Durban event promotion was lacking once again, and I heard about Friday’s gig at Society by reading a post on a Cape Town based blog, 2oceansvibe. Now I see this as a major problem, we shouldn’t have to get local event information from a guy two thousand kilometers away! Press about great shows needs to be forthcoming; else bands are not going to make an effort to play here! Well don’t worry, durbanscouts.za.net has a plan brewing. Stay tuned.

Anyway back to the gig. If you haven’t heard Goldfish before, then you’re not alone. Neither had I, and that’s purely because I don’t listen to any radio, especially not 5FM where they’ve made it to number one on some kind of vote-for-us top 5 list or something. I went to check out the show based purely on reputation, and the reaction my friend-in-the-electro-know gave me when I told him they were playing in
Durban:

"What? GOLDFISH are coming here?! FUCK SCHWEET YEAH!!! Cancel all plans, we are GOING to that my bru!"?

After carefully considering his enthusiasm, and wiping the spit from my eye, I headed down to Society with some mates to catch the act, and was totally floored by the incredible talent of the two members, David Poole and Dominic Peters.

Goldfish Ice Sculpture @ SocietyElectronic Dance Jazz is what these guys do. Their insane rig with millions of glowing buttons and knobs would surely be enough to do a show by itself, yet it’s the saxophone that got the crowd roaring on Friday night. See, all the music is done completely live, with each of the guys taking turns to play their respective instruments like the flute, sax, electric upright bass and keyboard, while the other mans the station command on the synths and samplers and whatever else is in their arsenal of equipment.

It’s amazing how cool this live instrument element is in a dance show, which I think is a result of it breaking traditional mindsets about the genre. You generally expect that dance music involves computer-generated beats being played by some guy with a fancy futuristic name like DJ STRATOSPHERE; to an audience that doesn’t understand what he’s doing, and probably assumes it’s little more than changing the CD every now and again. There’s no evidence of musical talent, and because of this lack of understanding on how DJs actually work, people don’t credit them enough.

With Goldfish, you can clearly see they are brilliant. There’s nothing like playing a classic instrument to prove you’re a real artist, and people thrive off this element of their show. In fact, unless you are standing right up in the front row, (almost spilling beer on their equipment – sorry guys!) you wouldn't be able to grasp the full complexity of what they are doing.

If you can’t see his hand waving over the infrared beam which controls the pitch of the sound, or fingers darting back and forth over the keyboards, or the touchpad sensor that controls the tempo, you’d presume it was all pre-recorded.

Well it's not, and it rocks, and I love it. I hope these guys don’t get reeled in by the lure of international fame and money; and instead hang around long enough to inspire and grow the South African music scene a bit. Check them out if you can on the rest of their country-wide tour. Dates on their site, link in the bands section on the left!