Chilly Gonzales - Southbank Centre (London, England) - Nov 7/15

Chilly brought his bathrobe, along with his piano, pop sensibility and humour to the large, full Southbank Royal Festival Theatre in London on Saturday evening. Emerging alongside the Kaiser Quartet they exhibited some instrumental cuts from their Chambers album together before Chilly broke the vocal silence and said good evening. From there it was a mix of music, comedy and showing off his 'musical genius' in a variety of ways. This included giving us examples of arpeggios in popular music throughout the times (and what certain songs would sound like without them) as well as conducting his quartet from different perspectives - as a producer using them as a sampler, or as a drum machine. Naturally he included Sample This too. He did rap, such as Supervillain Music and the cleaned up version of The Grudge and as an encore an amalgam of Self Portrait and his own rebuttal (Not) A Musical Genius from stood atop the piano bench. A particular moment of levity came during one of the more serious instrumentals featuring the quartet where from the shadows a man emerged and walked purposefully to the drum kit, stretched, and then delivered one thundering two-handed beat before immediately retreating the way he had come. (The drummer later was made to dance which brought on an awkward moment of forced audience participation that we won't speak of.) It wasn't just the Chilly show though - at one point he took a seat off to the side and instructed his quartet to "entertain me" which they did; payback for the song or two that he did solo while the lights went out on the Kaisers. One instrumental was performed entirely in the dark, leaving us to visualise it ourselves without the newly deprived sense. Plus there was a unique world premier as a writing partner of Chilly's took a mic to centre stage where he rambled about a hotel room with a piano and then sang three somewhat ridiculous songs about the things that may have happened in that room. It was interesting but not the strongest part of the show. Knight Moves, two standing ovations, and one encore later (but conspicuously no bongos) the two hour spectacle came to a satisfying close with the patrons left to gush about the entertainment that was had.