GIG NUMBER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Who
Röyksopp came on to a fantastic reception and immediately made a mockery of their "chill-out" tag, much as Moby had managed five years earlier. There was an excellent light show throughout and each song was announced by one of those strips which forms words by lighting up dots in red. It sometimes was a bit slow but at other times the song title was displayed early, letting me know at all points what the tune was: quite nifty! The two main ones I knew were So Easy and Eple (or Elmo as I thought it was called afterwards!), which are two lovely instrumentals which I'd heard many times but they'd never sunk in. The natural highlight though was Poor Leno (or Jay Leno as I seemed to like calling it) which really got everyone going and singing along. In addition to the two guys in the band who were twiddling the knobs, we also had a guitarist stage-left and a lady singer who, it was announced by the message system, was heavily pregnant.
Although being fairly tall myself, I am regularly frustrated by the tallest person in the whole place standing in front of me and today was an especially bad case and I had to develop a side-to-side dance to peer out and get to see what was going on. After a pleasing set which everyone seemed to have enjoyed, the red lights asked "do you want more?" to which we screamed "yes" and then Röyksopp came back for their two encores. I left the show with very few specific memories but a high regard for the three songs I knew and a desire to give their albums the listen they deserve. My next booked gig was Nirvana tribute Teen Spirit which was cancelled at the last minute much to my frustration, but my prolific year of gigs continued again little over two weeks after this!
Mark: 7.5/10
Röyksopp
Where
Manchester Academy
When
13th October 2005
Price
£15.00
Who with
No-one
Position
In the middle
Comments
I'm afraid this one was a bit of a drunken blur! I had got tickets quite a bit in advance but hadn't made any effort to brush up on the music of Röyksopp first nor did I bother asking anyone else to come along. I had a fairly strong feeling that they'd put on a good show as their Glastonbury performance looked amazing on TV! I didn't see the support band and managed to secure a fairly good central position despite several visits to the bar to try and get myself into the mood, splashing out £11 on a round just for myself then returning for another one! It took ages for them to set up the stage which seemed like standard fare for a dance duo: a cluster of keyboards and random gadgets.
