Words by Mina Wang
While New Century Hall’s usually unassuming exterior can easily escape the eye, there was no chance of missing hyperpop icon Dorain Electra’s presence in Manchester on Saturday. From leather and sequin-clad gig-goers smoking in front of the venue’s doors, to stairwell signs cautioning strobe lights and visual effects, the promises of the wild night ahead were evident even over the short trek up to the concert hall. Once inside the main hall, which was just beginning to fill up after doors opened at 7pm, the combination of neon lasers and speed techno thudding over the excited chatter of fans gave one the impression of having stumbled into a weekday rave.
Two years after playing at Band on the Wall, Dorian’s bombastic return to Manchester certainly lived up to the name of their most recent album, Fanfare. Since their 2019 debut album Flamboyant, the gender-fluid artist has garnered significant critical acclaim and become somewhat of a cult figure, particularly in queer and online spaces, for their gender and genre-bending art.
Musically, Dorian’s refusal to be limited by labels is clearly expressed in the range of genres which find their synthesis in their music, including everything from metal to baroque to hyperpop, which they helped pioneer. Moreover, it is expressed in their audience, which was united in its diversity at New Century: from NewRocks and “Ladies Love My Autism” tees to mesh shirts and “I Heart Sodomy” baseball caps (a reference to Fanfare hit ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’), with the occasional fur-suit sprinkled in, every outfit at the gig seemed to be a celebration of the wearer’s identity.
The palpable excitement in the room was aided not in small part by Dorian’s opener and hype man extraordinaire, Babymorocco, whose energetic performance kicked off at 8pm with the one-man-band leaping onstage clad in a red ski suit and snapback while roaring into an auto-tuned mic. The set started with ‘BabeStation’, a song from his EP Sugar-Luv (TBR), and continued with frenetic tracks such as ‘LET’S GO ZANTE’, ‘NRG’, and ‘Take it off Louise,’ with German DJ Swan Meat manning the decks throughout. Fans of electro-pop might also have recognised Jockstrap producer Taylor Skye’s iconic staccato style in the mix of ‘Total Bass of your Heart’ and hyperpop duo Frost Children’s throaty vocals on ‘SXC’.
While Babymorocco’s borderline-cheesy 2010s-type pop beats and at times intentionally silly lyrics (“They’ll say I have narcissistic personality disorder / But when I smile, I don’t have to pay for my coffee order”) might not be everyone’s cup of tea, they seemed to be a hit among Dorian’s audience, who jumped along until the floor shook. Paired with his over-the-top performance, which involved a theatrical strip tease that left his vest in shreds and elicited whoops and laughs from the crowd, the audience was more than hyped by the time his set ended to raucous applause an hour later.
Despite their apparent enthusiasm for the opener, however, it took only a single blast from Fanfare opening track ‘Symphony’ ‘s operatic organ intro for people to seemingly forget all about them. Against the red and gold grandeur of the baroque-esque draperies decorating the stage, Dorian Electra appeared in a blast of dry ice and red light, living up to the album’s title. Striking a pose in their cropped hussar jacket and shock of yellow hair reminiscent of a Telephone-era Lady Gaga, they seemed to embody the pomp and circumstance of the song. After the symphonic grandeur of Fanfare’s second track, ‘Idolize’, the third song, the title track of Dorian’s debut album Flamboyant, brought the performance back to basics with its simple yet sincere lyrics: “No taste for subtlety / And no time for restraint […] I’m Flamboyant / I go all the way.”
Much like Gaga, Dorian is a born visual performer as well as a musical talent – a fact which came to full light with the fourth song. In keeping with its title, ‘Puppet’ featured an oversized, two-headed puppet seemingly controlling Dorian throughout a marionette-inspired dance routine as the backtrack oscillated between distorted metal guitars and MIDI harpsichords. Their flair for drama came into effect several more times throughout the night, keeping the audience on its toes with elaborate choreographies involving banners and masks, dance interludes with independent storylines, and came to a head (pun intended) with Dorian’s decapitation at the end of ‘Yes Man’, complete with an impressively realistic effigy sporting their electric yellow hairdo.
Sonically, too, Dorian’s penchant for subverting expectations came to effect through a number of unexpected remixes of familiar songs like Flamboyant hit ‘Adam and Steve’, and Fanfare’s ‘Yes Man’ and ‘Touch Grass’, which shook the venue to near-seismic degrees as audience members took the fast-paced hardstyle kickdrums in stride. Other songs like 2018 single ‘Career Boy’ were shortened and interspersed with commentary to accommodate the narrative flow of the performance.
Although Fanfare is overall less overtly political than 2022’s My Agenda (a critique of right-wing conspiracies around the idea of a “gay agenda”), several songs on the album allude to Dorian’s outspoken left-wing political views. ‘Manmade Horrors’, for example, gives us an idea of their attitudes towards capitalism and consumer culture through distressing lyrics like “You may live to see a Minion with a strap-on / Live to see a slutty Mao Zedong thong.”
As such, while a fan favourite, audience members were left to grapple independently with the fact that it was this particular song that Dorian dedicated to Manchester, gleefully referring to the city as “the birthplace of the industrial revolution.” Luckily, though, the home of The Mancunion was given a more sympathetic shoutout before Flamboyant single ‘Man to Man’ towards the end of the night (or, as Dorian deemed it, ‘Man to Manchester’): “Up North you’ve got that energy,” Dorian announced. “Because you guys love music, isn’t that right!”
While the regular set ended on a slightly more low-key note with Fanfare’s final tracks, ‘Warning Signs’ and ‘Wanna Be a Star’, the eagerly demanded encore made for an appropriately ecstatic end to the night with the performance of Fanfare’s lead singles ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ and ‘Freak Mode.’ Naturally, the latter ended with Dorian leaping into a well-timed crowd surf, without which the night would not have felt complete. Once safely deposited on stage again, Dorian expressed gratitude to the supporting acts and bid the audience good night with a final flourish, yelling “I’ll see you all at the afterparty!”
Dorian Electra will be on tour in the UK and Europe until January 30, and will continue touring in the US throughout the winter.
