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Kulturfabrik, Krefeld, Germany
1st November 2007
Orkus International Festival Tour: Dope Stars Inc., Kirlian Camera, London after Midnight

To celebrate the first anniversary of the Orkus magazine being available in shops all over the world with an English issue, the Orkus International Festival Tour was initiated. Starting as of 27th October, the tour leads the bands through cities in Belgium, Germany, Italy and others. The line-up consisted amongst others of two living legends LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT and KIRLIAN CAMERA. On 1st November the venue was the Kulturfabrik in Krefeld.


Dope Stars Inc.

Founded in spring 2003, this band has a rather short but nevertheless successful history. When they released their first EP ‘10.000 Watts of artificial pleasures’, they attracted much attention from scene magazines even though it was initially published as a digital download only via Internet. In 2005 they signed a record deal with the German label Trisol. Short after that happened, the band entered the studio together with Thomas Rainer from L'AME IMMORTELLE and John Fryer who already worked for acts like NINE INCH NAILS or DEPECHE MODE, to produce their first full-length album ‘Neuromance’ which hit the stores at the end of August 2005. An EP called ‘Make a Star’ was the next musical sign of life released in august 2006 followed by the second album ‘Gigahearts’ at the end of 2006. DOPE STARS INC. are: Victor Love: (vocals, guitar, synths, programming), La Nuit (guitar), Darin Yevonde (bass) and Noras Blake (live synths). http://www.dopestarsinc.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/dopestarsinc



Music
When you enter the website of the band, the title row says “Industrial Rock'n'Roll” and one can only agree with that. Electronic beats are fused together with heavy guitar riffs and the sometimes harsh and sometimes clean vocals of Victor Love. To be honest, id didn't fully match my taste, but I have to admit that some songs were quite good and one couldn't resist to at least nodding with the head and feet. One word about the sound during the gig which really was terrible with too much bass and only in mono. It was not the bands fault; some people might have become a wrong impression of how the band really sounds.



Performance
The first band members entered the stage to a literally classic intro like an opera. The rest of the band followed accompanied by the well-known “Star Wars Theme” which always appeared when Darth Vader was about to appear. Everyone got into position. Three guys including Victor on the front and one in the back to care for the electronic elements of the songs coming from a Mac Book. The performance was a bit too static for me, but the guys know how to handle their tools, that's for sure. The audience seemed to be not very ecstatic for me.



Most people were just standing around and listened except for some folks, who screamed at the guys on stage and some others who were dancing very exhaustive. I guess most people in the venue really came for the other following bands.

Setlist
01. Theta Titanium
02. Bang Your Head
03. Lost
04. Infection 13
05. Self Destructive Corp.
06. Can You Imagine
07. Defcon 5
08. Ace of Spades (Cover)

Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 6
Sound: 5
Light: 9
Total: 6.7




Kirlian Camera

Do I really have to introduce KIRLIAN CAMERA? The project was already founded in 1980 by Angelo Bergamini. Initially the name of the band was SUICIDE COMMANDO but was later dropped because of similarities with another well-known band which has the same name. So the name changed to KIRLIAN CAMERA. The name derives from a special camera invented by Semion Kirlian which is obviously able to take photos of the aura of a human body. The initial band line-up also consisted of the keyboard player Fabrizio Chiari, the bass player Mauro Montacchini and the singer Simona Buja. The band now looks back on a 27 years long career with an impressive amount of releases and several line-up changes. Their latest album ‘Coroner's Sun’ was released at the beginning of 2006 via Trisol and a collection including all the singles, b-sides and remix collaborations of the band which is planned for a release in March 2008. KIRLIAN CAMERA are: Angelo Bergamini (keyboards, electronics, vocals), Elena Alice Fossi (lead and backing vocals, keyboards, electronics, bass guitar), Sarah Crespi (violin, viola, keyboard, guitar, pc) and Andrea Savelli (keyboard). http://www.kirliancamera.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/kirliancamerafront



Music
The music of KIRLIAN CAMERA is mostly electronic, but covers a variety of styles ranging from more melancholic and gentle tunes to rather club-driven tunes with pounding beats as well as some rocking tunes due to the integration of heavy guitar riffs always enthroned by the wonderful voice of Elena Alice Fossi. The set contained songs from the most recent albums like ‘Coroner's Sun’ or the wonderful ‘K-Pax’ but also the well known classic ‘Eclipse’. It was a very diverse set with songs to dream and songs to dance.



Performance
The lights went out and a classical melody appeared and soon four hooded shapes entered the stage with flashlights in their hands and took positions at on the stage. As long as the classical melody was played, the four stood still. They sometimes just held their flashlights into the audience. As the melody stopped, the lights lit up, the masks were removed and everyone got into his position. Angelo Bergamini was the only one, who did not remove his mask. When the first song started, the eyes of the audience focussed on Elena who enchanted the crowd with her wonderful and varied chant, not to mention that she's a very beautiful woman and some girls might have been jealous because their boyfriends were rather looking at her in her very tight dress. After a short break, Elena changed her dress which was even more short than before.



Elena was mostly in the near of her microphone , while Angelo was doing the keys and Andrea, who was standing behind Elena in the middle of the stage, was doing synths together with Sarah who was placed on the right side of the stage. On some songs of the set like 'K-Pax', the band was also accompanied by a violin played by Sarah Crespi, which added a great organic note to the songs and caused me goose bumps more than one time, during the gig. After the set had ended and the band left the stage, the crowd demanded an encore. Well, they got it, but they had to wait a little bit longer than usual, cause the band seemed to enjoy the clapping of the hands outside, but they finally entered the stage again to play some additional songs. I almost forgot to mention the lights.



While the lights that were mounted on the forefront mostly bathed the stage in red, the ones mounted at the backside lit up and painted the stage in many different colours. Sadly there were no video projections this time which usually give a special feeling to the presented songs.

Setlist
01. Intro - Ein deutsches Requiem
02. In the endless rain
03. Coroner’s sun
04. The path of flowers
05. Illegal apology of crime
06. Erinnerung
07. Herzwunden / Cia haunted headquarters
08. K-pax
09. News
10. Comfortably numbs
11. Edges
12. Heldenplatz
---
13. Ascension
14. Eclipse

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 8
Sound: 7
Light: 9
Total: 8.4




London after Midnight

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is a rock music project formed in the 1990s by singer / songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sean Brennan. One could describe their style as gothic rock, though the band and especially Sean Brennan always refused such a categorisation of the music as “artistically limiting”. They had their live debut at the premier Gothic Rock club Helter Skelter in Los Angeles, where they already attracted the attention of the crowd with their unusual live show and stage setting consisting of TVs playing bizarre video clips for example and already gathered some fans at that time. The fan-base grew gradually with the release of a self-titled demo followed by a tour. The first album 'Selected Scenes from the end of the World' was released in late 1991. It includes the songs from the demo release plus additionally recorded tracks.



Five years should pass until the second album entitled 'Psycho Magnet' was released in 1996. The third album 'Oddities' was then released in 1998. Then it went silent around the band, even though a new album was already announced in 2003, it took almost four more years 'til the follow up album to 'Oddities' with the title 'Violent Acts of Beauty' finally should be released at the end of October 2007. LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT are: Sean Brennan (vocals, guitar, bass, cello, violin, programming, drums, keyboards), Eddie Hawkins (live guitar), Joe.S (live drums), Tamlyn (live keyboards, sound samples), Randy Mathias (live bass). http://www.londonaftermidnight.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/lam



Music
The music of LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is mostly described as Gothic Rock even though the band and especially Sean Brennan always refused a categorisation. As the new album 'Violent Acts of beauty' was just released about a week ago, the set consisted of many songs from the new album like ‘Feeling fascist?’ or ‘America is a fucking disease’, which Sean announced with the word “This song is dedicated to our wonderful country America... our really wonderful country America” with a more than sarcastic undertone in his voice. They also played some of the classics of course like ‘Your best Nigtmare’ and ‘Spider and the fly’. Sound-wise, LAM suffered from the same problems as DSI. Someone there has really messed something up what was a pity for all those people looking forward a great concert.



Performance
Introduced by a piece of music by the Cossack Choir, the band entered the stage. Sean Brennan all dressed up in lacquer and such, while Randy Mathias who played the bass was wearing a top which made some girls in the crowd scream. For me it was a little bit too transparent. There was a little bit more movement on stage this time. While Sean Brennan was fully concentrated with singing and simultaneously playing his guitar most of the time, the bass player Randy Mathias was always in motion and moving to the rhythm. He was also the one who was responsible for encouraging the crowd to raise and clap their hands, what the crowd did immediately.



Of course the audience demanded an encore and the band returned to play three additional songs. After the gig had ended and the rest of the band already left the stage, the drummer Joe S. grabbed the microphone and thanked the audience for a great concert and threw his sticks into the crowd.

Setlist
01. Intro
02. Feeling Fascist?
03. Republic
04. Your best Nightmare.
05. Shatter
06. Heaven now
07. Nothing's sacred
08. The Kids are all wrong
09. America's a fucking disease
10. Kiss
---
11. Spider and the Fly
12. Bondage
13. Sacrifice

Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 8
Sound: 4
Light: 8
Total: 7.4





After the show ended and some people were already heading towards the exit, we had the possibility to chat a little bit with KIRLIAN CAMERA about life on tour and such topics as well as we learned that Angelo has a real dry humour. Sometimes we were not sure if he was just joking or if he was serious about it. One could not read it from his face. After quite some time we finally had to leave so we heartily said goodbye to everyone and headed towards home.

All pictures by Daniela Vorndran (http://www.vorndranphotography.com/ / http://www.black-cat-net.de/ / www.myspace.com/vorndranphotography)
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