Sunday night is an odd one for a gig. If you’ve had a busy weekend all you really want to do is stay in and watch Marseille vs. FC Nantes on TV. But when the line-up is strong, you don’t mind missing a game, that on paper, will be one way traffic for Marseille, so with a happy heart at making the right decision, and a warm jacket on, I embarked for the Green Door Store for Kanzi’s new Sketches, Early Summer EP launch night.

The crowd was a mixture of art-school chic like Scally Jazz*; drinkers looking for a friendly watering hole and live music fans wanting to check out two exciting bands before having to return to the daily grind. The support was handled by Squid. Last time I’d seen Squid was at Spectrum’s RSD all dayer at the Dome and they had impressed me a lot. I was eager to see how the intervening months had gone for them. They opened with their last single ‘Perfect Teeth’. It was a dose of woozy, ethereal atmospheric neo-jazz. There were tonnes and tonnes of layers to it, but it has the consistency of fog. Next up was ‘Train to Ore’. If ‘Perfect Teeth’ wafted around you like mist, ‘Train to Ore’ came at you like a Klitschko haymaker! In a few moments Squid had changed from Portico Quartet to Spiritualized covering New Order. Next up was ‘II’. Droney guitars and woozy keyboards were the order of the day. ‘II’ segued into ‘Interlude’, another example of the Portico jazz leanings, then ‘Mothballs’ kicked in. This time sounding like Jason Pearce and co covering Primal Scream’s belter ‘Shoot Speed/Kill Light’. The bass was the main event throughout. Pulsing and aggressive, but with a hint of humanity it thundered on like a juggernaut until its (ill)logical conclusion.

After a brief interval ‘Kanzi’ took to the stage. This electro-pop quartet has slowly been making waves since their self-titled debut EP was released in 2014. Throughout the gig Kanzi played ‘Sketches, Early Summer’ in its entirety. I was expecting earlier songs to get an airing, but it was the EP from start to finish. ‘Sketch’ kicked things off on the right note. ‘Sketch’ opened with ethereal chimes, cymbal’s and synths before a floating falsetto vocal took the track off into another, un-thought of, direction. Where Kanzi really excel is when all the band members are playing at once and working off each other. This happened on ‘March’. The tiny venue, that was packed, was suddenly filled with forward thinking electro-pop. Again, the star of the show was those impressive falsetto vocals. While Kanzi’s layers of sound weren’t as dense as on the recorded version, there still wasn’t a lot of space but somehow the delicate vocals found their way and showed why comparisons to Radiohead and Sigur Ros isn’t just lazy hyperbole. The set ended with ‘Intro’. On the EP I found it weird that ‘Intro’ ends the proceedings. Yes it works well due to its slowly meandering outro, but live it made perfect sense because of this very same thing. When Kanzi finished their set there was a brief pause before an avalanche of applause erupted.

As I was walking home I tried to make sense of what I had just seen and heard. Squid had blown me away a second time and Kanzi had lived up to the expectations of their fascinating and beguiling new EP. ‘Sketches, Early Summer’ is released through French label Animal Records, just like their debut EP. This seems like a match made in heaven as their music doesn’t feel like it belongs to one country or culture. When I got in I checked the FC Nantes score. As predicted Nantes had lost so the right decision had been made and everyone was happy, except for the Nantes fans, but that sadly was to be expected.

Nick Roseblade

*Scally Jazz are a group of neo-jazz fans that dress like they hail from Northern England in late 80s/early 90s.

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