Gig review: Otros Aires & RoughCoastAudio

Published on Thursday 20 January 2011 19:15

OTROS AIRES & ROUGHCOASTAUDIO OLD FRUITMARKET, GLASGOW ***

THERE are so many creative ensembles showcasing inventive, intriguing and ultimately very satisfying musical hybrids at Celtic Connections that one can take for granted the talent and vision required to pull off a credible mix of traditions.

Making their live debut, Ewan McPherson's RoughCoastAudio are still a work in progress. Their tentative blend of Celtic and Nordic song with electronica backing made for an awkward culture clash. Not only did the beats and samples appear grafted on gratuitously, they often drowned out the live instruments.

Argentinian quartet Otros Aires have had a few more years to hone their tango/electro fusion (as pioneered by The Gotan Project), but were still a frustrating proposition, as messy as their odd tangle of visuals, which mixed images of tango troubadour Carlos Gardel, grainy footage of the band and flashes of the testcard.

Couples flooded the dancefloor, eager to display the fruits of those tango lessons, but were momentarily wrongfooted by one number, which used a Kraftwerk-like backing track as its foundation. The players soldiered on regardless, with a languorous, swooning elegy, while the beats thundered irrelevantly underneath.

The fusion worked best when the beats were less obtrusive, but better still were the rare moments when they stripped the performance back to just acoustic instruments. An Astor Piazzolla number was more rewarding listening (and, one presumes, dancing) experience, foregrounding the coquettish interplay between piano and bandoneon and the soulful resonance of the tune.