Lite at The Workman's Club

Lite at the Workmans Club, Dublin, 10th February 2014

Prog is back, if the band opening for LITE are anything to go by in the Workman’s. When math-rock emerged it must have opened a rift in the fabric of space-time, through which poured generation-old ideas of lyric-less, extended instrument breakdowns, extreme time changes, key-shifts and general proggery.

All of which live on in The Physics House Band, right down to the tight paisley shirts, the array of vintage synths including a Moog, a Fender Rhodes and a Hammond, a jazz bass played at approximately neck level, and esoteric track names like Teratology, ObeliskMonolith and Abraxical Solapse. The three lads from Brighton play an incredibly tight set of cleverly arranged, heavy-jazz-prog-rock tracks from their debut ‘Horizons/Rapture’ EP, from which the stand-out is ‘Titan’, an arpeggiated piano-driven monster propelled by the stickwork of Dave Morgan, the first of this evening’s incredible drummers.

A bass has never been played in such a manner that the sheer speed and friction of the bassist’s fingers look like they’ll set the fret board alight. No distractions, little interaction, just a pure ear drum popping rock show.

Wasting no time in taking to the stage, LITE come out to a more than amply packed Workman’s, fitting themselves tightly onto the stage before breaking into their own brand of math rock glory. They’re not a hard band to like. Their intimate, compact live shows are a joy to behold. Their usage of the incendiary musicianship they possess is always humble and modest, and most importantly, the generosity and scale of their releases is unparalleled.

Lite have maintained a consistent schedule of releases for every calendar year since they came into fruition back in 2003. And yet none of these compare to catching the band take centre stage and showcase their intense level of concentration and pure, almost intimate, love of their instruments. This is a band that have had plenty of time to hone their craft and with over a decade together on stage they’ve certainly worked out their own formula of math rock that sets them apart from the bustling music scene spilling out from Japan.

The crowd look overjoyed with the performance as they bustle and bop to the time signatures, clamouring to get a better view of the small stage, blocked, almost entirely, by the throng of taller gentlemen who took their places early on. Alter Ego was fun, with that weird shuffling beat and pulsing bass; it’s certainly a rarity to see a band match the joyous looks on the audience’s faces as they play through their set, with almost all applause saved for Bond, an instant hit for any fan in attendance.

Lite have set themselves up as behemoths in the math rock world, now they just need the rest of the world to understand their equation and they’ll be taking on much larger stages.