Breton – The Lexington, London – Dec 5, 2013

There is something about about home matches that makes the native’s performance either especially good or just suck. Let’s be honest: Friends and family in the audience are not only sources of joy and encouragement. They can distract, and in the worst case put more pressure on you than on an imminient dentist visit. Good thing that BRETON from London, UK are something like the cradle of natural coolness. The mood at last weeks gig at the Lexington in London reminded me of good-old Berlin times at Magnet Club, where at least once a month some local band performed and the audience consisted only of friends and friends-of-friends. Indeed, BRETON‘s band members could not hide their joy, singer Roman Rappak frequently cheered people he spotted within the audience, and everyone sang along for synth-player Ryans birthday. But at the same time, BRETON put on a nice and respectable show.

As for me, I only really knew three songs beforehand, which I still consider to be the best: Obviously the epic electro-hymn The Well (still asking myself why they didn’t play that one), followed by Edward the Confessor and Pacemaker. Additionally, I enjoyed some of their new songs at the gig, especially Envy and Got Well Soon. The rest however sounded like a more electronic version of FOALS, which is not a bad thing at all, but not exactly mind-blowing either.

Still I would encourage everyone to see this band live. The reason? After all,  BRETON is not “only” a band. They are an art collective from South London that partly only formed the band in order to show their short films more often than at a handful of film festivals every year. Thus, their visuals are impressive, but that is not it. Neither is the fact that they perform without guitars but were equipped with two bases, three laptops and four synths. Or that they are especially good looking. Or that I have never heard variations of the word “fuck” so many times in one evening. The reason you should pay attention for BRETON is that there is hardly any band of this genre that lets this loose when playing live. Seriously, these guys can dance – I could not take my eyes off Daniel McIlvenny and Ryan McClarnon, who performed moves on stage that made me wonder if they were on playback. Hence, for everyone who wants to see a gig full of passion and love rather than established bands that got boring of their own setlist, this is definitely a band to watch.

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BRETON