- There are few video artists—or non-musical artists at all for that matter—as renowned in the electronic music community as Chris Cunningham. Aphex Twin, Bjork, Leftfield, and Portishead have all enlisted his talents for their music videos. But it's his work with AFX for which he's probably best known, and for good reason: they're pretty much two versions of the same person, just doing a different type of art. So there's little more to be said by introduction, really; Chris Cunningham live in London was, as expected, quite probably the most mind-bendingly visceral audio-visual experience I've ever seen.
The warm-up acts were well chosen. 16bit lived up to their name with digital bit crushed undertones, but largely what they played was characterised more by a crashing, hyper-aggressive dubstep style. Even when they departed from the 140 BPM tempo, there was still the same gritty breakbeat. A remix of the Tetris song and the whopping Nero remix of "Crush On You" by The Jets were highlights. Rather than making a continuous flow, they segued smoothly between tempos by means of brief lulls; a kind of background music (if something that loud can termed as such), as evidently nobody was there to dance anyway.
Factory Floor were just as noisy, with an electronic drum kit front centre, a guy on Ableton and synth to the right, and a girl creating distorted washes from a guitar, violin bow and sporadic incoherent moans. Rapid, sharp rhythms and evolving, repetitive synth loops crackled through her. They finished off with an extended 140 BPM or so jam with filters opening and closing over a freaky acid-tinged line, and an extreme workout from the drummer. Laying down kicks on every beat and semiquaver hi-hats for about ten minutes, it's no wonder he had to take a moment near the end.
Cunningham arrived soon after to rapturous cheers and took up his place behind his MacBook. Having passed away a few days previously, it was a fitting tribute that Gil Scott-Heron's dark-shrouded face was the first thing on screen, with Cunningham's remix of his "New York Is Killing Me" providing the soundtrack. Although bleak, I was surprised at the mellowness; that is until it moved into the second of the presented pieces, which opened with a young girl, less than ten years old, lying in bed asleep with her arms around a stuffed toy.
Then, the inevitable happened.
Cunningham's speciality is taking vulnerable people and tearing them apart with relentless electronic music. Grotesque disfigurement and horror—not always wholly explicit, but suggested through facial expressions and blinding whiteness covering critical areas—were just two of the devices he used on this night to devastating effect. There was a brief interlude of pastel coloured nature and kaleidoscopes, with some of Boards of Canada's Geogaddi. Otherwise, though, he was unyielding.
In "New York Is Killing Me," he seamlessly stretched subway platforms light years into the distance. In "Rubber Johnny," he mutilated the human body into baffling, sick contortions. The music, too—largely self-produced—was scattergun breakbeat that was starkly defined and weighed down by a carbonite sub-bass. It was all exact, powerful and razor sharp. Although remaining still behind his laptop the whole way through, there was always a feeling that we were wholly in his grip. It was as if the images, the sounds, the green lasers scanning into the crowd were scalpels he was using to surgically dissect our brains.