No Excuses Night

Electrophile
Radio Radio
Saturday, March 12

It was called No Excuses Night, and damn if it didn’t live up to its name. Free fashion show, free bands, free admission — probably the best entertainment deal in a while in this city.

Electrophile

Detroit supertech players Electrophile look like something out of The Matrix and sound like something out of German electroclash — oh, hell, I’ve never been good at this genre thing. Let’s just say they live up to their name, their whole show a love letter to electronic sounds. They feature booming techno-style beats, 1980s New Wave-influenced breaks, lots of synthesizers, fierce vocals from lead singer Sandor Gavin and an overall sound that is the unholy child of Rammstein and Information Society, and if you can make any sense of that analogy, you can have my job.

It’s an acquired taste, but this kind of post-post-modernism is the stuff I live for, looks and sounds that heavily influenced the post-Matrix pop culture splash of latex and leather and are in turn equally influenced by the blowback. There comes a point when you don’t know what’s ironic and what’s sincere anymore, and what’s more, you don’t care.

On their song “Nasty Habits,” Gavin remarked, “It should be from the ’80s, but it’s from now, which just about sums it up, I think.”

Besides lead singer Sandor Gavin’s fierce vocals, backup singer Rayne shone on her turn at lead, doing an electrotech version of “Fever” that simply smoked with passion despite the electronic backing.

They wrapped it all up with a pitch-perfect rendition of the electroclassic “Send Me An Angel” and then a techno-flub that just proves you should stick with Macintosh for all your computer needs. All this for less than the price of a dozen Columbia House CDs.