Live, NOW (or, rather Nightmares on Wax Soundsystem, a rather confusing title that evokes memories of Norman Jay’s booming Good Times bus at Notting Hill Carnival, just with more weed and less dancing) fail to recreate the intricate mixes of the record, but manage to convey enough enthusiasm to have the crowd bouncing along in a rather self-conscious fashion (how the hell are you supposed to dance to chill-out anyway?) While earlier numbers like ‘You Wish’ fail to get the ballroom dancing, a couple of the best tracks of his ‘In a Space…’ (the fantastic ‘Pudpots’ and a dramatic recreation of the Arabic themed ‘Deepdown’ are highlights) are received with the kind of arms aloft devotion that is sorely missed through most of the rest of the show.
NOW (essentially a one-man disco in a panama hat) play up to a predominately middle class, white student crowd, and, to be honest, they’d probably have lapped it up if he’d just stuck on a Zero 7 album and buggered off out back for a joint. However, DJ George Evelyn, gamely rises to the challenge of managing to make one of the most maligned musical genres of recent times seem fun, and manages to pull it off very well. They’ll never be the most exciting live act in the world. (Man wearing towel on head pushes button! Slightly shifty looking man in baseball cap drops record!) but in Evelyn they have a charismatic and bouncy frontman, just as at home leaping about to his own music as he is waggling sliders. Despite much of the crowd being unable to see any of the action, due to the stage being position roughly 15cm from the floor, the crowd spend the entire gig grinning, shuffling from foot to foot and trying to catch a glance of the engaging DJ.
However, despite his enthusiasm, his collaborators let the side down. A rather shiftless MC warms the crowd up into an only slightly frothy fervour (“Do you want more Nightmares on WAAAAXXXXX???!!! Erm… Actually, sorry, they aren’t coming back.”) and two uncomfortable looking singers are pulled out from the side of the stage at opportune moments, but manage to inject new life into a couple of rather worryingly similar-sounding tracks.
Evelyn seems happy in the groove he’s dug himself. Without the one of two ‘big’ numbers that would have broken the band into the mainsteam years ago, with contemporaries like Coldcut and Lemon Jelly, NOW seem comfortable being an aloof, cooler older brother to the chill-out crowd, experimenting with new ideas, but still remaining populist enough to send the crowd home feeling warm and fuzzy. The frontman really looks like he’s enjoying himself, and the fact that the cavernous Electric Ballroom is full to the rafters shows that despite not being on every ipod in the land, he’s got a dedicated fanbase that weren’t put off too much by his disappointing third album, and are enjoying this obvious return to form.
Finishing way before the allotted 12pm curfew, fans have nonetheless caught a 3-hour set that, while not exactly rocking the crowd all night long, certainly shuffles up next to them and asks them round for a barbeque. And who could refuse that?
