I saw Boy Plus Girl arrive at the very beginning of first support Friendship's set, and then saw them watch their second support act Time Shield. The band was even friendly enough to help out during Time Shield's set, when a guitar pick was requested.

When it was their time to embrace the stage, Boy Plus Girl's performance was odd to say the least. They have been making electronic music together since 2006 now. To be honest, after all these years, their recent performance wasn't great. For dance music, there was no dancing going on in the room. At least two metres from the stage was empty floor space, as the extremely small crowd stood at the back of the room, watching still, providing only the odd foot tap. Was it just the crowd? Was it just the venue? Or was it just the fact that Boy Plus Girl haven't got anything new to show? I hadn't been to see Boy Plus Girl before, so I couldn't compare their performance against previous gigs, but I wasn't blown away or made to feel like dancing on my first time seeing them.

Boy Plus Girl introduced only one new song to the mix of their usual playing set, explaining that “this is a pretty new one, and I'm sorry if it is no good”. A negative start! They have to show that they believe in their music for anyone else to as well. I agreed with him, it wasn't that good. They haven't evolved over the years with the rest of the electronic music scene. Boy Plus Girl are still your stock standard two guys on the stage with a synth, keyboard, and dubbed mic to add effect to the vocals. Either Boy Plus Girl need to offer something new, try a different venue, or attempt build up a new publicity plan to get more people at the shows. It's all about the dancing, and there was no dancing happening at this gig.

On the other hand, I was drawn by their second support act Time Shield; a one man show who is much more than an electronic musician that tweaks the synth and mixes beats and tempos. His stage presence is reminiscent of a magician or wizard. His hands hover the synth like a magician would a crystal ball. When a faster tempo is drawn into the songs, he tweaks the synth's knobs like his fingers have just touched a hot pan. He had a white screen that bounced off intriguing and artistic video mashes that resembled meanings of childhood, and the pressures some parents put on their children's future careers. He constantly referred to this screen throughout his set, which made it look like it's the visuals that fuel his music.

His videos demonstrated visual meaning to the audience about the underlying messages which his musical creations were intended to convey. The videos were a pastiche of TV shows like Gilmore Girls. A track that I particularly loved used samples from an episode of Gilmore Girls about Rory not wanting to go to a pricey college. The vocals from Lorelai (Mother) to Rory (daughter) were repeated; “but what about college?” What about Harvard?”, which made the crowd laugh. It was a creative mash of video, vocals and synth at work, which portrayed the message of parental pressure perfectly.

photo taken by Lily Daley, from myspace.com/boyuragirl/photos