It was an ordinary Tuesday evening, the day after Scott Walker had passed away and we went to Islington Assembly Hall prepared to experience something similar to the last gig of Xiu Xiu. We were spectacularly wrong as this live performance was different in many ways and even more powerful.
The one hour of waiting time until John Bence came on stage passed really quickly as we were lucky enough to enjoy great ‘warm up’ music that included songs by The Cure, Nico and Bauhaus. This was, by far, the greatest and more fitting (to what would come next) set of songs that we have been able to listen to before a gig. The evening started calmly and in a rather uneventful way, which of course was hugely deceitful for the performative storm that was just about to ‘hit’ us. John Bence appeared and for the first 3-4′ was seating calmly in front of his laptop…