DIGGING DEEPER
GIRLS IN SYNTHESIS
THE ARTIST / AUDIENCE BARRIER...
I’m John, the bassist, and one of the shouters, in the Londonbased punk/post-punk etc etc band Girls In Synthesis. We’ve been playing live since the end of 2016 and our shows are physical, very energetic and, I think, unique. We even used to play on stage. No, seriously. I’ve used to feel that the pedestal-like nature of a band performing to an audience on stage was a necessity and also watched people use it as a status-reminder. Over the last few years, our stage show has developed into an allencompassing, unique spectacle which I feel has laid some important groundwork. The stages. Often full of shit, old gaffer tape, other bands’ setlist (and once, a pair of their fucking pants), broken cables and the smell of stale beer. They were our stages. But they weren’t. They belonged to 3-4 bands a night, 7 nights a week, 4 weeks a month… the stage was where all the magic happened. The audience stared up in amazement. Stared down at their warm cup of Carling, then fucked off home.
During one of our early shows, we had the telepathic decision to abandon the stage, and make a bit of fuss in the crowd. This may not seem like an epiphany worth writing about, but it started something. From then on, we started the set on stage and then, at a certain point in the show, took the mics off the stage, planted them firmly in the crowd and played the rest of the show from there. Instantly, the atmosphere changed. People reacted in exactly the opposite way you’d think they would; they loosened up, became more animated and everyone wanted a bit of mic time. And so they should. The shows became theirs as well as ours. The audience became performers. Someone once said that we were a ‘socialist band’. I don’t think that was meant politically, things aren’t as clear cut as that. I’d like to think that they meant we level the playing field between the artist (us) and the audience (them) and make it about ALL of US. We’ve played around 80-90% of our shows this way (we had to admit defeat at Brixton Academy, 48
which was a sad day…) and often to the detriment of what we can hear sound-wise. But you can’t argue with the results. It’s become a big talking point with regards to the band and how people view our performances. And I’m not pretending this has never been done, it’s an old cliché really, isn’t it? Breaking down the barrier between the band and the audience. Hippy bollocks. But it feels like we’ve actually succeeded to some degree, and in a way that maybe others haven’t. It’s made the shows POP. Could every band perform this way? Absolutely not. Should every band? Probably not… depends on what you want to achieve. I’ve seen pictures of confused guitarists milling about in the audience like they’ve lost their way to the toilet, so I’d say have an intent in why you want to interact in that way. The frightening aspect is, how our performances will fare with COVID, social distancing and the amount of sweat I’m covered in one song in. We might have to go back to playing on stage. Now there’s a thought…
Photography by Bea Dewhurst
