Nubiyan Twist live at Digital review – soul-filling neo jazz is for humans only

Tom Excell’s Leeds collective made a thoroughly convincing argument against AI in music with this evening of unadulterated phone-free joy. The funk and soul delights lit up a dance-ready crowd in Digital, but it was the surprise EDM and punk diversions that really took the breath away.

A funny thing happened to me 15 minutes before I was due to leave for this Nubiyan Twist gig: my phone broke. One minute I was listening to the radio, the next I was faced with an alarming boot screen filled with computer jargon that, no matter how I fiddled with the buttons, couldn’t be changed. I was immediately confronted with my habitual overreliance on my phone. Not only do I use it for mindless scrolling like everyone else (and indeed, this week has been particularly bad for my doomscrolling habit), but I need it to just exist in today’s technological society. My upcoming train tickets are on there, and access to be email or my online banking or my university files requires my phone’s authenticator. Worse still than losing cash or a dissertation, my Nubiyan Twist tickets were on there. When I left for Newcastle via train with my friend Arman, the ticket machine promptly broke without explanation, not before Arman had paid for his non-refundable ticket. There was a sense that, at last, the machines are conspiring against us helpless humans. It was easy to imagine that life would be impossible without them.

But, of course, it isn’t. Arman bought another ticket, and with a stroke of good luck we were allowed into Digital after just giving our names to the doorperson. The night already had a theme a technological failure, so when Tom Excell kicked off his set with a not-so-subtle allusion to AI, it only felt natural. “I am a machine,” he told us through computerised vocals, “and I don’t understand this human experience you call live music.” What followed was a compelling artistic response to the frightening rise of AI in music which, despite it’s obvious inferiority to human art, is now remarkably good enough to garner millions of streams, “siphoning away money” from hardworking bands like Nubiyan Twist, as Excell puts it. Hackneyed and heavy handed as Excell’s computer-narrator framing may have been, popping up between songs for brief forays into bitty techno, his message is urgent and timely, and Nubiyan Twist are the perfect vehicle for it. Long before the dawn of the so-called AI revolution, the Leeds College of Music grads already felt like an exceptionally human-first band. Their songs, which blend Afrobeat, soul and funk in the now well-established ‘UK jazz’ style, are lithe and supple, with the joy of dancing a recurring focus. A rotating cast of guest vocalists deliver uplifting lyrics about breaking free from shackles and unstoppable love, whilst horns fade in and out with carefree ease.

Nubiyan Twist’s recorded material has a tendency for breezy easy listening, but in a live venue such as Newcastle’s notorious city centre nightclub Digital they are a different prospect entirely. Straight-talking disco strutter Lights Out already has the place bouncing by song two, the horn section nailing every last flourish (albeit with the whole thing blurred by some distracting mixing issues). From there, Excell and co turn up the heat steadily and ruthlessly. His own featherlight guitar riff is the gem at the heart of Chasing Shadows, an immaculately groovy Afrobeat track that gets the crowd throwing their hands in the air with glee. Old fan favourite Tittle Tattle is given a thrilling electronic reworking (Excell not one to miss an opportunity to bellow “Any ravers in the house?!” as he launches into the tune), and offers a chance for lead vocalist Eniola, previously a little sheepishly stationed on the far right of the stage, to finally let loose, venturing to centre stage for an exhilarating new rap verse.

All the while, there are smiles all round. One man next to me appears to be in his 80s, but when the shrugging funk of Red Herring comes on he’s throwing shapes like the best of us. It’s exactly the sort of pure “human experience” Excell’s robot character could never dream of, although perhaps a little too human – one fan has helpfully left a cup of overflowing vomit on the floor near the front of the audience area. The stench is powerful. It’s a testament to Nubiyan Twist that the extraordinary final 30 minutes of this gig provide enough uplifting funk to overcome the… funk. Pray For Me’s sun-drenched calypso provokes full carnival pandemonium in the crowd – it is, to use some football lingo, pure limbs. Luke Wynter’s bass flows like water, whilst Lewis Moody’s meticulous synth solo wafts in like a warm breeze. Excell and Finn Booth’s percussion duel is a marvel, but it’s Hannah-Mae Birtwell’s baritone sax solo that really tears the roof off Digital – I would describe her solo, but it was hard to make it out from all the ecstatic screaming coming from myself and the crowd around me.

And yet, improbably, Nubiyan Twist still haven’t yet hit top gear. They do just that with a debut performance of Message, which is beefed up into a shockingly heavy rap-punk bruiser in the vein of Rage Against the Machine, powered by a single electric four note riff. Eniola clearly understands the assignment, digging into some ferocious rap verses, and Excell – clearly lapping up his new role as punk rockstar – goes as far as initiating a wall of death in the crowd. There are some groans from the fans around me, but for those of us that got involved, the end result was a minute of childlike euphoria, bodies colliding to the soundtrack of Jonathan Enser’s squealing trumpet. In fact, it’s such a fierce mosh pit that my shoe is kicked off my foot at one point. I choose to take immediate evasive action, the nearby pile of congealed vomit suddenly at the top of my mind.

Reach My Soul’s bassline remix closes the set in similarly joyful, genre-blind style, hands bobbing up and down after the subsonic synth bass rattles the walls. The gig had been nothing short of a triumph for humanity. This is what the AI resistance looks like: a few hundred people having undiluted fun, singing together, dancing together, forgetting that their phones lie at home in an unusable state and they currently have no means of getting home. At the merch stand we could talk to some of the performers, including ever hard-working Excell, who had hopped behind the desk just minutes after finishing his 100-minute set. From the support band O. I bought a real CD containing real music by real people. It was clearer than ever exactly what core parts of the human experience the machines will never be able to emulate. I’ve never been happier to miss the last train home.

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