You can’t criticize city folk for wanting to tone it down after a long Easter weekend of drinking copious amounts of booze and eating your body mass in chocolate. Not Vancouver city folk, however. Easter Monday saw some of Canada and half of Australia flock to the Commodore Ballroom on Granville Street for a sold out show for Modular darlings, The Presets. As the stage went dark and the crowd went wild, Kim Moyes came out from the haze to take place behind his wall of drums followed by Julian Hamilton in a fuchsia pink hoodie. At that moment, everyone knew that tonight was going to be one insane party.
They didn’t waste any time and pounded us with several shots from their latest album, Apocolypso and their first album, Beams. “Talk Like That,” “Eucalyptus,” “Yippiyo Ay,” and “Girl and the Sea” were perfect antidotes to get the crowd begging for more. Vocalist and keys master, Julian, was captivating. Occasionally stepping from behind his keyboard, he glided across the stage with ease and his voice remained haunting and heavenly for the duration.
Everyone knew that tonight was going to be one insane party.
The show came to a midway point as Kim stepped down from his drums and stood behind the xylophone that was placed in the center of the stage to ease us through “Aeons.” After a few minutes of sparkly calm to restart the crowd, the duo stood side- by-side for what was to be a final hardcore 30 minutes. Non-stop, thumping beats tore through “This Boy’s in Love,” “Kicking and Screaming,” “My People,” and “Are You the One?” as hands were continuously pumping the pink and blue strobes that danced through the air.
We had a couple of seconds to reflect before Julian screamed, “Are you ready for one last dance Vancouver?” as two spotlights shone down and wrapped these electro gods in a golden haze for the last song, “I Go Hard, I Go Home,” and made sure that every single person went home kicking and screaming.
Words and Images: Lauren Keogh
