Reviews

Live Review 9th Sept 2000 - Dark Star Audio

These three hip dudes were not quite as techno/dance-minded as I seemed to remember. I'd only seen them once before, but was impressed and curious to hear more. Hunched over their equipment - an assorted array of small boxes with lots of cables spewing out of them, a couple of synths and some electronic drum pads - Greenhaus unleash their beats and it keeps on rolling until the end of their set. It's an odd but distinctive noise too. Unlike anything else directly. I was thinking of Underworld, Leftfield and Empirion when I saw them before. But my ear must have been more attuned this time around because whilst the road they travelled zipped past some of those reference points, they didn't pause to dwell on them.

This was more experimental than my memory gave it credit for. A driving backing track with samples dropped in live (CDs popping in and out of a player throughout the set), spoken voices, jumbly beats with layer upon layer of sound snippets and live synths holding it all together. This was clever stuff, intelligent but not 'serious', indeed even tongue-in-cheek at times. Smoking fags, drinking Bacardi Breezers, unassuming T-shirts and jeans, sneakers and uneventful hairstyles - Greenhaus are an unpretentious and cool bunch of guys. Their objective live seems to create a buzzing atmosphere rather than getting the audience dancing to a chart-bound beat. And it worked because they danced anyway.

It could be seen as audacious to use music from 2001 (on the wonderfully-entitled A Bass Odyssey) but they pull it off. The siren-like synths and pounding drums that kick in don't disappoint. By the end of their set, they'd drifted into the outer boundaries of industrial noise - making it further difficult to pin down their sound with a convenient label. Greenhaus themselves call their music techno. But that doesn't capture it at all. If all techno were as inventive as this then there'd be a lot more of it in my record collection. No, 'techno' isn't sufficient enough to cover the territory that Greenhaus are exploring and I won't even try to offer up an alternative. Simply check out their debut release, due before the end of the year, and experience for yourself the Greenhaus effect.

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