Autamata

Sometimes, it’s nice to have your expectations confounded. Only passingly familiar with the Autamata oeuvre beforehand, I arrived at TBMC with a fixed view of what was in store – specifically another studio-oriented outfit offering a worthy but ultimately dull attempt at translating their record into a live setting – and instead bore witness to one of the best gigs I’ve seen in quite some time.

Ken McHugh has transposed his debut album, My Sanctuary, from disc to stage with flair and imagination. With the truly spellbinding vocals of The Tycho Brahe’s Carol Keogh captivating the audience from the off, the suprisingly formal guitar/bass/drums/keyboards line-up masterfully wove a supremely atmospheric, hypnotic wall of sound. The background visuals, meanwhile, were perfectly in sync with the music’s spooky brilliance – slow tracks through space, flowers coming into bloom, reversed footage of collapsing buildings.

Not that this was by any means an exclusively, low-key, downtempo affair – the band kick out the jams with the rendition of the first My Sanctuary single, ‘Jive County’, which metamorphoses from its earlier lo-fi, electro incarnation into something of a bass- heavy, funk opus. Taking the rudiments of the post-rock template and adding the visceral, emotional wallop of Aphex Twin or Mogwai, Autamata have even at this early stage rocketed to the forefront of the Dublin independent scene. Mightily impressive.