Architecture In Helsinki Making Castles in The Hague

Last night I saw Architecture In Helsinki as the opening act at The Music In My Head tour in The Hague, they are a quirky eight piece from Australia and to say they were un pretentious would have been an understatement.  The majority of them hadn’t dressed as if they were playing a gig, in fact a few didn’t look like they had planned to leave the house at all when they got dressed, but here they were.

I believe a key factor about gigs is expectation, a good gig exceeds your expectations and in this case, AIH were spine chillingly good.  From the moment these odd balls stepped on stage they created a certain anticipation and the first chord gave me goosebumps.  Despite this being their Dutch debut they were not about to ease themselves in to it with a mellow acoustic number, instead each began yelling giving the impression they were going to break into a thrash metal set.  Of course this wasn’t to be but it did set the tone; it set up the rest of the show with a frenetic energy that simply wouldn’t die.

But on the subject of metal, if these guys has gone down that route im not sure it would have been such a bad thing because they did stretch into about every other type of music, I felt the ska and acid jazz interludes were particularly successful.  Many people would associate jazz with horns, and that is exactly what they gave us!  They were armed with two trombones, a trumpet and a tuba of all things.  What was more there didn’t seem to be any rules about who it was that should be playing these, or any other instruments, if one got bored and put something down another would scoop it up play it and drop it again.  They certainly never got the musicians union memo about using “normal” instruments, as the drum stand was littered with irregulaly shaped pieces of scrap metal which they hit with anything that came to hand.  Also the drum stand and the drum kit seemed fair game for any one with a stick who thought it needed a bashing.  Many kit drummers would, im sure, be somewhat vexed by the presence of some one else taking it upon themselves to play THEIR cymbals or floor toms.

I refered earlier to expectations, and I truly believe that a key factor in these guys blowing me away was that I thought they were going to be awful.  If anyone has heard their album material from Fingers Crossed I hope you will know what im saying when I describe their music as engineered to the point of sterilised, prissy and lifeless.  Well I implore you to not let this put you off seeing them live because they take these same tunes and turn them into a bubbling cacophony which is also aesthetically pleasing when you see these guys jump around and hit stuff with sticks as if their life depended on it.

What seemed at the time like a staged riot is actually a melting pot of eight innovators who take a tune and make it their own every night.  There aren’t any rules, and realistically with this type of performance you shouldn’t expect anything, but you can guarantee that it will be loud it will be eclectic and it will be excellent!