Factory Floor & East India Youth
Heaven, London
3rd December 2013
Factory Floor & East India Youth share a bill at Heaven and Keith Goldhanger goes along as part of the ageing (disgracefully) on the dance floor process.
One of the first things one notices on entering this venue tonight (if you discount the undecorated Christmas tree in the corner) is the amount of small change you get when purchasing a pint with a fiver. OK you do get the loose coins given to you on a little plastic tray but you’re not allowed to keep that bit. The second thing is the four deep queue at the bar when going for seconds. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who took notice of Ray Winston at half time last Sunday?
This night is a special one.
One of those you expect to remember in decades time.
Like that Cabaret Voltaire gig just around the corner all those years ago when we all turned up wearing one of those long coats a bit like East India Youth‘s main man (actually, only man) William Doyle is sporting as he strolls around waiting for everyone to turn up this evening.
And turn up they (we) do in their (our) droves.
This is the best we’ve seen of East India Youth so far this year and it’s all looking promising in regards to the debut album that some of us eagerly await. This whole evening has been put together and highlights, whether intentionally or not, hour after hour of superb electronic dance excerpts that come and go all evening at regular intervals intermittent with the sort of noises our washing machine makes when we forget to take those stones out of our trouser pockets before washing them. There are many people out there that lark around on synths, learn all the software and collect other likeable and ear piercing screeches but there is also a reason why some get to play on a big stage on a Tuesday night whilst others struggle to leave their bedrooms.
East India Youth, like Factory Floor understand that to stand there and turn everything up to twelve and overlap sounds that cover every frequency possible, you also need some beauty thrown in every now and then otherwise (like those blokes down the Old Blue Last the other week who’s name I didn’t catch) you may as well stay at home forcing metal objects into your vacuum cleaner whilst turning the food processor on fast for three hours. Heaven, How Long by East India Youth has been one of the most played and hummed tunes in a certain East London bathroom this year. Sneaky Youtube visits hinting at what’s going to be on the debut album have been watched with interest and Looking For Someone has a few keen youths at the front singing along whilst the rest of the audience look on probably wondering how the fuck people can sing along to this racket. It’s a glorious racket once you’ve put in the hours y’know and history may have taught us that this is what makes all the great bands linger on at the front of out record collections longer than most.
The same goes for Factory Floor.
I’m sorry to say that gutted wasn’t the word I thought I’d be spewing out about the debut Factory Floor album when it came out (on my birthday of all days … exactly a year since they ruined my day by not turning up at Bestival).
They were officially in my bad books.
They’d officially pissed me off.
I moaned and moaned and kept on moaning until I realised I’d been moaning and playing this album for weeks and weeks and weeks and couldn’t put it down.
They’ve officially now redeemed themselves. Not that they give a fuck about oinks like me but they’ve reminded us again that this is how we get introduced to all our favourite albums that we will still be playing in front of our children and our children’s children isn’t it ?
It’s what happens when you misplace those Atari Teenage riot cd’s and start to want something you were never going to have. Once you recover from that and take certain albums for what they are, for example, individual masterpieces you can be stuck with that particular soundtrack for years. Maybe East India Youth’s debut may be included this time next year. Only time will tell.
Therefore it is with great relief that we’re here again, in front of Factory Floor at a nice big venue with nice huge speakers nodding violently and dancing with arms semi erect and experiencing another chapter of these electronic wonders that some of us reckon have plenty more on their hard drives to give us as we grow older (dis) gracefully on the dance floors. Factory Floor, despite my earlier disappointment this year with the album are quite possibly the best dance act around at the moment. Your parents would hate it and your mates, unless they have four months to get their heads (ears) around this may find it hard work too.
They throw us loud throbbing, distorted, sometimes painful slabs of noise that come and go in between different heavy rhythmic patterns and on occasions they sound not too dissimilar to someone banging some nails in the wall whilst the microwave keeps on pinging in the background. They have voices that are processed over and over and over until they don’t really sound like vocals at all and every recognisable tune seems to just blend nicely into the next keeping the entertainment flowing from beginning to end.
Factory Floor are the coolest band in the world right now and a lot of you are going to hate them because of this. A lot of you will be dancing like you’ve never danced before once you get your heads around this and some of you may never go to another disco again.
Now that’s what I call Music.
~
East India Youth can be found on Facebook, Twitter and SoundCloud. Factory Floor are on Facebook, Twitter and SoundCloud.
All words by Keith Goldhanger. More work by Keith on Louder Than War can be found here. He’s also on SoundCloud here, Facebook here and tweets as @HideousWheeelInv.
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