A man calling himself President Bongo and wearing a pineapple-patterned suit is performing dance moves rarely glimpsed outside office parties, his hair flapping around his shoulders and glasses bobbing on his nose. A girl called Earth is moaning, "I still have last night in my body", as she throws her arms around like Kate Bush fighting off a wasp attack. This twin-headed kitsch monster is Gus Gus, Icelandic pranksters with the serious intention of making you move.
Gus Gus began life as a nine-member dance collective in 1995, but have slimmed down to a quartet, refining their eclectic sound and their personnel. The jazz and hip-hop influences that shaped their debut album, Polydistortion, have been replaced by the deep house and funk of last year's Attention, giving them mainstream success.
Projected images of a snow-covered landscape contrast with the warm orange and blue lights that flood the stage. Two men in black lurk behind a bank of keyboards: Biggi Veira and Buckmaster De La Cruz, responsible for the warped keyboards and thudding bass that form the brittle skeletons of the songs. Veira occasionally throws an arm in the air, but is happiest hunched over his high-pitched synthesisers, while De La Cruz adds low, rumbling washes of sound and watches Veira's nodding head intently.
Whirring noises interrupt the glacial beats of Unnecessary and overwhelm Earth's detached sweetness and President Bongo's shrill harmonies as the bass provides hammer-like blows and the synths rise higher. The music is giddying. Veira's synthesisers squelch at every opportunity and the repetitive rhythm beneath Earth's haunting refrain in Desire turns the hedonistic invitation into a haunting threat.
But though Earth adds humanity to the creeping, clashing beats of Call Of The Wild, and soul to the swirling cacophony of Dance You Down, Gus Gus fail to break free from the deadening hand of technology and come alive until the club-pop of David. Accessible and anthemic, David is as much a night down the local Roxy as it is Ibiza. Hands go up in the air and Gus Gus finally prove as good as their word.
