Gig review: ESG

ONE of those bands whose cult status and influence – on bands from Franz Ferdinand to The Rapture – has always far exceeded their commercial impact, veteran American post-punk ensemble ESG’s first Scottish date in several years only merited a booking in one of the city’s smaller basement venues, but Broadcast was suitably packed and pulsating.

ESG 's Renee Scroggins performing on stage. Picture: Getty

ESG - Broadcast, Glasgow

***

An after-hours weekend club setting would have been the optimum time and place for a show by a group whose primitive, repetitive, polyrhythmic-beats based tunes grew out of the stylistic melting pot of late 1970s and early 1980s New York and essentially presaged the feel of electronic dance music by several years.

Led by sisters Renee and Marie Scroggins on vocals, assorted percussion and drum machine, with Nicole Nicholas on bass and Nicholas Nicholas on congas and dancing (mostly dancing) they had the chutzpah to drop in after just a couple of numbers probably their best-known song, the aptly named Dance, with its shrilly yelped vocals and savagely simple – if typically wonkily played – groove. Considering the distinct similarity of a lot of their stuff, though – closer Erase You would later recycle Dance’s drums and bass line practically note-for-note – it hardly risked driving punters home early.

The ESG experience is one for body much more than mind, finding feel-good flow in often quite dark places – the one-guitar-note drone of instrumental UFO, for instance, or the minor-key stomp of Moody. With dancer Nicholas (who didn’t move so much well as enthusiastically and often) leading by example, there can hardly have been a static pair of feet in the room by the climax of You Make No Sense.

Seen on 24.06.14