A little bit more

The evening started off on a brave mission to try and find a ticket for a friend of mine who decided on the 11th hour that he was keen to go catch Little Dragon live in Johannesburg. We made arrangements and weaved ourselves into a colourful crowd and as usual beautiful music has a way of bringing old faces to one place in the most humbling way. The opening act was a one man wonders Vampire 9000 who set the mood for what would be an electrogasm of a night. Felix Laband came on shortly after the fierce Vampire and had the crowd in a trance with what seemed to be a kwaito based fusion of abstract music with creepy samples from what I believe to be m'zeke zeke.

Enter Little Dragon, they walked on stage like it was another day at the office and it wasn’t long before they fed off the crowd's energy and had the crowd buzzing in delight and admiring in awe. When the first song ended I was deeply saddened and disappointed...maybe I had high expectations from such a world-renowned group. I was forced to endure the pain as I stood and listened, waiting for my moment of euphoria. I must say the engineers were to blame for the poor sound that had the vocals sounding like they were coming out of a mic from an underground hip-hop session, it was so terrible that I walked away from one of my favourite songs (ritual union) to buy a cold one and make small talk outside by the bar area.

Later the band signed out and left the stage, the crowd then proceeded in a proudly South African manner screaming,  "We want more". 

After about a minute or so the group trickled back onto the stage and delivered what I had been waiting for, Yukimi Nagano’s shades and hat was off and her soul started pouring out of her lips, the rest of the band followed in with even more passion than before, the music was like warm honey down my ears, the crowd had sparked a passion in the band and from that point in Little Dragon set the stage ablaze with an amazing performance. My heart dropped when they officially left and I found myself in two worlds not knowing whether I was content or sad, either way I had seen my favourite band and wonderd if I will ever enjoy their music again.

Pictures taken  by:  Nicholas Nabìl Tebogo Rawháni