Live Review: The Orielles - Concorde2, Brighton 23/03/2023
The Orielles stun in Brighton with mesmerising blend of dance and indie.
Only five months after releasing their third full-length album “Tableau” to critical acclaim, West Yorkshire band The Orielles have been garnering a lot of attention from avant-garde fans from all over the world.
Their effervescent display of experimental, innovative, and ever-changing mixture of dance, funk and hyper-pop on “Tableau” has gained them comparisons to the likes of avant-pop greats Stereolab.
The trio has just embarked on their 2023 UK tour, Concorde 2 at Brighton being their second night in a row after playing at Cambridge this past Wednesday night, with ten more shows booked around the country before they head further into Europe.
In front of what looked like a sell-out crowd, the group showed no signs of timidness as they hit the stage, instantly catching the attention of most of the crowd with ardent arpeggiating synth sequences, backed by an airtight crisp drum sound, roaring overdriven guitar tones and singer Esmé Hand-Halford’s mollifying vocals.
Highlights of the night included the performance of “Beam/s” from their newest record, an eight-minute song which brilliantly exemplifies how the group use off-rhythm electronic sounds to create a mystifying, dreamlike world which fuses together brilliantly with the ecstatic playing of guitarist Henry Carlyle-Wade, who seems to drift off further into this world as the song progresses.
Another brilliant moment was the performance of “The Instrument”, as the song builds a lot of tension throughout with a dazzling repeating guitar riff which turns into jangly dream-pop style strumming as the chorus comes along. The last few minutes of the song are a trademark of the West-Yorkshire trio’s newly found sound as the expanding delay feedback and razor-sharp arpeggiating sounds form a wall of sound resembling an old tape machine slowly dissolving everything that passes through.
Some older releases such as “Sunflower Seeds” and “Bobbi’s Second World” added some variety to the set, as the funky rhythms mixed with a progressive sense of melody energised the Brighton crowd, especially those who were more familiar with the group's first endeavours into music together.
It goes without saying that the synergy The Orielles have grown over their short tenure together is very promising, and they have shown at Concorde 2 just how powerful their newest genre-bending sound can be. This is a group that really sticks out in the modern experimental music scene, and there is no doubt that their live performance has reflected this.
Words by Jay Cohen
