- Spektrum came on at the stroke of midnight, with all four of them huddling behind the raised DJ console, planning their assault on the crowd that had started to gather beneath them. Starting their gig off with a slow funky beat that reminded me of early Basement Jaxx, their enthusiasm for the music was infectious. The crowd stopped sitting in their high stools and cuddling at the bar, as the kaleidoscopic lights started dancing off the empty podiums and cave like ambience of Zouk’s main room.
The slow churning beat built up like a brooding boxer getting furious as clubbers took notice. The crowd started to hit the floor as Gabriel, Teia and Isaac, Spektrum’s rhythm strategists built up the tempo into a dirty groove and peppered it with occasional hand waving rock-song harmonies. The tunes were pretty much mid-tempo ditties of funk and dismembered vocal-less disco tunes entrenched in revolutionary afterthought. And the beat went on, doing the proverbial building up and breaking down crowd-teasing stylistics.
The highlight of the evening belonged to Lola Olafasove, the singer and front-woman of Spektrum. Dressed in a yellow Gucci-ish top with a fluffy white mini skirt, she moved around like a rock star with the primal athletic gait of a lioness. Standing on the podium, she danced for a while with a microphone in hand before starting to sing. Her vocals were amazing: part dub-reggae and kinda druggy. It was treacherous and vaguely threatening. The crowd was receptive as many stood around watching her groove and belt out indecipherable words in repetition. It was like being in a dream. Something blob-like goes under the music cloud and pulls out a rainbow. And it fades into a pink sliver of light before the sound of elephant thunder reaches your ears. I watched the psychedelic TV screens on the wall.
"The tunes were pretty much mid-tempo ditties of funk and dismembered vocal-less disco tunes entrenched in revolutionary afterthought."
Singing songs from their latest album Enter.. the Spektrum, Lola ran through familiar tunes like Breaker, Spek-t-t-t-trum and Freefall. Drinking and dancing without a care in the world, she looked like she was having the most fun in the entire club as everyone started cheering her on. It was a pity the crowd wasn’t larger, though there were a group of drunken men dressed in black finger-pointing and doing the yeah-yeahs right next to Lola. What was left of the crowd on the floor danced madly: my companion couldn’t stop dancing even though she was entirely sober.
Unlike the other disco acts on the Playhouse label, Spektrum plays a gaunt bass-driven minimal funk with an early 80s punk edge. This was pretty fresh to me considering the recent trance & techno acts that have played at Zouk. The night was druggy, jumpy-aggressive and claustrophobic, which was a welcome change from the exuberance of hip-wagging trance. And live singing always rocks the house!