It was a wet Thursday night and the train sped through the darkness between Amsterdam and Utrecht. Outside the window was a void. It was like one of those 80’s horror films where everything between the cities had been replaced by a viscous blackness inter spaced with a long lonely canal and a huddle of industrial buildings, a no-mans land.
Once you get out of the shopping center/mall hell that is the the central station, Utrecht is a very charming city. The split level canals with the lower level that houses the multitude of bars and restaurants (and in the past possible trolls) are unique. I would like to live in a place that is an amalgam of favorite features of the various cities I have enjoyed. I’ve lived in Amsterdam for some time and it is definitely a great city but If I could change one thing I would transport the Utrecht music venue Ekko to Amsterdam.
The warm up act was a US rapper called Juiceboxxx who was on tour of Europe. His act was full of high jinx and he was somewhat entertaining. He started his set sitting in the corner with his back to the audience talking to himself and banging his hands off the wall while the sound of Bruce Springsteen (Born in the USA) boomed over the sound system. The rest of the show was spent in a manic frenzy of activity. Leaping into the crowd and slapping people on the heads (which almost got him punched and resulted in beer that was thrown at him) and frantically jumping up and down to swinging from the overhead pipes. He does indeed resemble somebody in need of a Ritalin prescription. I did like his rapping, very Beasties but the music with the constant heavy delayed feedback loops did get tiresome after a very short while.
Eventually we were treated to the main act. Dans le Sac started off the tunes and he was joined on stage by the bearded Scroobius Pip looking dapper in a suit. He was clutching a suitcase from which he extracted various pieces of paraphernalia over the course of the evening. (Bibles and bottles of wine, suitable props of a preacher)
As expected the music and poetic lyrical delivery were superb and the crowd were loving it. Mr Pip exclaimed that the gig and audience was much better than the previous night when they had played the Kleine Zaal of the Paradiso as part of the Noodlanding night. This is not so surprising as playing in the Ekko to an appreciative crowd is infinitely preferable than playing in fount of a bunch of drunken students who probably though he was Osama Bin Laden.
During the course of the gig were were treated to all the great tracks from the 2008 début album, Angels. As they only have one album’s worth of material the gig ran to just over an hour and was padded out with covers including a song by the Sugarbabes, a band they were promoting on behalf of the British government because (according to Mr Pip) the Sugarbabes are a band that are playing the British pub circuit. The gig finished with a cover of Crème by Prince.
Unfortunately no pictures of Dans Le Sac due to a mixture of poor light and frantic movements on his part. Overall it was a very good gig and I am curious to see where they go with their new material.
