Intense.

More like some sort of art ritual than a gig, in a way; the first “piece” was almost half an hour long, partly improvised, big slow dynamics, old man Gira controlling the vibe by waving and shaking his arms around above his head, while the band cranks the volume and intensity up and down.

It’s powerful stuff, but a bit samey sometimes: Gira mutters and bellows, the band conjure a big wall of sound out of nowhere before gradually (or suddenly) returning there.

It’s also exhausting: just a barrage of sound, you know? Which is the point, of course—albeit much less savagely done than in their heyday, or so I’m given to believe.

But I don’t have the endurance I once had… I can’t quite imagine how Gira, who must be in his late sixties, can still front that sort of thing. I left at what I assumed would be the halfway point of the encore, but if you told me they were still battering out that final track right now, twelve hours later, I’d probably believe you.

(Much as it’s fun to suggest it, the sound desk BSOD in the picture did not occur during the show—which was unusually well mixed, given Plan B’s tendency to render anything that isn’t techno into an inseperable mush—but during the interval before the headline set )