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Concert Review: The Rapture


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POP REVIEW | THE RAPTURE

A Cacophony of Arty Funk, Drawn Together by a Dance Beat

By JON PARELES

Published: December 12, 2003

The first rule for an arty funk band is that the funk comes first, and the Rapture knows it. Its songs are built on the splintered sounds that post-punks and minimalists selected to parry rock's opulence as the 1970's ended: high, hollow guitar chords or isolated notes; two-finger keyboard fragments; discordant trills or nagging repeated notes for saxophone; tinny, deliberately artificial drum-machine sounds. The Rapture's two singers, Luke Jenner on guitar and Mattie Safer on bass, have high, pinched voices that are pretty only with an effort.

But when the Rapture started its sold-out three-night stand at the Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday night, all its fractured components were meshed in service of the most visceral pleasure: a dance beat.

Vito Roccoforte's drumming kicked the music ahead and lined up voices and instruments as components of acrid but irresistible funk vamps.

And while the music strutted and bristled, Mr. Jenner switched off between a strangulated yelp and an incongruous tenderness. There was no irony at all in lyrics like "Open up your heart" and "I need your love."

Of course it's easier to concoct art-funk now than it was 20 years ago, because there are so many clear prototypes. The Cure, the Contortions, Public Image Ltd., ESG, Gang of Four, and Talking Heads were all directly imitated during the Rapture's set, along with a few hints of more current dance-club music.

The band members let their beat move them as they played under a screen showing flames, high-speed travel or loops of people dancing, also reminiscent of early-1980's shows. (At one point Gabriel Andruzzi, the saxophonist, picked up a cowbell and twitched across the stage as he banged out syncopations.) But there was no denying the ingenuity or crunch of the music. The Rapture's album is called "Echoes" (Strummer/Universal), and with any luck such a smart, funky band will move beyond echoes in its next batch of songs.

The concert stayed arty with the Black Dice, the free-improvisation band that shared the bill. Two members stood at electronic consoles that sprouted plenty of patch cords; the other two played guitar and drums. The band's continuous but thoroughly varied set hinted at patterns and then demolished them, never indulging one texture too long.

A dulcet repeating guitar arpeggio, hinting at Congolese soukous, was overlaid with clanks and blotches of low-frequency noise. The thumping beat and tom-toms of tribal house music emerged briefly, only to be challenged and deflected by the other musicians; one member sang wordless syllables over shivering cymbal sounds and a rippling guitar chord.

At one point, as electronic chirps and bleeps were subsumed in an overwhelming rumble of manipulated drum noises, the music sounded like a bulldozer flattening a rain forest.

NY Times.com

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