Chris Cunningham has always been one of my heroes. Along with Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romanek and Michel Gondry, he was one of those music video directors whose work you eagerly looked forward to. He hasn’t shot any music videos for a good long while now but his back catalogue includes the Aphex Twin masterpieces ‘Come to Daddy‘ and ‘Windowlicker‘, the Bjork ‘All is full of love‘ video, Madonna’s ‘Frozen‘, Leftfield’s ‘Afrika Shox‘ (unbelievable video) and my personal favourite, Squarepusher’s ‘Come on my Selector’. Cunningham only rarely shoots music videos these days, not surprising really given how far the budgets have shrunk. Last night I went to see Chris Cunningham live at the Roundhouse in Camden and was expecting to be blown away. But I wasn’t.

The show features remixes of other artists’ work, some original compositions and of course a potent visual element with three screens assaulting the senses with a dizzying mix of horror porn, flesh and danger. Cunningham himself shambles onto stage to hide behind a MacBookPro, long hair the only sign that this might in fact be the famous director. The crowd whistles, cheers, whoops and braces itself. Here be fans of the highest order. And it starts well, ambient noise accompanied by floating sci-fi lightscapes, reminiscent of Blade Runner, gently revealing themselves to be New York subway lights, passing through tunnels. The craggy face of what looks like a homeless man sings a dirge about New York, accompanied by thrashing drum hits and flashes of light. It’s a good beginning. It’s a remix of “New York Is Killing Me”, one of the songs he worked on for Gil Scott-Heron’s album ‘I’m New Here’. And it gets better. Next we’re treated to a nightmare vision of a young boy being pushed and prodded by invisible fingers, his body thrashing around to the manic drum and bass rhythms as the light bulbs in the ceiling of his room fire electric danger through his body. The action takes place to the menacing sound of a metronome thwacking relentlessly back and forth on the outside screens. It’s dark and disturbing, but as with all the best Cunningham work, there’s a sense of humour to it, and I found myself laughing. Again, so far so good.

But just when you think it’s all about to develop into something genuinely breathtaking, it just doesn’t. A pseudo dance piece featuring two naked protagonists evolves into domestic violence and ends in penetrative sex, Rubber Johnny, the lead character from his 2005 short film, makes an appearance and the ears are continuously assaulted and battered by the thumping, scraping, mashing music. I heard someone behind me nudge his companion and tell him to expect ‘audio rape’. That’s a pretty fair description. The problem with the show is that you can’t quite pin down what it’s supposed to be. Is it a DJ set, is it a film, is it something else altogether? It’s not quite clear. You can of course say that Cunningham is doing whatever he wants and that’s fair enough. As long as it’s good.

In isolation the pieces are extraordinary, but linked together as a show they demonstrate a mind-numbing repetitiveness and a surprising lack of creativity. To call it one dimensional is unfair, but Cunningham seems to have only two gears: thrash the shit out of everything, or sub bass drone. He revels in knitting the visuals so tightly to the music, every crackle, fizz, pop and slash cut with a razor by the images so that you sometimes wonder which came first, the music or the images. The Squarepusher video demonstrated this but it was breathtaking and so imaginative that it blew my mind. Watching last night it felt like he’d become so obsessed with that connection between the edit and the music that he’d gone too far. There’s seemingly no creativity, it’s just the same images repeated over and over again in the same pattern. Very quickly it loses its effect and, dare I say it, I actually got bored. It’s hard to imagine being bored while your ears are being pounded by one of the most extreme electronic soundtracks you’re likely to hear this year and your eyes are being drop-kicked by human forms being brutalised and punished, but I was.

The problem with the show is that it feels like its based on one idea that doesn’t know where to go. 45 mins is a long time to be subjected to the same thing over and over and I can’t help feeling he missed a trick to create a more varied journey. It’s peculiar, but he came across as a poor imitation of… well of himself. After 35 mins I was utterly utterly bored and I left. When you’re paying £28 to stand up and watch someone’s work you hope that it’s going to be better than that. More variety, more guile, more imagination, more ideas, is that too much to ask? Chris Cunningham’s videos left a profound effect on the way I appreciate the form and they are true originals, but he doesn’t appear to have moved on at all. Still the same fascination with the human body a la grotesque, and it all just feels a little bit old now. French director Romain Gavras is currently much more provocative and intriguing and if you’ve seen his video for Justice’s Stress, or M.I.A.’s Born free you’ll know what I mean. What happened Chris? What was he even doing on the stage, making sure the laptop didn’t go to sleep? The Roundhouse is an awesome venue and deserves a better use of the space than a triptych of screens. Oh well.

If I were to award stars the way reviewers do then this would get 2/5. Very disappointed.

Rating: **

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