delivering rounds of £2 Jagerbombs, and somebody’s already spewed all over the urinals before any of the named acts have started. All in all, it’s safe to say the audience is pretty hyped for the show.
Maribou State did well at this point, then, to assert some kind of control over the masses. The London duo were the subject of much hustling-and-bustling attention at the front as they delivered a vibrant set of percussive, hypnotic dance-pop, and bassy beats in a Bondax-ish mould. When Hahn finally arrived (travelling straight from an earlier performance in Leeds), the hype had reached bursting point. A pressing crowd seemed undecided as to whether they wanted to dance or simply squash into each other, and Hahn’s performance seemed to imply that he, too, was unsure as to whether he was at a club or a gig. Structuring his set around sparsely placed crowd-pleasers, like the opener Say My Name, he was repeatedly subjected to a vibrant response from the audience, but also seemed happy to allow periods of downtime between impact tracks.
With the dynamics clearly hinged on the occasional high-pressure drop of well-known tunes, there was a constant sense of anticipation which kept the atmosphere alive, but in between these hits there was relatively little in the way of a compelling mix. This on-off vibe worked a charm on this highly-impassioned audience though, and there’s little else to be said than praise for a guy who knows exactly what he’s doing.
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Words: James Balmont
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