The location, the "Pfefferberg" is an ensemble of an old hall, that officially holds about 750 people when it's sold out, and a garden with lots of seats and a snack counter. At 21.00 when the gig should have started most people still sat outside. Nobody was in a hurry, neither the band nor their audience. About half past nine I strolled into the hall. There weren't more than 80 people at this time. Checking the merchandise, I found the guy behind the counter completely alone with all the different kinds of t-shirts and CD's. Nice that there were t-shirts for girls! I still had no problems walking back directly to the stage without using my elbows; most people still sat outside. But now more and more of them decided to come in. Whilst the hall was filling I took a look at the people around me and was positively surprised about their various styles. There was the soft guy on my left hand; talking and talking to me about Nina Simone records (without breathing between his words). On my right hand there were these two fat bikers in black leather lighting their cigarettes with a kind of flame-thrower that nearly burnt my hair. And in front of me there was some rasta-styled girl jumping around to the tape music.

The free space in the hall now decreased rapidly and round about 22.00 the band entered the stage with quite severe faces.
As I found out, they were effected by their travel from Sweden on the same day: a 5 hour trip by ferry and then some additional hours onwards to Berlin, where they just did the soundcheck and had rather little time to recover before the show. I had never been to a 16hp gig before and had no idea what to expect. In no case could I have imagined what really happened. The songs (even fabulous on CD) developed a most powerful inner life in that live performance. Sometimes simply floating just to increase and explode in the next moment.

The band seemed to electrify everyone in the audience but - on a closer look - with entirely distinctive effects. I noticed mainly two types of listeners: one type, shouting, freaking and dancing wondering how anyone could stay calm in presence of that music - the other type, standing stiff looking slightly disparagingly at the dancers. It nearly seemed as if two different "schools" of audiences had come together to enjoy this band.

When David was changing his guitar picks with his teeth (it really looks strange and most people simply did not know what he was actually doing with his fingers so deep in his mouth) there was some helpless laughter amongst the clapping and shouting but that did not seem to affect him in anyway. After "Wayfaring Stranger" he thanked us for coming and continued with some words about "a coldness here" that made everyone speculate animatedly whether he meant the weather or the atmosphere in the hall.
Anyway, after this words and the following second of irritated quietness in the audience (as children in presence of their teacher) the atmosphere got really hilarious and even the band seemed to have more fun.

With his powerful playing and with his behaviour, Steve reminded me of a "good old" punk guitarist, he is just brilliant. This extra portion of guitar was so good; I could not fight a grin on my face, whenever it came to front. Pascal smiled with eyes shut playing his double-bass making the whole stage tremble by pulling the chords. It's pure pleasure to watch it. David sat on his chair jittering and shivering and fighting for control while shaking his instruments as if they were human beings he has to convince of what he's saying. It was exiting to listen to his text variations by noticing that he turns some phrases in the complete opposite (showing us by this an abeyance of good and evil - light and dark - answer and question?).
As far as I remember he turned the "is there something behind my eyes" in "Burning Bush" into "there is nothing behind my eyes".

After Clogger he started shaking hands over the heads of the audience and when we cottoned on to that the band was about to leave, everybody started clapping and shouting in order to make them stay. They left - but came back after a few long minutes starting the first encore with "Strong Man". The live performance of that song blew the last man in the hall out of his shoes (only in case that there was someone who still had them on his feet) and it was only topped by "Cinder Alley". A woman who has appeared beside me a few minutes before (she complained sadly that she has needed the whole time since the gig had started to make it to the second row) cried out: "Burning Bush" - and it was given to her and all of us;) - according to the setlist. When the band left again people started additional feet stomping to all that clapping and shouting. That (or just a good mood) brought us David back, followed by Jean-Yves and then Steve, Pascal and Elin re-entering the stage to play "For Heavens Sake".

When they left again and now finally (as the music from the speakers announced) people left the hall only reluctantly. Most faces I watched while lounging outside mirrored quite different expressions, at minimum the credits of the band's high live quality and at maximum a sleepwalking trance-like state of shock and every degree in-between. Really nice evening.

By Tania