Performance is the product

I saw The Bays last year at the Warwick Arts Centre and was mindblown. Their mantra, 'performance is the product' sums them up quite well. When I went to see them, the auditorium was scattered with handfuls of people among swathes of empty seats, which did not bear testimony to the experience I encountered. We sat right in front of a human-sized speaker to better experience the music, as the 'experience' is the emphasis of all Bays performances. An orchestra were instructed to play the music on the digital screen in front of them, of which the score was being created as we sat and watched by a small man surrounded by computers, wires and cables. Every now and again it would flash up on a screen, and you could see the creative process at work.

What began sounding like a piece of skewed classical music morphed through stages of thumping DnB, eerie silences filled with meaning, and flurries of jazzy electro. The crowd responded in any way they desired. Some people were sat gracefully still as if they were at an opera, some were moving in response to the rhythm, and I distinctly remember one guy with long brown hair standing up and swaying wildly around the stairs. I, wasn't sure how to react as I couldn't draw upon previous experiences to guide me! I went for the casual nodding look, but it didn't seem to matter at all.

Here is what The Bays say about themselves and their music:

"Forget every rule you’ve ever been taught about live music. Ignore every outmoded notion of what it is to be a ‘live’ band. Forget even what you think you think ‘live music’ actually means.

What drives this band is a need to communicate with their audience in a way not possible with traditional live bands. There are no ‘songs’ as such to perform, there’s no album to promote, there are no commercial imperatives at play. The Bays only perform live, they never rehearse, they don’t have a set-list and they couldn’t ever do the same performance twice. It’s all about the moment – an experience or an event that exists between the band and the audience for one time only.

The Bays have no intention of releasing any material in the immediate future, but even if you could capture the performance in digital format, it would only represent a fraction of the total Bays experience. Because what they do that is so unique, so unprecedented, is that they enter into a creative partnership with the crowd, receiving feedback from the dance floor and reinterpreting that response, rewiring the vibe and taking it to a new level.

Each of The Bays is feeling a progression in the music and is anticipating where the performance is going to next. It could change at any moment and pursue a new direction in a second. Taking the concept of the DJ – presiding over a seamless continuum of music – The Bays drop sets like a live band creating a 90-minute DJ-mix. And reinventing the concept of studio remixing, The Bays are creating new tracks on stage and remixing these ideas live without any planning, verbal communication or commercial consideration.

The guys are pushing boundaries with their sound. They are giving their audience something radical, revolutionary even. So much so, that if the hype is to be believed, the 21st century notion of what it means to play live will henceforth be understood in entirely new terms - in terms first defined by The Bays."

I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience of the live music of The Bays and I would recommend it to anyone. If you live in the glorious south of the country, The Bays are playing on the 12th March at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, London. Enjoy. I've posted a short piece on them underneath to whet your appetite.