Snap Crackle & Pop @ The Waiting Room, Stoke Newington, live review: Sapphire in the disco
Labyrinthine: Sapphire Slows performs at The Waiting Room. Photograph: Andrew Barnes
I’m more used to attending frenetic, guitar-band gigs at the shiny sweatbox that is The Waiting Room in Stoke Newington. So to drop in on one of Snap Crackle & Pop’s nights of live electronic music on a Tuesday in late February was a bit of a culture shock.
I arrive just as opening act Monaco are putting the finishing touches on their impressive stage set-up. The duo face each other down, each with their own large bank of samples and sequencers. With gear in place, they set about triggering a dual-assault of beats, the hammering 4/4 forming a canvas for them to daub some New Order-y synths here; some Fuck Buttons-esque grinding noise there. It’s an enjoyable, cobweb-clearing way to start the night.
Second act Fluida have more auspicious instrumentation – I don’t go in for a lot of the ‘cultural appropriation’ chat around these days, but it’s hard not to be skeptical of the pairing of the Trinidadian-influenced handpan (which some see as a bastardisation of the steel drum) with a low-slung, funk-ready bass guitar. Their subsequent set, whilst not reaching the full ‘Tim Robbins in High Fidelity’ level of world-music embarrassment, does little for me: the mix of the chiming ‘pan with softly enounced singing comes over a little limp. Nonetheless, songs with some nifty vocal sampling fare better, and the crowd seem to be on side.
The headliner tonight is Sapphire Slows (real name Kinuko Hiramatsu), Tokyo-based purveyor of bedroom keyboard pop. I had already sampled 2013 album ‘Allegoria’ on Spotify, and her live show saw many of the exciting elements of that record – the isolated, chilly bass; the oceanic bloops; the wandering synth lines – ring out with a new immediacy and impact.
For example, the labyrinthine ‘Fade Out’’s core sample takes on a booming quality that perfectly suits Hiramatsu’s voice layered over the top – a voice that is joyously disinterested at times, but with a Neneh Cherry style melodic confidence.
The simplistic comparison here is Grimes, but songs like the banging ‘Third Party’ and softer ‘Break Control’ have a haunted 90s haze, more downtempo and sodden than the Canadian star’s work. The crowd don’t really dance (London rarely surprises in this regard) but are quite rightly captivated in a Tuesday night trance.
Snap Crackle & Pop have just set up a record label of their own, and on the evidence of this night’s curation, we can expect excellent electronic eclecticism on wax.