During their recent gig at Berlin’s beloved underground music venue, 8mm, the Aotearoa-hailing four-piece band School Fair bathed their listeners in a brooding, solar cacophony of sound. The band, which is comprised of vocalist and guitarist Semisi Maiai, drummer Hamish Morgan, bassist and pianist De Stevens and vocalist Findlay Buchanan, delighted their listeners with a rich tapestry of a setlist. Characterised by a fruitful marriage of pulsating basslines, pounding percussion and beat poetry-esque lyrics, School Fair effortlessly cultivated a cosmically melodic ambience, which was eagerly lapped up by their listeners.
A deserving celebration of the release of their newest record, Bird The Kid, produced and recorded by Stevens, School Fair’s Berlin appearance on the 13th of March, proved to be a hypnotically enveloping trip to a moodily melancholic soundscape. A set list that seamlessly fluctuated between the hopeful, the buoyant, the sycophantic, and promptly back again, School Fair broadcasted their sound to 8mm’s willing attendees. Tracks such as ‘Kick The Stars Around The Trashy Sky’, with its hauntingly lilting structure and the more ominous ‘Propped Up’ were pillars in the band’s setlist, whilst simultaneously acting as bright bastions for the band’s burgeoning musical ability across their two albums.
Images: Otto Mendelsson / @phottosphotos
Flurries of twinkling piano notes served to soften the band’s moody melancholy and even contributed to induce a more tangible sense of optimism. A successful harmony of being both broodingly optimistic and hauntingly melancholic. Ending with the chugging, rolling number of ‘Leaving This Rancid City Slain’ served to leave a moreish taste in the mouths of 8mm’s attendees, with the audience wilfully wishing for more. ‘Leaving This Rancid City Slain’ acted as an appropriate end to a flourishing crescendo of a setlist, with School Fair departing the stage with a roomful of new fans.
Acknowledging their debt to luminaries like Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Cure, and Ride, School Fair transcends mere imitation, crafting a sound that is uniquely their own—a mesmerising blend of intricate arrangement and hypnotic allure. Not only this, but after four years of solitude after the release of their 2021 debut album ‘Gorse On a Hill’, School Fair’s Berlin set marks a welcome return for the band, and a searingly successful one at that. If their gig in the German capital is anything to go by, then School Fair’s upcoming sets in Bristol, London and Brussels all promise to be similar, captivatingly impassioned affairs.