Show Review: Disclosure
The Fox Theater in Pomona is an odd place. It’s big—like, 2,000 person capacity big—and almost painfully art-deco. It’s also the only venue with a real draw to speak of for miles, which means that any concert that appeals to young people will flood the theater with suburban kids who have been using said concert to power them through their classes for the last three months.
Disclosure appeals to young people. Disclosure flooded the Fox Theater with young people. And this made for one hell of an audience.
Being an audience member for an electronica act is a tricky balancing act between paying attention to what the performers are doing and focusing on perfectly executing those sweet dance moves of yours. And somehow Disclosure gave their audience a way to do both: there was always a canopy of glowing phones held aloft, but the ground floor was an undulating, sweaty mess for their entire set. Contrasted with the reaction to opening DJ T. Williams—which was polite, but unenthusiastic—it legitimately seemed like Disclosure made the place come alive.
There was no shortage of spectacle on the stage, either. The two British brothers switched between working laptops, electronic and live drum kits, basses, vocals and synths between or during each song. No fewer than five diamond-shaped screens provided appropriate visual accompaniment, be it LED infernos for “When A Fire…,” prismatic diamonds for AlunaGeorge track “White Noise,” or their trademark face sketch lip-synching along to their encore of “Help Me Lose My Mind” and “Latch”. Their live performances were tight and well-rehearsed, with nary a bleep out of place and just enough variation to let you know that, yes, this was happening live in front of you.
My only complaint was that the setup meant that the producer duo spent the entirety of the show on opposite sides of the stage. Musically, it didn’t seem to affect much—live basslines remained very much locked into the Akai-triggered drumbeats—but the physical distance did make the show seem a little more clinical and a little less organic. But during the show, it didn’t make that much of a difference to me, the rest of the crowd, or our collective dancing shoes.