Nedry @ Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms

After reviewing Nedry live just a few days ago, it’s time to revisit the fusion of sounds that forms their three-piece collage, but this time in a beefier, darker rock venue in Portsmouth; this time as support act to 65 Days of Static.

The Nedry blend of glitchy beats, dubstep wobbles and ambient bliss for the post-rock generation provides for a well matched support slot, the band also sharing the same record label. Lead singer Ayu sports a 65 Days t-shirt whilst she skips and bobs around the stage with an ingenuousness that is charming, her wailing floaty vocal creating soaring melodies, the words unimportant, her voice used as another instrument amongst the mix of hyperdub twitches. Behind her the two male members of the band caress laptops, electronic drum pads and all manner of knobs and dials like two epileptic office IT technicians on a big night out. It’s not all geeky electronics and effects though; to give variation on tracks such as Condors electric guitars are pulled out and used to create pummelling angry repetitive riffs, reminiscent of Death In Vegas. It’s reasonably experimental but always interesting and never disengaging.

So where do Nedry fit as a band ? They straddle so many genres that they simply cannot be pigeonholed easily - a good thing. Songs such as the sorrowful sounding Apples and Pears have sounds that glide effortlessly between gentle folkish guitar and twisted heavier 4am sub-bass. Their music veers off in different directions yet never feels or sounds unnatural or forced. It’s as if they have taken a map, cut it up, glued it all back together wrongly and yet still get to the end of the journey without anyone noticing how the roads weren’t in the right place.

Third on the bill at a slowly filling venue is always a difficult place to be but there’s a confident sense of pick and mix with what Nedry do in the live environment. Combined with Ayu’s vocal (the Bjork comparison is inevitable) and her innocent stage presence, they convince a few 65 Days of Static fans that it’s time to raid the piggy bank to buy a new album.