Zan Lyons at The Raindance Film Festival

On Friday boo and I went to see Zan Lyons playing at The Spice of Life as part of The Raindance Film Festival.

I was introduced to his work last year at This is Our Punk Rock. I’d mainly gone to see Alec Empire and Venetian Snares but was absolutely blown away by Zan Lyon’s blend of glitchy noisy electronica with live violin and video art.

boo and I arrived early, paid entry and got stamped so we could disappear off to The Trocadero and play in the arcade. They’ve changed some of the games and I couldn’t find Virtua Tennis 3 or a Ghost Recon Machine with the swipe card memory. On the plus side, the Silent Hill arcade is pretty fun but it’s drowned out by the nearby dancing games.

Anyway, we got back to the venue just before Zan Lyons was due to perform. I was a little surprised to not see any familiar faces from the noise scene but we managed to secure a table with a perfect view of the stage and the projector screen. I had high expectations for the gig and I certainly wasn’t disappointed - the music was beautiful and perfectly complemented by the projections. Some of the video reminded me of Chris Cunningham’s works involving bodies but I wouldn’t say it was derivative. The fact that Zan Lyons was incorporating live sampling also set him apart from other electronic musicians who you can never tell how much is presequenced. He certainly didn’t “just press play”.

All in all well worth the £5 entry fee and a much better experience than my other proposed entertainment for the evening - watching an episode of the next series of The IT Crowd being filmed. Zan Lyons is highly recommended and I’m now going to have to track down some of his releases when my invoices finally get paid.