Kobai
Stumbling into the lager-sodden-carpeted Barfly, 20 mins late (as usual), I only manage to catch the end of Cobra Grande, a non-offensive, trendy hair-cutted indie outfit, but am not overly concerned, because next up are Kobai, a six piece electro rock group from Glasgow.
I recieved a demo from Kobai six months ago and was totally blwn away by their diversity and lacfk of desire to cling to the coat tails of 'Raising Kain' or jump on the Dohert-esq smackwagon and actaully have a stab at originality, a trait all too rare in the current Glasgow music scene.
They open with the beautiful 'Undone', flooding the room with haunting vocals and a rythmic ambiance created with the help of delicate keyboard and a hypnotic beat. Next up is 'Seratonin', an untterly danceable belter, synthesized rythms, heavy crubching guitar riffs, explosive beats and a dirty as fuck climax, a clear crowd favourite with the Kobai army of fans. I find 'Shattered' a bit of a non-ground breaking offering, certainly not bland, and maintains the crowds attention and then finds its self being totally destroyed by 'Electronic, another dance infused number, delivering us a wee adrenalin rush and an inability to keep the four limbs still. 'Blinded' is a song that really stands out. Its a sleazy fucker with an obvious influence from The Music, complete with menacing Kasabian-ish attitude and contains more hooks than me nan's crochet bag. The strange Primal Scream/Soulwax hybrid batter through the pulsating set and finish on 'Uber T echno', a hard hitting, energy oozing rave like song(complete with cowbells!) and has the Kobai boys working up a sweat you can almost taste (which I did, but thats another story), no vocals for this one, just fully blown rocking out. The genre-defying boys leave the stage all too soon, making way for touring headliners 'Souldrive' , heavy rock with more than a salute to 'Metallica'.
Laurie MacMillan
