The Qemists / Dorje / Princess Slayer [Live Review – The Player’s Lounge, Guildford, 9/9/2016]
UPDATE: TMMP has been reborn! This video has the full story:
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The Player’s Lounge is a fitting venue for a lineup this diverse. Half set from a Bond movie, half rock-ready venue complete with PA pumping out classics from the likes of Limp Bizkit and Nirvana, despite its more hip-hop-friendly name The Player’s Lounge provided its fair share of commendable ambience as the evening’s performers prepared to take the stage.
Princess Slayer (92%) are a real blast from TMMP’s distant past. Since the days of their Living EP, drummer/producer Vince Welch and vocalist Casey Lim have recruited a new cast of session players to aid in delivering a series of seriously slick EDM-based tunes. Running through a set strewn with classic personal favourites (Snake Skin; God Said), cover-remixes (ERIKA’s Fly Away Bird) and winning new songs (Every Déjà Vu), I’m going to say that Princess Slayer slayed it – mainly because as far as I can remember, I haven’t used that pun before.
I don’t think anyone in attendance would disagree with this score for Dorje (100%), considering the vast majority of the evening’s punters turned up to catch this set and this set alone. Cheers, whoops, and applause greeted every drum hit, guitar lick, bassline, and vocal melody – and that was just during the soundcheck. That can partly be explained by the fact that most of Dorje’s audience was made up of students from the local Academy of Contemporary Music – at which Dorje’s backline, Princess Slayer’s frontline, TMMP, and members of this evening’s headliners have also studied in the past – and Rob Chapman, Rabea Massaad, Ben Minal, and Dave Hollingworth are renowned and revered online for possessing virtuosic skills of the highest order.
Dorje’s set wasn’t so much a set as a masterclass in Read more…
Bands capable of speaking out intelligently about political issues are few and far between these days. Most seem set on insisting that it’s all about the music and having a good time, rather than encouraging their audiences to educate themselves and act on issues that mean so much to so many, but are often ignored in the age of cheap flatscreens and Xbox Live.
It’s weird to think this gig would never have happened had the Boileroom’s licence been suspended – but the former did happen, because the latter wasn’t. The peacefully dubstep-loving crowds were out in droves last night to check out: 
A common accusation levelled at those whose core beliefs revolve around science and humans is that they are little more than logic-driven robot people, cold and emotionless, utterly devoid of the ability to feel ‘real feelings’. Their favourite music is assumed to consist of late-Seventies robot pop (Kraftwerk / The Normal / Giorgio Moroder / etc.) and the various electronic music styles birthed since that era, while their favourite activities are presumed to be a) watching Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens videos on YouTube, and b) arguing with Creationists and Christians in the comments.