Alcest @ the John Curtin Bandroom, 27/10/2011

I'd heard many good things about this Alcest band before but I never really got around to checking them out. Then they announced an Australian tour, so I thought I'd give them a long-overdue listen; turns out they're fucking awesome and I was really looking forward to this tour. I was especially glad that they announced this second show, as the first one clashed with another gig I absolutely had to attend. So here we go.

First up was Encircling Sea, a band I've seen live quite a lot over the past few years but that's OK, because they're usually pretty awesome. Still, the previous show had Nekrasov supporting; I would have rather seen him because yeah, Encircling Sea play quite often and Nekrasov barely plays at all, in fact I heard that it was going to be his last show ever. Anyway, this is about Encircling Sea, not Nekrasov. A friend of mine who's a bit more familiar with the band than I am, informs me that this set consisted of a new unreleased song at the start, and then a section of their Ecru piece at the end. I was contemplating just posting this as one solid file because it really did seem like one long jam (not that that's a bad thing), so thanks Garrett, now I can do something a little bit more accurate.
SETLIST:
(New song)
Ecru (partial)

(recording to follow)

The inclusion of Heirs on the entirety of this tour was something I had no complaints with, as they're always a stunning live act and on this occasion they delivered yet again. Little disappointed they didn't bring out the projector like usual but I suppose they didn't want to upstage the headlining act or whatever. Anyway. It was a damn good performance, but I've been really surprised while tracking this to discover that they only played FIVE songs. I know that some of their songs are lengthy, but I didn't expect this. I guess there's a bit of difference between the studio and live versions of their material. Anyway, here they are. Very good set.
SETLIST:
Fowl
Burrow
Mockery
Men
Symptom

DOWNLOAD MP3 HERE

Alcest. Man, I had some high expectations for this show and they pretty much met them with great ease. They had a few sound problems though, or more accurately a recurring series of one major problem - vocals being way too quiet. It apparently happened onstage as well, with Neige asking to be turned up at one point, only to be told he was turned up as loud as possible. "Oh, OK then!" he replied, clearly a little bit disappointed. Anyway, other than that it was a beautiful show. Being that they have some lengthy songs, only nine in total were played but it didn't really feel like we missed out.
SETLIST
Le Secret
Les Iris
Summer's Glory
Écailles de Lune (Part I)
Printemps Emeraude
Solar Song
Souvenirs d'un autre monde
Percees de Lumiere
----Encore----
Elevation

DOWNLOAD MP3 HERE