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March 4, 2015

Review: BRNS @ Birthdays, London 02/19/15

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Reviewed by Nathan Hetherington

Despite the fact Belgian 4-piece BRNS emerged two years ago, this small but perfectly formed East London venue played host to their second ever live show in the city, and the general feeling from the fairly excitable crowd reflected the fact that even though it’s only a relatively small body of water separating them from their homeland, this wasn’t the most common of occurrences.

Firstly, the support act Febueder couldn’t have been better suited to the task, featured here earlier in 2013 this band have yet to have a significant break but here they delivered excellent lo-fi sounds, much like a raggedy, bitter version of Glass Animals or Alt-J.

BRNS start the set with some of the heavy brooding atmospherics found on the new record “Patine” and build up to the danceable single “Mexico” from their debut effort. On the way they seam together a varied set that takes in the four part melodica intro of “My Head Is Into You” and machine gun drums of “Here Dead He lies”, a rare disparity in their performance which leave you in awe of the drummer/lead vocalist’s respective talents.

At times you notice the void left in the center of the stage where normally you’d find a front man, but it is the climactic points of their material where the group really come together, sounding like a united force and conjuring up vocals reminiscent of Foals’ early work with the percussive quirkiness of Cymbals or new comers Acid Jazz. Needless to say, BRNS are an act that testify when pushing the boundaries of genre can work to an unexpectedly glorious extent.

Vuurwerk belgium (Soundcloud)

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