Synth East - NIK COLK VOID, FINLAY SHAKESPEARE and ROBIN “MOLTEN MODULOR” VINCENT & STEVE DAVIS
A great night of challenging, inventive electronic music. Here’s hoping Synth East 2023 wasn’t a one-off and it will be back next year.
Synth East is a one day event “dedicated to celebrating the best in synthesizers and modular through hands-on interaction and live performance”. I miss the daytime events but make it down for the live performances this evening.
First up it is Robin “Molten Modular” Vincent - who has been heavily involved in organising this event - and pro-snooker player turned DJ and member of The Utopia Strong Steve Davis. Their set is effectively an improvised demonstration of what can be done with modular synths, taking in random ambient and new agey music. It may be a lazy comparison for this type of music but there were distinct hints of Oxygène era Jean-Michel Jarre in some of the bleeps and bloops. When the drum machine kicks in, things have a downbeat, slowed down Midfield General kinda vibe.
Bristol based Finlay Shakespeare takes things in a more pop direction, adding soulful vox to a more energised, percussion-heavy industrial-inflected synthpop sound. I came up with all sorts of comparisons - mid-90s Depeche, early 2000s Soft Cell and classic Fad Gadget. One friend through Heaven 17 in to the mix whilst another nailed it with LCD Soundsystem. Shakespeare puts his all into the performance, there are great moments but is does get a little samey at times.
And finally to the headliner, Nik Colk Void of Factory Floor, Carter Tutti Void and more. Like the very best electronic music, Void’s set treads the fine lines betwixt music and noise or between art and craft absolutely perfectly. Held together with melody and heavy percussion, this recalls classic rave or big-beat. It is suitably danceable but is thankfully too cerebral to ever threaten stray into mainstream, lowest-common-denominator dance.
If I am honest, I don’t go to many pure electronic music - by which I mean music made without live vocals, stringed instruments and percussion - performances. That’s not because I don’t like the music - I very much do - but because I like to see a spectacle which is so often missing . Whilst Void herself wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels across the stage, the combination of some wonderfully inventive, challenging music, great projections and cracking lighting meant that this was easily the best set of pure electronic music I have seen since Fuck Buttons blew the roof off the Waterfront back in 2013. And as anyone who knows how much I love(d) Fuck Buttons will know, that is a very high compliment indeed. My only complaint is that I got to the merch desk just as the last copy of Void’s Bucked Up Space was sold.
