Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Black Ghosts

The Echo, July 26, 2008

Loaded with acres of ace tuneage about monsters, mayhem, money and making out, and blessed with a bracingly bashing couldn’t-give-a-toss attitude, British electro-punkrock party boyz Does It Offend You, Yeah’s set on the Echo’s small stage Saturday night felt like being in the right place at the right time. That’s because, well, you also got the feeling that Does It Offend are, just maybe, precisely peaking right about… now! (You ought to try and catch them play live right away, like within the next month or two.)

DIOY,Y themselves seem pretty much aware that what they do is re-stir that heady stewpot of sheer youth, confused outlook, testosterone-fueled aggro and need to say something, anything, and that what they do has a short shelf life; seems, in fact, like that idea was the impetus in forming the band in the first place. Whatever, the London four-piece have a pretty distinctive punk slop/electro-precision sound, which made for a lot of funny dance moves by the crowd at the Echo, who had to alternate between pogoing and breakdancing, sort of, or like some bizarre combination of the two. Point is, dance the crowd did, unlike anything I’ve seen in many a day. In point of fact, the room was a-rockin’, to near crumbling point. Extraordinary…

Boasting boss titles such as “Weird Science” and “Let’s Make Out,” “We Are Rockstars,” “Dawn Of The Dead” and “60 Ft Octopus,” the band’s songs for the most part are a bunch of jokey lyrical gobbledygook wrapped around James Rushent’s funkily fuzzed-out bass lines and Rob Bloomfield’s electro-inspired tightass minimalist drumbeats, as synthdude Dan Coop supplies scree and squawk and exuberant-to-the-20th-power co-frontman Morgan Quaintance bellows the words and bashes guitar and stabs some keys. The opening bits of each song were impatiently (in the good way) run through in order to get to the good parts, which is where they start the chanting chanting chanting! and the crowd is sucked into the head-bobbing, fist-pumping, handclapping-footstomping ocean of humanity striking out against complacency and laughing their heads off at the same time!

It was rude, sloppy, tight as a rat’s ass and very, very funny — it rocked with 100 percent authenticity, in other words, and yes, it really was very, very offensive.

London laptop and live-electronics DJ duo Black Ghosts opened things by ripping out a flawlessly paced, super-high-NRG kinda set of near-brutally relentless series of beat loops peppered with subtle textural fills and actual on-mic vocals. There was certainly an air of Follow That after their set – which is precisely what Does It Offend You, Yeah proceeded to do with such triumphant anarchy. Amazing…

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