Eyeless In Gaza

Perhaps it isn't worth racking our brains too much over why certain innovative bands — ones who've created music that's original, aesthetically compelling and thrilling — remain the preserve of just a handful of devoted fans, but in the case of Eyeless In Gaza, it might be precisely the "intimacy" of their sound and approach that has shaped this story. An intimacy so lyrical, romantic, extreme and turned in on itself that it can feel almost draining, an experience that many might even find unpleasant.

In this 2005, caught up in the never-ending new-wave revival, the Nuneaton duo revives their own legend by landing in London for their first show in the capital in 19 years. Bush Hall is the prestigious venue where Martyn Bates and Peter Becker stage a show that's nostalgic yet full of life, its mood perfectly in tune with their music, which has always been rooted in the lyrical daze of remembering and losing oneself in inner sensations. Pity that the acoustics of the gorgeous Georgian hall aren't the best suited to recreating the immersive atmosphere these sounds need, which end up dissipating and flattening out among the stucco work and elegant false columns lining the walls.

"Luckily", though, the audience is inevitably made up of nostalgics, music critics or devoted admirers, as well as a cheerful, noisy crowd of friends and relatives of Martyn and Peter, so the atmosphere takes on a new and unexpected shade of intimacy, warmth and humanity that EIG's music has always held in potential, even if it was constrained by the melancholic solipsism of the frontman's voice. This departure from the band's usual aesthetic world could have veered into ridicule or into sad, belated self-celebratory posturing, but the duo sidesteps that risk with irony, opening up the experience to a new perspective: perhaps in the "music industry", there are some who don't deliberately seek glory, in order to preserve a more intimate and familiar existential dimension.

The concert: of the two, Martyn is the one who has kept up his musical activity more consistently, whether as a solo artist or collaborating on the most disparate projects, and his readiness and preparation, at first, keep afloat a concert that starts off a little shaky, as if scraping away the thickest layer of rust. Then the old sparkle starts to show through, and the harmony between the two is rediscovered. The setlist is drawn almost entirely from the records of the early Eighties, those ballads suspended between techno pop and industrial, between robotic funk and ecstatic rapture that set the EIG "standard" on their first albums. Nothing is given over to the post-'90 improvisational experiments, and little to the more guitar-pop period of the mid-Eighties. The synth is the very same one from back then, and when the unforgettable line of "Transcience Blues" kicks in, it feels like being catapulted back more than twenty years. "Keynote Inertia", "Changing Stations", "Pearl and Pale" or the more recent, magnificent "Streets I Ran" have lost none of their lyrical and dramatic splendour, none of their utterly original vision of pop drama, lived entirely inward, even when whispered or mournful notes give way to a cry - always a cry directed at some evoked, distant image nonetheless glimpsed within. It seems the liner notes for the forthcoming "Best Of" on Cherry Red are being written by none other than Alan McGee: could the moment of rediscovery have finally arrived even for this most "niche" of wave cult acts?

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