Live Review

Booka Shade – Tripod, Dublin

• 6th May 2009

On a rain sodden evening in Dublin City Centre, Booka Shade returned to Irish shores for the third time in twelve months to bring some much needed Berlin debauchery and revelry to Dublin City.

On the night support act LRB served up some excellent minimal fare to open up, all the while sharing a stage crowded with abandoned electric drum kits, synthesisers and samplers kitted out in red and blue neon lights. LRB eventually wound down his set an hour after midnight, and with a moment of heavy handed allusion a girl of oriental extraction appears on the backdrop videoscreens to cue the beginning of ‘Mandarin Girl’.

Booka Shade follow this up with their breakout hit ‘Body Language’, and maintain the momentum by packing the set with songs from their genre splicing tech house album ‘Movements’. The deep house influenced moments of ‘The Sun and the Neon Light’ were for the most part set aside in favour of maintaining the tempo of the rabid spectators. However they could scarcely afford to omit ‘Charlotte’ from their set and as expected the audience went wild at its introduction, while ‘Trespass 06’ kicked the set into its high gear final act.

Several songs where the drums may have been a bit more restrained on their album find themselves imbued with far more percussive energy by Arno Kammermeier. This was doubly energising for those present, not only do the songs feel more driven but the animation on the part of the band is infectious. Walter Merziger later defied the audience to show him just how mental they can get from behind his immense sampler array. This competition built into an incredible set climax, with the inimitable ‘In White Rooms’ providing just the kind of epic curtain call that this powerful performance demanded.

Kammermeier and Merziger were clearly impressed by just how crazy the crowd went for their music, and as a reward treated them to a double encore. This featured less well known numbers but everyone in the arena was more than happy just to keep the energy going, which is just about as reliable a gauge one can get on the strength of a gig.

Booka Shade provided all the nuance, atmosphere and intensity it is possible to achieve within electronic music and tethered it to the energy and fervour of a live musical performance. It’s an intoxicating combination, and one that the uninitiated should seek out should they grace our capital again.