Mystery Jets, Silent Disco Live – Brighton Concorde 23/09/08

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For some reason, a well known alcoholic beverage company has decided the week BEFORE the students hit town, to put on a series of gigs in Brighton town. The twist being that these are the first set of gigs to be played ‘silent disco’ style. That means electronic drums, headphones, and apparently a random Dutch radio broadcast.

The night starts badly when I am told that due to the ‘well known beverage company’ I can’t have an orange juice and lemonade. If your going to go WAAAAY over the top with your branding, then perhaps it is wise not to annoy people and prevent them from drinking non alcoholic drinks. Just a thought. Oh, and don’t give out feather boas, hats and gloves either. Perhaps I am just too old for this (at 26 I’m definitely one of the older faces in the young crowd). The whole idea of the silent disco live experience is odd- almost as if a gimmick was required to make loud music more entertaining. Then why no support band? Instead we have to endure 2 hours (yes two hours) of inane anglo-dutch djing, playing everything from old swing to hard house remixes with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. My favourite mix of the night? That has to be going from Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ to Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’. Only when you hear a bunch of drunk moron’s shouting “F**K YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME” with no music, at the tops of their voices, does the pathetically adolescent nature of that song really hit home. As the ‘hits’ keep coming the occasional voice comes in and warbles along, hilariously if you, like me, aren’t wearing the headphones. This is part of the novelty of the silent disco. That and watching people dance like idiots.

However, in the live environment it simply does not work. If like me you get stuck next to the band’s biggest tone-deaf fan all you end up hearing is them droning along. The volume levels are such that the sing-along fan drowns out the music from the stage quite easily. Headphones just aren’t cut out for live sound, as anyone who has ever tried to play electric guitar through one will tell you. Everything sounds as if it’s in a cave, guitars reedy thin and keyboards virtually non existent. Only vocals and e-drum kit fair well in the mix. Not that any of this is the fault of Mystery Jets of course. It is a shame that the quality of sound wasn’t better for their polished 80′s pop tunes. During ‘Alas Agnes’ I took off my headphones to hear an effective three part harmony in accapella, which was surely the highlight of the night. These boys certainly seem to have a way with a melody, as ‘Two doors down” and ‘Young Love” testify, the crowd singing tunelessly along with every word. They too, it seems, find the whole event somewhat weird, but take it in their stride, throwing down some electronic beats on the E-drum kit while Blaine makes the sound of a Klaxon and bassist Kai Fish throws shapes while wearing an audience donated pair of barred glasses. “This is weird. We look like f***ing aliens. It hasn’t been the same same since we got back from Ibiza Rocks. What a mistake.”

Having won the crowd over with their joyous pop racket and sing-alongs, Mystery Jets see in the return of the Silent Disco with an 80′s classic. Having posed as wedding band for ‘Making Dens’ producer James Ford’s recent happy day, they treat us to a straight up cover of ‘Careless Whisper’, which Harrison dedicates to the security guard who, he says has looked miserable throughout the set. Possibly because no one thought to give her headphones, so she has been sitting in silence for the past 5 hours.

The Silent Disco live experience is one that seems doomed to failure. The mass-sing alongs and poor quality of sound are just two of the problems with it. The chances of headphones staying on the heads of a more active band pretty low. But when you have the quality of songs and performance that Mystery Jets put in this evening you just don’t need gimmicks.