By Larry Kao
After playing the Coachella festival in the desert for the weekend, the Liverpool band Ladytron made its Los Angeles stop for its United States tour on May 2nd, promoting their Extended Play remix and b-sides EP and bonus DVD. This tour was an actual live music tour, as opposed to the DJ sets at select clubs last year by band members Reuben Wu and Mira Aroyo in support of last year's The Witching Hour. Their entire set was about an hour-and-twenty minutes, inclusive of an encore, and featured a showcase of their back catalogue, but understandably focused mainly on songs off the new album.
Kicking off their set with the opening track from The Witching Hour, the band blew through all the old singles off their previous releases, including the single that brought them critical attention, "Playgirl." The live performance of their set was further enhanced as the four main members of the band, essentially all synthesizer players, added an outsourced live bass player and drummer, and regular band member Daniel Hunt integrated guitars in addition to his synth duties. The added guitar work gave the music another layer, especially during the hauntingly beautiful "Soft Power," off the latest album. Singers Mira Aroyo and Helen Marnie add a darker element to the music in their vocal talents, while Reuben Wu's synthesizer work lays a steady foundation for the rest of the music to build on.
This evolution of the live show to include live bass and drums is also consistent with their evolution as a band; when the band toured for their last release, Light and Magic, the show consisted of the four main band members with synthesized rhythm and bass tracks. The Witching Hour was much more a fusion of rock music with electronic elements than their previous efforts, and the live show reflects this change. Another product of this evolution to include human elements to the band's electronic past is the change in band attire and stage presence. While past shows featured the band all in matching military-styled uniforms emphasizing unisex-ness, Tuesday's show saw the band in regular clothes, not in uniform. The ladies of Ladytron wore dresses, and the men wore average, everyday, stylish clothes. The initial move for the band to de-emphasize sexuality was to have the focus on the quality of the music instead of superficiality of the band. But now that Ladytron has established itself as an ever-changing band that is musically viable, de-emphasizing sexuality from music is no longer necessary. Other aspects of the show were less mechanized as well; when Helen and Mira weren't singing, their dancing had more of a nuanced bounce to the beats than previous live shows where “the robot” dominated.
Unfortunately, while the band became more human in their live shows and album, most of the audience at the El Rey refused to dance along with the music. Strange, considering that Ladytron is first and foremost a dance music band. While the tour was essentially scheduled to promote their newest release, the Extended Play EP, it was hard for them to play those songs, since most tracks of the EP are remixes taken off The Witching Hour, and several British b-side tracks that had not yet been released in the states. Of the two, Extended Play versus The Witching Hour, the real find is in the full length release where the original songs can be found in their original form. As with the improved live show, The Witching Hour is a spectacular mix of the different elements of rock music and electronic music that prove that Ladytron transcend easy definition and categorization, while they remain, at their base, a dance band.
The remixes of the songs on Extended Play are not bad, but that's because the originals were already good to begin with. However, the remixes of the songs don't really add anything amazing to the originals, only make them more dance-able; something not really necessary for the already beat-laden songs. Extended Play is still worth looking into, mainly because of the bonus DVD included with it. The DVD features two videos off The Witching Hour, for the singles "Sugar," and "Destroy Everything You Touch," and a documentary entitled Once Upon a Time in the East: Ladytron in China. The video for "Sugar" has the main members of the band sitting in a waiting room of a photographer, and the video later enters the photographer's studio. Destroy Everything You Touch is set with the band member's faces integrated into a snowy mountain backdrop. Like most videos, they are interesting as an outsider's visual to the band's music.
But the most interesting element of the DVD is the documentary chronicling Ladytron's tour of China. In the summer of 2004, Ladytron were booked to play a series of shows in China as part of an exhibition tour set up by the British Council. The British Council's goal with the exhibition was to promote and improve diplomatic and economic ties through showing the different Chinese cities with what Britain had to offer China. Ladytron were chosen as cultural ambassadors to China for their music, but also because of band member Reuben Wu's Chinese ethnicity; it was seen as a potential link between the Chinese and the British. The tour stops consisted of Shenzhen and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, and Chongqing and Shanghai municipalities. The documentary mainly focused on press conferences and questions asked of the band during their promotional tour, but includes some footage of live performances, sound checks, and interviews with locals. The short video is good for showing the cultural clash between the band and their Chinese interviewers; in one instance, after the music is complimented, the women of the band are asked why they look like boys, a reference to their previous decision to appear asexual in military-styled uniforms in their live shows.
In the same interview, Reuben is asked if he is responsible for the more electronic elements of the band, because he's of Asian decent. And Reuben's ethnicity is asked about on several occasions, where he has to explain that he was born in Liverpool, but his parents are from Hong Kong. With the running time at about 30 minutes, the documentary does not really cover everything with their tour, but it certainly gives an interesting view for fans interested in both indie music and China. The DVD makes the Extended Play EP much more palatable to spend the (roughly) $10 for the purchase, but the real gem is still in The Witching Hour, where all tracks shine untouched by unnecessarily added beats. And the live show is not to be missed under any circumstances. The band wrapped up their U.S. dates at the Glasshouse in Pomona, CA on May 3rd, and did a few promotional in-studio sessions for Los Angeles-based radio stations. After leaving the states, the band has scheduled both live performances and DJ set dates on both sides of the international dateline in the upcoming summer months.