On the last night of a month-long tour, Esser and DATAROCK (and KAV for the West Coast) were playing a venue in Seattle rhat completely dropped the ball with the show’s production. The sound was terrible and non-existent in the monitors and the promoter was not-to-be-found until about 10pm and booked this terrible hipster rap act that ate up the headliner’s set time and threw water all over the stage (which doesn’t mix well with electronics!). Also, Seattle (and maybe all of Washington) has this bogus law about “No alcoholic beverages onstage”. All in all, it was a weird scene. But we made the best of it until finally the band was asked to stop playing around 1:30 am.

On top of this, the last night of any tour is subject to some ribbing, some hijinks…you know, shenanigans. One camera can’t possible do this night justice but I can hope that this sheds a little light on the situation. A cautionary tale.

KAV (myspace.com/kavsonic) is a person as well as a band. Kav himself was the guitarist for the reformed HAPPY MONDAYS, legendary in the UK. KAV, the band, just got off the road from a destructively brilliant week of shows with upstarts Esser and high-energy DATAROCK.

Tonight KAV will be at Spaceland (1717 Silverlake Blvd, LA) for KROQ’s “Locals Only” FREE MONDAYS with October Residents: LightFM as well as Obi Best and Wrong Way Driver. Like I said this is a FREE SHOW so stop down and enjoy some music from across the pond!

If you can say anything about Ladytron its that their style has always been constant. There will always be great vintage synth sounds, good beats, and some hot Bulgarian-Glaswegian tag team vocals. 604 and Light & Magic are unquestionably hipster masterworks good enough to make anyone dress in black and go to indie fashion shows. It’s certainly what kept me up at 3am sculpture and ceramics labs in art college. But in the last few years I as a fan have been questioning the potentcy of their trademark style. When Witching Hour came out I started noticing less and less scortchers like “Seventeen” and “Flicking Your Switch” leading me to think that Ladytron might be losing their cool. This is more apparent on Velocifero, which seems to work really well as background working music and not the dancefloor ragers of just a few years ago. Maybe one of the differences is that the songs have gotten so much longer. The music that used to seem like a glimmer for dj’s to build off of is now a drone to be swallowed by white noise. Velocifero is not unlistenable, just hard to praise. It comes out June 9th but if possible catch them on tour this summer with Norway’s Datarock. The highlight of the album may be their current single “Ghosts” now available on iTunes with a bevy of upscale remixes. I’ll say this about the simplicity of Ladytrons music, it lends itself very well to remixes. Sometimes, you can hardly tell which was the original.

Ladytron may just be what they’ve always been, an amazing band to shop to.

Ladytron’s Velocifero (Nettwerk) gets a 4/10 with hopes that the next album brings a bit of an overhaul to their sound (like more guitar).