A ‘live’ show that’s about as dead as can be
Roy Orbison: The Hologram Tour Hammersmith Apollo
There were audible gasps when the glowing figure of Roy Orbison rose from the bottom of the stage. No wonder: he’s been dead for 30 years. But there was also laughter. And that was the mood throughout this discombobulating hi-tech show: nostalgic pleasure mixed with incredulous unease.
For the world’s first major holographic tour, Orbison’s 3D CGI replica stood at a microphone in grey suit and sunglasses, apparently strumming an electric guitar. His tremulously high, quasi-operatic vocals were pristine, stripped out of original recordings and overlaid on lush arrangements for the live band and the Royal Philharmonic seated either side. You could feel the audience relax every time another fantastic melody kicked in: Only the
Lonely, In Dreams, Crying. Yet there was no singing along to those almost irresistible choruses. As live shows go, it was about as dead as could be.
The detail on the Orbigram was superb, down to the tassled fringe of his jacket, but restrictions of movement subtly undermined his physicality. This definitely wasn’t The Walking Dead: our zombie star remained rooted to the spot all night. The aesthetic design of humanoid animations struggles to overcome something known as the Uncanny Valley Effect, in which the closer replicas get to reality, the more they elicit feelings of eeriness in observers. It perhaps accounted for the unwillingness of 3,500 fans to suspend belief. My own unease centred on the realisation that technology will close this gap, and one day all live shows might be like this.