Benefits

The Rumshack, 29 April

Tuesday night and the sun is out in Glasgow on a very pleasant evening. The crowds are in the parks or outside on the pavements eating and drinking to their hearts and wallets are content.

Meanwhile, in the darkest recesses of The Rumshack, both support act Hang Linton and headliners Benefits, have managed to entice a sizeable crowd to forego the summer setting for a barrage of hard-hitting social consciousness.

Benefits frontman Kingsley Hall provides the energy, delivering poetic lyrics with the fury that resonates with the collective messages that form the backbone of their work. Think heavily politicised spoken word to the backdrop of the darkest crannies of electronic music.

In the darkened confines of the venue, allied to a strobe lighting onslaught, he appears from and disappears into the shadows in equal measure lending, a sense of foreboding throughout the night.

While the album title from which most of the songs come from, Constant Noise, is a fair description of the evening’s sounds, there is much more to the music than the rant and drone noises that may have been the description of previous gigs by them in the city.

It’s not all about Kingsley and the venom he manages to display though. Robbie Major performs like a sound engineer on the night, mixing the techno style beats with the industrial backdrops that frame Kingsley’s lyrics perfectly.

Whether on the electric violin, keyboards or myriads of electronic gizmos that clutter his area, the sounds reverberate around the room enabling the crowd to bob, toe tap and even weave in unison.

It’s difficult to pigeonhole the music being delivered by Benefits. Amongst the poetry recital, there are grand statements being made to the backdrops created in an almost cinematic way. Hip-hop? Rap? Industrial? Experimental? Perm any one from all of these, at anytime throughout the set.

How significant is their choice of cover, Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream? A passionate performance with a hopeful message.

This was an uncompromising set of songs. They are there to make us all think about the way our lives are being managed/mis-managed. Watching and listening to both Kingsley and Robbie is an experience and one we hope to repeat in the future.

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Support Act – Hang Linton

Merging funk, dance punk & breakbeats, Hang Linton delivered a mixed set of songs that demonstrated the breadth of music that has influenced himself and many others over the years.

Whether strumming his electric guitar or berating aspects of life with a simple backing track and microphone, he delivered a performance that proved the perfect warm up for Benefits.

He’s a multi-talented individual with a nod to the expressive arts, and the mix of body language, sounds and genuine warmth as a person, endeared him to the audience.

Similar messages coming from both acts on the night. Such a huge disappointment that those in power don’t understand, can’t relate to or even want to listen to what’s actually going on across the country.