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Bjork, Blackpool Empress Ballroom, May 1



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Published Date: 02 May 2008
WHERE do you begin to describe a show like that? Fifty per cent gig, fifty percent theatre, but one hundred per cent stark raving bonkers would be as good a way as any, and it's no more than the fans of the tiny Icelandic singer have come to expect from a solo career that's lasted for 15 years.
Any artist that has the front to face a packed room with a 10-piece brass band, a computer programmer, a DJ, a drummer and a pianist for company isn't short on confidence.

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Most gigs you go to are just that, musicians strumming though their back catalogue, but this was pure theatre from opening bars to a long howled-for encore.

To me, Bjork has been a performer who has been more admired than loved. Some of her stuff comes across as a wall of anguished, self-indulgent howls to the untrained ear and during quieter moments of the show you could clearly hear some fans (who had paid out £37 for a ticket) nattering away to each other, shuffling from foot to foot and looking a bit bored.

But for every low there was a high. The night only kicked into life when the big beats and the massive lasers came out - drum and bass is the perfect backing for her powerful voice, even though she was battling a heavy cold.

We were given nothing more than polite 'Think you's' after each song, but then that's part of her diminutive unobtainable Ice Queen charm.
During the big beat songs she was a blur of hyperactivity as her brass band, complete with matching headgear and flags bobbed up and down.

And that's all the big crowd wanted. Five minutes of pained caterwauling is okay, as long as the drums kick in and they could all dance. After she'd done 70 minutes and went off the audience shouted, stamped, whistled and screamed for 10 minutes until she came back on for a two-song encore.

The performance aside, the highlight of the show was the truly astonishing pyrotechnics. Huge cannons shot out hundreds of thousands of pieces of glittering paper which took five minutes to fall, and it was all backlit by enormous laser beams that made it look like an electric snow shaker, which is quite apt from someone from Iceland.


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  • Last Updated: 05 May 2008 12:07 PM
  • Source: n/a
  • Location: Morecambe
 
 

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