Live review - The Middle East/ Temper Trap, Somerset House, 12.07.2010

It was the night that the Aussies came to Somerset House and both the crowd and the bands, The Temper Trap and support band The Middle East, seemed to get a kick out of being at one of London’s prettiest venues.

Part of a run of outdoor gigs called the Summer Series, this years bill included Air, The Mystery Jets, Florence + The Machine, The XX , and The Divine Comedy. The outdoor setting, in the courtyard of Somerset House, did add a bit of extra magic to the proceedings as well as some nice acoustics, which were particularly good to the impressive vocal talents of both The Temper Trap and The Middle East.

The Middle East had the harder task as they are still relatively unknown in the UK but it didn’t take them long to win over the crowd of Temper Trap fans with their wistful, acoustic, indie folk sound.

A band of six talented musicians, they are not afraid of adding layer after layer of instrumentation including banjos, flutes, and accordions to the mix leading to really beautiful melodies and truly dreamy songs.

By the time The Middle East got to ‘The Darkest Side’, one of the best from their eight track 2008 album, ‘The Recordings of The Middle East’, the crowd had stopped their conversations altogether to listen to the guys and girl on stage fingerpick and sing — in perfect harmony, of course, — their way through another song.

The band also played a couple of promising-sounding new songs but their most famous song, ‘Blood’ (above) was kept until last supplying another fantastic showcase of their poetic lyrics, mesmerising melodies, and proof that The Middle East are definitely worth looking out for.

Then The Temper Trap took to the stage to a rapturous response from the crowd, which continued throughout their hour-long set.

Starting with ‘Rest’, the group of four stormed through some of their hits from debut album ‘Conditions’, the audience of fans with them all the way, singing along and clapping in all the right places.

New song, ‘Right Here’, went down a storm — slower-paced but still with that great force of energy that is largely down to lead singer Dougy Mandagi’s amazing voice, it left fans whispering to each other that they “can’t wait for the new record”.

‘Fader’ soon got everyone shouting along again, providing a reminder that Temper Trap have already managed to create some great pop songs in their short existence.

Lead singer, Mandagi, has clearly picked up a few crowd-pleasing tricks too — tipping water over the drum he was smashing the heck out of during an epic version of ‘Drum Song’, it sprayed up, hitting the lights and wowing the already spellbound crowd.

Of course, ‘Sweet Disposition’ was the finale, and the crowd really kicked into life when that guitar riff started up, even the rain that immediately started spitting down couldn’t dampen that level of audience enthusiasm.

The sound of clothes

The amazing 'Sound of Clothes: Synaesthesia’ was created by composer Nick Ryan and inspired by Nick Knight's photographs of a Balenciaga jacket - I was certainly put under its spell last month, even if I didn't totally appreciate the rest of the show.

I have been looking for some footage of this amazing piece since visiting the ShowStudio Fashion Revolution exhibition in Sepetember (apologies for the quality but it was the only video I could find!). Ryan was asked by prolific fashion photographer Nick Knight to consider the texture of the different parts of the jacket and recreate these textures and the feelings they evoked through colour and original orchestral scores.

I went along to the Somerset House show with my fashion-enthusiast sister (she studies fashion at the Arts Institute, Bournemouth) who lapped-up some of the more 'out there' exhibits which seemed to my untrained eye to come straight out of the film Zoolander.

It's not that there weren't some amazing and thought-provoking exhibits because there were -such as the 'Synaesthesia’ and the giant Warhol-inspired sculpture of Naomi Campbell which visitors could decorate with their own art or thoughts (below) ...It's just that there was also a range of images created with the help of a CT head scanner which produced pictures of models with parts of their heads missing and the contents of their skulls on show...then again, maybe I'm the one missing something?