26-02-2011 Clan of Xymox

Supports: Fertile Reality; Venue: Tivoli de Helling, Utrecht (Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Tivoli starts quite calm but later the night it fills up quite well. Clan of Xymox is headlining and Fertile Reality is taken as support.

Fertile Reality is an indie/new wave band. They have been around since the 90’s and got their music out to some radio stations. Tonight they start with an introduction of the band and everyone seemed to be called Ed. No one found this so funny and someone asked why they didn’t name themselves “The Eddies” or something like that. Let’s keep this to their specific sort of humor that not everyone appreciated. In between the songs this returned some times, but no one seemed to be take note of it any longer. Musically the band brings a little more excitement. It is quite calm music though, finding the strength in the guitars rather than the vocals who seemed to stay a bit back in the mix, especially in the start. The band entertained quite ok, but I doubt they convinced a lot of people to their sound. When they left the stage they got a polite and modest applause.

Clan of Xymox started in the 80’s. From the original setting only Ronny Moorings is still active in the band, stated on the website that he is Clan of Xymox and the others on stage are just live members. They have pretty much filled the venue with fans, a good thing to see is that there are people from all ages. A very diverse audience. Also the music of them has a few different sides. They have this side with quite calm dark wave songs, fans just listen to this calmly and sing along sometimes. On the other side they have some more passionate songs that get the crowd dancing. At this concert the band gives a mix of those and switches them of quite often. The band played for example their song “Emily” which was a 2009 single but also go back further in time which gives great contrast in their set. On the stage it is mainly Ronny who gets the attention, while the rest of the musicians more focus on the music, but there is still a little show element. This doesn’t distract from the music as this is clearly what the focus is on. They gave a intimate show that certainly got people dancing, a show to remember. The band clearly seem to enjoy themselves as well. At the end of the set they keep coming back to play some more.