Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 26/01/09

With interest piqued in America's avant-rock scene by the recent saunterings of Telepathe, Gang Gang Dance and Animal Collective into the public consciousness, north London's Luminaire tonight prepares itself for Lucky Dragons. But where those three aforementioned call New York borough Brooklyn home, Lucky Dragons pair Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara hail from Los Angeles: a city whose underbelly has been tickled more recently by punk-ish acts like No Age, HEALTH and Abe Vigoda.

Over the next 45 minutes, Lucky Dragons seem to straddle the two cities; fusing the guitar shunning, laptop-based nature of Brooklyn experiments with the communal good vibes fostered in future-famous hometown venue The Smell. The duo, set up on the venue's floor, quash inhibitions with the opener before distributing rattles among the crowd. On closer inspection the rattles appear to be crudely sculpted and home-made, sticks bound in pairs by black tape and with wires plugged, somehow, into a central control box that Fischbeck manipulates, scattering the sound across pre-set loops and the dense, rhythmic chatter of drum samples.

It's a novel way to turn onlookers into participants - for most, setting up in the midst of an audience seems to betray an urge to conjure the sticky intimacy of dive bar gigging, but for Lucky Dragons it's more like a pre-school group learning session, childish grins emerging on the faces of those contributing to the warm fits of noise with their own DIY percussion. Leading the exercise is Fischbeck who, after parading around a while with a home-made clave jutting naughtily from his groin, furnishes the crowd with a series of wires, again rigged up to that central effects box.

The wires seem to respond to human touch, so that when Yahoo! Music grabs hold a huge roar goes up from the PA. When someone else touches our arm the sound is altered, the most dramatic differences occurring when two both in possession of wires link skin. Soon, the inner circle is a roaring, whizzing knot of shifting noise, all smiles as the backing track loyally runs through bass lines and Rara adds to the clamour with an electronic flute and mic'd up tambourines.

As songs drift dreamily into each other, thoughts turn to those at the crowd's rear - such is Lucky Dragons' emphasis on communion that it must be galling to feel omitted. But for those fortunate enough to be stood or sat within touching distance, Fischbeck and Rara's inventions provide a night to remember, the public grateful for the intelligence and imagination of their makers.

by Kev Kharas