Photo: Press
“That was… not the best rendition. Oh I feel a bit flustered.” Over an hour after she was due on, and after three awkward false starts, The Japanese House has finally stuttered to the end of her first song, ‘Clean’. On record, it’s a glitchy delight, flickered with samples, distortions and vocal layering. Today though, things aren’t going Amber Bain’s way.
Her guitar won’t work properly, there’s painful feedback coming through the speakers and into her in-ear pieces, and she spends much of the set shaking her head despondently. Her microphone, as if it too has all but given up, frequently droops down mid-line, forcing her to stop playing so she can right it again. It’s not her fault – a fact she makes subtly clear when she apologises for the fifth time, before adding, “well, I mean, I’m sorry on behalf of the venue,” – but it’s making the set a difficult one to enjoy. Particularly for Bain herself.
By the time she’s completed the second song (equally unhappily), she’s had enough. “I’m gonna be an arsehole,” she announces, “and only do two more songs. It’s really hurting in my ears. Please don’t hate me.” No-one does – but it’s a frustrating end to what should have been the perfect showcase of The Japanese House’s arresting, intriguing music.
Everything else in the Oval Space – one of a handful of venues across East London in which Visions Festival is taking place – is delayed too. Jessy Lanza’s on next, an hour after she was scheduled to come on, but it goes smoothly enough. Drawing from 2013’s pulsing Pull My Hair Back, as well as this year’s Oh No, Lanza treats her live set as if it’s a karaoke performance – twitching and shimmying appreciatively to her own beats, singing each line as if it’s coming to her there and then. It’s intoxicating to watch.
No-one is more intoxicating, though, than Mykki Blanco. On what transpires to be the last night of his European tour, the American rapper throws himself on top of the mixing desk, onto the floor, and into the crowd, his aesthetic – like the music itself – a mesmeric mix of hyper-masculine and playfully queer. He wears his outfit - which looks like the result of an episode of Project Runway which asked contestants to make something fabulous out of a hospital gown and shower curtains - sloped off one shoulder, most of his tattooed chest on display.
“Fucking Brexit,” he says towards the end of the set, just before he launches himself back into the crowd and begins dancing maniacally up and down the bar while a burly security guard races across the venue to try and persuade him down, “What the fuck was that?” Amen to that. And amen to Mykki Blanco.
