DIMITRI FROM PARIS + AEROPLANE
XOYO | January 25th
Dimitri Yerasimos has several aliases. He’s ‘from’ Paris, Tokyo — and Stoke on Trent. Where tonight?
Before that question could be answered, we had to navigate packed-out corridors, safely transport our drinks from bar to dance floor, and see how the warm-up acts fared. None of these were straightforward. Most people didn’t mind the congestion that much: this is Britain, after all, and that national stereotype of ‘being good at queueing’ was ironically (or post-ironically? Difficult to tell with Shoreditch crowds) bandied about frequently. On the plus side for XOYO, then, it’s reasonably priced, bar staff are accommodating, queues were long but acceptable, bouncers were professional and the toilets were kept relatively sanitary.
Dimtri was to play in Room 1, so we set up fort there. Cosmonauts did an excellent job of warming-up, playing vaguely cosmic and futuristic old and nu-disco to a growing crowd, gradually building up to more italo-influenced tracks towards the end. Aeroplane, however, was hugely disappointing. Most of us had seen Aeroplane before. This set was the same as any other: vapid nu-disco and some ‘electro bangers’, accompanied by oddly fascistic and increasingly frenzied fist-pumping. We thought about writing ‘THIS IS NOT 2007’ on a piece of paper, folding it into an aeroplane, and chucking it at Vito to register our Music Journalists’ Annoyance. Aeroplane hit by a paper aeroplane while M.I.A.’s Paper Planes was playing? ‘We are SO clever and funny and attractive’, we murmured to ourselves before deciding that violence was never the answer – snarky reviews are. If they’re to gain any new fans, Aeroplane need to update their shit schtick.
Dimitri came on after Aeroplane, looking a little bemused by the pace and intensity of what had been playing before. There then followed two hours of fun, original and edited disco and house, much of it easily recognisable but none of it overplayed or tired. There was no Messiah-complex posing and no artifice. He stuck to the classics. He played some new or unreleased material, too, but Dimitri is an entertainer, first and foremost. Tonight, then, Dimitri came from Funland, Aeroplane came from 2007 – and Cosmonauts came from 2020.
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Words: Robert Bates
Photo: George Thatcher
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