Debaser Slussen is deserted like the desert of Arabia when I get in. Sahara, or whatever. Having booked the interesting LA wife-husband duo Rainbow Arabia, the dude-chick duo that run the tropical club High Life invited Stockholm to a party in true pre-summer spirit playing exotic stuff like the stuff you can check out on their excellent blog. I also got to hear Glasser’s Apply, El Guincho’s Bombay and, to my surprise, a track that sounds either like a cover of OR the original to Gorillaz’ Dirty Harry (I HAVE TO check it up properly) cleverly thrown into their DJ set. It’s too bad there were only 10-13 people there, not counting the people who work at Debaser. Yes, it’s sad but true. I have picture proof below.
I have several guessings as to why so few people attended this:
1. Black Mountain were playing at Strand the same night. Swedes are suckers for rock music so that might have drawn some folks, but from what I heard from my friends and from what I checked, the gig wasn’t sold out at all. The reason why I didn’t go see them, even though I too think that they friggin’ ROCK is that I have already seen them once and I might not benefit much from seeing them again and the gig at Debaser Slussen was cheaper, so there you go.
2. Next door, in the smaller restaurant section of Strand, Swedish punk legend Kajsa Grytt is having a sort of book and album release party. Probably a little popular amongst Swedish hipsters.
3. It’s the middle of the month. Payday weekend is faaar off. In a small, Nordic country like Sweden, those sort of factors are painfully visible in the nightlife, even in Stockholm.
4. Just like another electronic duo with a hot chick on the vocals that played a Thursday gig at Debaser Slussen that I attended some weeks ago, The Hundred In The Hands, Rainbow Arabia have suffered the curse of receiving mild-to-negative Pitchfork reviews which immediately cuts the size of their hip inner-city audiences. A little undeserved for both bands. Get it together, Pitchfork!
Having listened to their stuff, and really liked it, I thought I knew exactly how their worldtronica would sound live. A lot more guitar-based. But, just as with The Hundred In The Hands, what the few of us attending got was BASS. Bass so heavy and loud dubsteppers would’ve been jealous. The bass drum turns the whole thing into more like ravetronica with weird, psychedelic touches of their tropicalism. Nice, I think, but even nicer when you’ve got a charming and cute creature as Tiffany Preston wailing and squeaking into the mic like an Arabian Zola Jesus. Am I a douche and/or a sexist for thinking that Dave Preston is one lucky guy to be going steady with such a cool chick?
Anyway there we are, all 10-13 of us thinking what a blast of a gig everyone in Stockholm are missing when Tiffany decides to join us out there on the empty dancefloor with the mic and all, leaving me in an awkward position not knowing wether to check out her or Dave’s cool manipulation of the electronics on stage. Swedes are awkward people by nature, we just stand there not knowing what to do while Tiffany is going gaga right there in the middle among us. All of a sudden I feel someone at my back. I turn around. It’s her, dragging me with her like a seducer into the dancefloor. Oh, Tiffany. You shouldn’t have done that. You picked the wrong Swede. I know, I looked so cool with my cool clothes and all and now you wanted to project your freaky attitude on my cool and collected exterior. Too bad I’m not like other Swedes. I play along. I play the game. Didn’t expect that when you wanted to tease and provoke some audience interaction, huh?
I danced. But I must say she still caught me in a bad time. I haven’t practiced my experimental exotic theatrical interpretive performance art dance in like six months, so I was a little rusty. I played the role of… well… confused, surprised hipster dude awkward performing his really really really rusty experimental exotic theatrical interpretive perfomance art dance. I think she noticed me being crappy and rusty at my experimental exotic theatrical interpretive performance art dance because she danced on, engaging with some other members of the audience and I, true to my actor talent, stayed in character bodily expressing my dissatisfaction that this little exotic hussy dumped me for a bunch of other people. Interesting gig. And I’d only drunk like half a litre of wine. Well, that’s just the intoxication of a really cool, cutting-edge hot chick performer and the music of Rainbow Arabia.
Listen to Rainbow Arabia on Spotify!
