2 Bit and Yuki live at La Boutique Electronique
Gig report by Martin Eve [martin@2bitpie.net]
Last night, Jon Fugler and Mike Bryant were accompanied by Yuki for their first full live set under their new alias 2 Bit.
The club, located on Tabernacle Street, just off from City Road near Old Street Station was never full throughout the evening, and this did somewhat impact upon the atmosphere. However, there were nonetheless excellent performances from both The Reptiles - a stateside hip-hop foursome complete with their own ultra-talented in-house beatboxer - and 2 Bit themselves. The doors opened at 9pm and The Reptiles put in a decent length set before the gang took the stage behind various bits of gear: Mike Bryant, his keyboard and Jon Fugler, an Apple Mac. There was also an unknown guitarist onstage throughout, although it was unclear to me how much playing was involved as opposed to aesthetic appeal!
The set began with Runaway, which has an awesomely typical Fluke bassline. A combination of initial shyness and slight undermixing on the vocals meant that some of the words in this track were lost, but this is an aspect that can only improve with time. This was more than made up for in the next track which remains my favourite on the Yuki album, Orleans. A stomping bass line over a pounding drum beat brings back, for me, the bass synth groove of tracks such as Atom Bomb (Straight Six Instrumental Mix) and 2 Bit Pie's Fly. Moving swiftly on to Loverlover the band finally started to get an atmosphere going and the crowd loved it - there were people jumping up and down at the front while Yuki offered her seductive message. The quirky twists in this track went down especially well with my hapless victims friends who I had brought along - a good indication of where mainstream appeal lies for the non-Fluke fanboy. While I have never really taken to Believe, there was nothing that I could technically fault with the performance - Yuki seemed to be getting into her stride. Finally, having played the Latitude favourite Key Lime Heart, the bittersweet piano line of Blue rang out while the backing track crescendoed into its full righteous fury. This track was fantastically atmospheric and, to my ears, I think the drums were modified from the album version.
It seemed that the gig was over far too quickly - although there is huge potential here. In the words of Jon Fugler: "Give it another half an hour..."
As an additional note, I am starting, with this gig, an effort to present vital stats beneath gig reports which I will also be updating for previous shows in an attempt to standardise what scarce information we have available. The hope is to eventually compile a database, similar to the discography, of Fluke / 2 Bit gigs, along with any recordings, videos and pictures available of the events. I will also be attempting to make copyright statements explicit, along with fair use rationales for the purposes of reportage, archival and documentation.
Gig Info
Date: Saturday, 2009-07-25
Location: London, Sosho Club; 2 Tabernacle Street
Set type: Live
Set variety: Yuki
Set List
- Runaway
- Orleans
- Loverlover
- Believe
- Key Lime Heart
- Blue
Media
Photographs
These photographs are © Martin Eve 2009. I hereby grant an irrevocable permanent licence to anyone who wishes to use these images for non-commercial use under condition that 1.) this original copyright is acknowledged and prominently displayed alongside a link to this website (http://www.2bitpie.net) and 2.) these exact licence terms are applied to any derivative works.
Videos
The content within these videos is © 2 Bit / Yuki 2009. It is believed that their inclusion here qualifies as fair use to document a one-time event for which no free substitute will ever be available. The clips are of insufficient resolution and/or length to ever be of detrimental commercial impact to the subjects depicted therein or the holders of the copyright and it is hoped that such exposure may actually be of positive benefit to such persons.
Runaway
Orleans
Loverlover
Believe
Key Lime Heart
Blue
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