If you go to see a solo artist whose sound is based in some kind of electronic dabbling, more often than not the live show can be a bit lacklustre, resembling karaoke more than a live performance. Whilst endless fiddling and layers of complexity are possible, it also means this kind of music is often very difficult to translate live, especially with only one member. The sole person on stage will probably be standing in front of a laptop, perhaps also a sampler used to trigger a backing track, and just sings along to the pre-programme sounds. Likewise, LA Priest (aka Sam Eastgate formerly of mid-noughties dance-rock outfit Late of the Pier) makes all kinds of weird synthetic noises and is on his own tonight. As he almost tiptoes on stage dressed in in what looks like a set of satin pyjamas, passing between dramatic overhead pillars of light, from the off its obvious LA Priest has something little more interesting in store for us.

Rather than cutting corners, LA Priest is in fact working in overdrive.

Seemingly taking on the responsibilities of a whole band, scurrying between his synths and manipulating noises from obscure analogue hardware, all while singing with a microphone gripped in one hand. On the slow jam funk of ‘Occasion’, he modulates the pitch and tone of the synth, so that it slowly evolves from a squelchy bass line into a buzzy lead part as the song builds to its chorus. There’s not a MacBook in sight, and all the analogue equipment has a warm sound as well as lending a certain feeling of physicality to his performance. Although its probably not obvious to a non-tech geek what exactly he’s doing when tampering with all his equipment, you can very clearly hear the results in noises being emitted.

Its the first show of the tour tonight, and Eastgate appears a bit unsure what to do with himself between songs with no one else to interact with. He makes light of the awkwardness by pretending to have a conversation with one of his keyboards, which gets a good laugh. Generally he seems pretty content with his default position of frontman, when he occasionally he picks up his guitar for some overblown 80’s guitar soloing, he comes round to the barrier to deliver some pastiche rock posturing.

The second half of the show is dedicated to the more up-tempo dance numbers from his debut Inji. There’s an element of improvisation that is often lacking from such shows. After finishing ‘Learning to Love’, he samples the crowd’s applause and feeds into a pulsing, hypnotic house beat, which is left on loop as he exits the stage before slowly fading out. Overall it’s a fun, engaging show, but you can’t help wondering how it may have benefited from a few extra hands, even if only to give LA Priest a chance to catch his breath.
Louis Ormesher
Photos: Tom Barlow Brown