Toby Marks has provided the slow underbelly of dance music for over a decade using his pseudonym of Banco De Gaia, and tonight's gig launches a modest UK tour to promote the release of his '10 Years' retrospective double CD collection of his best known material.

The set list covers tracks from his 1994 debut album 'Maya' through to his more recent works.  Unfortunately for Toby and his drummer the attendance is poor, with less than a hundred people in this admittedly small venue.  The small crowd could be down to the unusually high price for Wedgewood Room tickets this time around, or perhaps due to ineffective targeting of advertising, but the fans present contribute well to the atmosphere, making it feel more than half-full by the time Banco's performance is underway.

The first gig of any tour often provides technical hitches for many artists - not just electronic based - and tonight is no exception.  Toby looks more like a science lab technician than a musician for much of the performance, as if he is frantically trying to ensure that all the cables stay plugged into the rig, and that the sequencer and samplers all carry on happily clicking away with each other.  Other than one particularly noticeable glitch, when all the sounds disappeared apart from the drums (was it as simple as the audio leads falling out the back of his laptop?) the set segued together without any problems.

Listening to the album '10 Years' and tonight's set demonstrates Banco De Gaia's prowess at mixing together elements of World music, ethnic samples, dub, and electronic beats, breaks and sounds.  Although his sound has effectively stayed the same for the last decade, this well-mixed groove proves that Banco De Gaia's music predates what is now referred to as "Chill Out" by many years (remember back when it was "Ambient Dub"?).

The most interesting aspect of the gig was Toby Mark's prowess on the guitar.  Leaving the synths and modules on autopilot to do their own thing, Toby added strumming and solos to many of his pieces - but where was the guitar sound?  In actual fact Banco De Gaia was using some very complicated technology to convert each guitar string's frequency into a MIDI note to feed into a synthesizer.  This had the result of Toby's guitar doodlings being transformed into filtered analogue pads, wistful sustained violin ensembles and, in one instance, a rather convincing sounding organ solo.  This sort of gadgetry often has only a novelty value, but Banco De Gaia used it sparingly and tastefully without it detracting from the rigid quality of the music as a whole.  That Toby could adapt his guitar playing to create an organ solo speaks well of his ability as a performer, and shows he is uncomfortable relying solely on pre-recorded, sequenced sounds as many of his peers do so often in their live sets.

A crystal clear set of fine slow-beat instrumental pieces, belied by a small yet appreciative crowd.

Review: Andrew Morrison