26-06-2007 Cynic

Support: Textures; Venue: Doornroosje
By: Wouter van de Kamp

With their second album “Drawing Circles” Textures really live up to the high expectations they created with their first release Polars. After hearing that bassplayer Dennis had quit Textures I was very curious how they would fill this vacancy.

As I later heard from the keyboardplayer he had learned  to  play Dennis’ parts in only  three days. That really is a huge acomplishment since Textures’ polyrythms are all but straightforward. After seeing Textures so many times I wasn’t really surprised anymore by their great enthusiasm they show on stage, which fits their music perfectly. It was obvious that Dennis’ stand-in wasn’t part of the band. He was far more static, but hey, only three days… The crowd reacted quite enthusiastic as well.

And then it was time for Cynic. I had heard their album Focus and seeing Textures named themselves after a song by them I was quite curious as to what they would be like live. When you see a sixstring bass entering the stage you almost instantly know what you can expect: artists that own their instruments. And they did live up to that expectation. They take playing instruments to an almost impossibly high level. Nevertheless they do not know how to show that in their performance. They stand their staticly and the interaction with the audience was minimized to below zero. It looked like they were running in automatic pilot. A brilliant one, but boring for those who do not know the music. Another major demerit was that the grunts and keys were taken account for, not by any artist, but by a tape. How could such a band do that?!?! I hope the fans were not too disappointed since I saw a lot Cynicshirts walking around. I had seen it after three songs. Good to have seen them, but I will not go and see them again.

Pictures of this gig available here

Links:
Textures official
Cynic official
Doornroosje