Words by Holly Warren. In Bloom In Tune
Whatever you were doing last Wednesday night, nothing could have been as hip as Dead Ceremony at Electrowerkz. Drinking gluten-free green-tea mocktails out of a mason jar in Brixton is only for posers now, the real place to be was in an old warehouse down a side street in Angel paying £4 for a can of Strongbow (well, how else are they going to pay for those light installations?). How cool is it on a scale of one-to-doesn’t even have a sign? It doesn’t have a sign, so even the people who have heard of it can’t find it.
The dark, smoky room was the perfect place for Dead Ceremony’s icy, ethereal electronica. There was an air of concentration on their faces and they were so absorbed by the music and achieved an electronic sound with guitars and actual drums over a drum loop. The chilled-out geometrical sound paired with drawn out, emotional vocals became a transportive combination, and made it easy to forget it was a work night and you needed to go home and make dinner. In the hazy enclosed room, the steady beats and euphoric sounds of third song, 'Losing You', made you feel as if you were in an after-hours club, and it would be incredible in a festival tent. You know when you’re exhausted from jumping around and singing along, and a bit too drunk, and you want something really beautiful with a strong beat to move around to in the dark while you’re out of your head? Dead Ceremony are the perfect act.
They managed to create a three dimensional sound with a depth that filled the room, the singer lost in the music, seeming to forget he was being watched. The band picked up the energy during 'Looking Glass' [listen below]; a radio-ready tune with a bridge that left me singing “Black smoke rises from rooftops and no one gets out here alive” for days afterwards. Dead Ceremony's sound is so current and their tracks have already found their way on to Radio 1, so it was a wonder the place was so empty. Where were the flocks of Ms Mr and Chvrches fans? Either they haven’t caught on yet or they’re still wandering lost around Islington.