Dijon may have sold out two nights at Brixton Academy, but the first feels more like the audience are witnessing a joyous jam session between friends: musicians who are totally attentive to one another and unabashed in their passion.
Following an extensive US tour of his acclaimed album Baby – and ahead of next weekend’s Grammys, where he is up for producer of the year thanks to his work with Justin Bieber – the US singer-songwriter clutches the mic as if it’s giving him life, seemingly preoccupied only with the sounds surrounding him. His music is a kind of lo-fi but densely produced R&B, but his setup here is the stuff of electronic prog rock, with soundboards and decks, a vast array of synthesisers, a live kit, electric guitar and bass, a violin and backing vocals. That ambition is matched by the setlist: 21 songs in two hours played in quick succession.
Opening with Big Mike’s, Another Baby! and Many Times, the new sandwiched with the old, Dijon plays the bedroom R&B of his debut album Absolutely with the experimental pop mindset of Baby. He blends influences to the point of whiplash: Scratching is King Krule meets Simon and Garfunkel, emphasised by a live banjo and tambourine.
A run of seven songs in the middle – including The Dress – starts to feel mundane, with the exception of an Appalachian-sounding jig sung and played on violin by Sam Amidon following Annie. But after (Referee), smoke carpets the stage and the lights dim: the first real use of stagecraft. The guitarists take up synth pads, creating an eerie, futurist soundscape that swells and collapses in grungy chords: despite the instrumentation, this music is earthy and deep, and, on Rewind, passionate to the point of anger. The performance wakes up: TV Blues and Talk Down feature industrial sounds as rhythmic devices, phased and filtered without consistent hi-hat rhythms, forming an oozing, glutted sonic atmosphere.
Yamaha, Automatic and Kindalove close the show like the end of a 1980s prom, mirrorball lights illuminating the starry-eyed crowd. But then a clarinettist plays over the encore track Rodeo Clown, the noise diminishing until all we hear is the voice of Dijon, lit by a single spotlight, in the now-familiar silhouette of him hanging off his mic. Visually spartan but sonically rich, the show elevates Dijon’s discography to another plane, made almost unrecognisable by its fearless auteur.
• At Brixton Academy, 23 January.
