TESSERACT
“And now it’s time for some jazz,” says Plini Roessler-Holgate with a touch of awkward shyness as he stands in front of a heaving crowd. Jazz isn’t Plini’s mainstay: this is a wry introduction to his cinematic concoction of technical instrumental creations. They don’t hold the abrasion or anthemic sway of what’s to come, but the thickness and crescendos coupled with an acute attention to every hook, bassline and beat get a rapturous response.
Between The Buried And Me know no bounds when it comes to genre-shifting, splicing swing, jazz and mellow soundscapes with brazen metal. They can be brilliant and they can be clever, and tonight they lean towards the latter with a set that suffers from time constraint, noticeable fatigue and the omission of obvious fan favourites including recent hit Condemned To The Gallows, plus anything from The Parallax II: Future Sequence or The Great Misdirect. The shocking segue from the mellow outro of Millions into the onslaught of Sun Of Nothing is dramatic but not cohesive. Their saving grace, though, is The Coma Machine, a rock opera-esque carnival of sounds with the mother of all choruses.
By contrast, TesseracT play the show of their career. Everything is honed, shaped and perfected, including the photogenic stage set-up (their huge glowing logo on the backdrop, a shifting explosion of multi-coloured mood-setting lights, figure-cutting smoke hazes), the unbelievably high spec sound output, a note-perfect performance from each of the five members and a celebratory exploration of their musical history that balances the exploratory, softer intricacies of their later melodies with plenty of robust favourites.
Fresh off the back of this year’s Sonder, they play Juno, King, Luminary and Smile. The hard hit of Luminary bursts with vivacity and spinetingling depth, dropped in by guitarists Acle Kahney and James Monteith.
With a few tweaks to the octave range, Dan Tompkins makes songs from Altered State his own (the album was originally written for singer Ashe O’Hara), resulting in some of the most euphoric moments of the night. Equally, old favourites Deception and The
Impossible are a jaw-dropping culmination of angular, percussive technicality and aching emotion, driven by the uneasy rumblings of drummer Jay Postones and bassist Amos Williams. Including a suite from Polaris (Dystopia, Hexes, Phoenix and Survival) leaves no stone unturned, completing the survey of their cerebral history.
Eight years ago, TesseracT debuted with an EP, Concealing Fate, conceptualising the stages of growing up through an allegorical hexology: Acceptance, Deception, The Impossible, Perfection, Epiphany and Origin. Feeling like they’ve come full circle, tonight is the ‘perfection’ in their own story.
“FEELING LIKE THEY’VE COME
FULL CIRCLE, TONIGHT IS THE ‘PERFECTION’ IN TESSERACT’S OWN STORY.”