Ipso Facto - Live: 26th Sept 2008

No-Wave. Nu-No Wave. There's a low rumble and a sedate pace. Cool seduction hangs palpably on the air. Four shadowy apparitions wearing precision bobs thump out their slow repetitive rhythms. The noise comes like the elongated stretch of an icy glacier as it carves its infinitesimally slow progress through a Scandanavian fjord. Not so much played as released. Beyond the craning necks is where this in-action is at. Through dim lights and dry ice resides the source of this oblique reverb and lulling hypnotic riffs. The wellspring of sweet sardonic vocals and parping, ghostly keys is here. Siren like. Calling. It's intriguing. Intoxicating. Unsettling sometimes. This is Ipso Facto.

As an all female quartet in tune with their 'look' as much as their music it'd be easy to be distracted by the visuals but there's much more than mere style and mannequin moves. The bizzaro fairground atmospherics of "Smoke and Mirrors" is disorientating and seductive whereas the studied shimmer and Souxsie Sioux delivery of "Ears and Eyes" displays perfectly the foursome's knack of creating something fresh from the foundations of decades gone by. Think Marianne Faithfull, Nico era Velvets and the gothfather (and mother) roles of The Cure and The Banshees, but only as jumping off points. Sound like a humourless exercise in studied retro indulgence? Not a bit of it.

As the pace quickens and the crowd relax more Ipso Facto deliver a deliberately non-standard set of material the highlight of which is "Introducing", as infectious and vibrant a two minutes as you could hope for whilst maintaining the appearance of austerity. Soundtracking the darker, more melancholic corners of any dancefloor they urge you to "Roll up!" Making eager promises which thrill and disturb simultaneously like they're proprietors of some Victorian sideshow carnival and they very well might be, they're certainly the only show in town worth anything right now and you can't help but peer inside.


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