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…
