Glacial Nights: Drab Majesty live at MusicBox, Lisbon

Cold nights are for cold music, aren’t they? And is there a more perfect season than the Fall to indulge in such melancholic and introspective delights that are brought by coldwave, the magnificent musical subgenre that blends post-punk, gothic rock and electronic music together in an exciting and decidedly chilly way? On this particularly auspicious night, the honour of celebrating all things icy and gloomy was left in the charge of two delightful names that have taken the genre in different directions: Drab Majesty, with their minimalistic approach to composition, and Kris Baha, with walks a more bombastic and futuristic path.

Unknown, perhaps, to most of the audience present that night, Kris Baha is a queer Australian/Italian-Armenian and multifaceted artist that dabbles in the dark arts of industrial music, electronic body music, post-punk and darkwave, a tradition that is firmly rooted in Berlin, the city he currently resides in. Just a few days before stepping into Portugal for the first time, Baha had released his brand-new record, Ghost In The Machine, and he was all too eager to present it fully to a nearly-sold out MusicBox, in Lisbon. From the get-go, the beats flowed at an astounding pace, with Baha giving the audience almost no time to rest between songs, as he performed tracks such as “I’ve Become”, “SENTIENTS”, “Nothing Is Real” and “Mvtational” from the aforementioned record, as well as a remix version of Boy Harsher’s “Electric”. Submerged in a sea of intense, fast-moving lights and pulsing beats, we felt like we were neck-deep in a rave party at Berghain. We felt the sweat drip, the smiles widen more and more, the bodies moving rapidly and in tandem with the sounds that Baha was injecting into our systems. If this were already to be the end of the night, we would be completely satisfied, but we still had a few more dances moves left in us.

It has been a while since Drab Majesty last visited Portugal. In fact, their debut performances in the country happened all the way back to 2017, where the duo of Deb Demure and Mona D gave a chilling performance in both Porto and Lisbon. Now returning with a brand-new EP, An Object In Motion, as well as a full-length released in 2019 and not yet presented to the Portuguese audience, entitled Modern Mirror, the anticipation was at an all-time high, to say the least. Let’s just say that the androgenous duo did not disappoint. Sharply-dressed, adorned with sunglasses and glistening silver paint, and with a clear focus on the aforementioned records, from which they performed songs such as “The Skin and The Glove”, “Vanity”, “Oxytocin” and “The Other Side”, Drab Majesty barely moved from their allocated positions, dancing in place while playing their parts competently. The audience, in turn, responded with utmost reverence and danced away swiftly as the voice and guitar of Deb Demure echoed in their heads and the eerily beautiful synths of Mona D coursed through their veins. Not wanting to remain merely on their latest sonic incarnation, Drab Majesty intertwined the aforementioned new material with some goodies from The Demonstration, namely “Dot in the Sky”, “Too Soon To Tell” and the apotheotic “39 by Design”. For the encore, the duo decided to end this glacial night of coldwave with the elegant “Not Just a Name”, a fitting curtain call for a brilliantly atmospheric performance that we all hope to repeat time and again, in the future.