Live: Indiana and Shelter Point

 

It’s 8pm and Shelter Point take to the stage to a mostly full Rescue Rooms. Or at least half of them do. Robin begins the performance solo, playing an eerie percussion intro before Liam struts on stage and layers the dream like vibrations with his atmospheric vocals.

Rumour has it that Zane Lowe loves this band so much that he actually uses Shelter Point as background wanking music. That may or not be true, but the duo have been getting a lot of attention on Radio 1 and recently conducted a brilliant show on the BBC Introducing stage at Hockley Hustle a few weeks back.

The two-piece certainly know how to captivate an audience. The sound created is cosmic and takes full attention of the senses, locking the gaze of the crowd firmly to the stage. Robin, looking suspiciously like he belongs in Kraftwerk, plays a mesmerising set. An array of effects and percussion that decorate the magic carpet ride of Liam’s voice. If I’m brutally honest, this isn’t my sort of music, but when they're are in full flow that is forgotten as your mind gets lost in a sparkling audio galaxy. Bravo, Shelter Point.

Next up is one of the shining diamonds of the Nottingham music scene that is poised to become a superstar. Having watched the breakthrough of Indiana from the very beginning I have a strange but fierce loyalty towards her. I don't think there is anything she could ever do in her career that I would criticise or "unlike" her for because she is such a brilliant chapter in the success story of the Nottingham music scene. Check out this interview after her first ever live gig.

Perhaps this opinion of Fridays night’s performance at Rescue Rooms might be built on bias from the start but I will try and be objective.

Shelter Point - Cut Me Loose

Halloween might have been and gone but Friday night’s happenings at 25 Goldsmith’s Street were scary. Indiana is a black magic woman. From the first seconds of the set an inescapable spell is cast upon the room. Bounding every soul within range into an involuntary frozen state of stunned silence. Her voice so powerfully delicate and her backing band brilliantly reinforcing every beautiful note. Indiana performs a perfect set proving why her debut album is so hotly anticipated. Heart on Fire is an absolutely huge pop anthem waiting to happen. The glittering fragility in the chorus unbearably gorgeous to the ears, while dark sultry numbers like Smoking Gun and Mess Around are performed with an assured coolness.

One of the downsides about become a mainstream artist and being played on national daytime radio one is that you are inevitably going to start to attract some wrong-uns to your shows. Unfortunately there is a splattering of rude people in the crowd who can’t seem to obey the gig etiquette of shutting-the-fuck-up while Indiana is singing; Blind As I Am silences them. Obviously the highlight of the set. It is more than a song. A few minutes of supernatural stupor as the stand alone vocals ring out across the room. Every neck hair stands up, pints pouring out the taps freeze mid-way, people literally stop breathing. Indiana’s voice penetrates through the air, washing across everyone in a spine-tingling, goosebump generating spell. The is no other live music experience quite like hearing Blind As I Am in the flesh.

A sold out venue roar Indiana back onstage for the encore and sing along every word to the super-cool Solo Dancing. Indiana may act timid and shy onstage but she knows she possesses dark magic powers, “Hypnotised by the law of motion, music stops and the spell is broken.” And as the music stops the spell is indeed broken, evaporating from the room and releasing the hypnotised crowd as they explode into applause.

Indiana and Shelter Point played at the Rescue Rooms on Friday 7 November 2014.

Indiana website
Shelter Point website