Foals + Bombay Bicycle Club + Matthew !WOWOW! @ 229 The Venue, 24/11/07

(I forgot my camera, so all of these are by photographer extraordinaire Riaz Philips. Those are my legs. See more photos here)

Having literally not been to a gig for aaaaages, it was nice to finally go and shove some indie kids around in the spirit of fun. If you're under 18, living in/near London and go to a gig every now and then, you'll probably have heard of All Age Concerts. Theyre one of the main champions of gigs specifically for under 18s (not forgetting Underage Club) and they are pretty well respected for consistently puttting on a helluva good show, and last night was no exception.

Due to various train/ticket/massive queue problems we missed most of the first band's set. The ticket said Tinseltown were playing, but apparently they had to pull out due to some kind of illness. i don't know what the replacement band were called, but their last song was extremely danceable. After this there were some DJs who did a pretty nice job, putting down some club classics such as 'Licky' by Larry T and Princess Superstar. After that was Bombay Bicycle Club, who put on a more than adequate performance. BBC, like so many others, is one of those bands who I knew about for ages, and I knew are probably quite good, but just could not be arsed to actually listen to their tracks. However, I am now aware of how truly great they are. Currently I don't own any mp3s of theirs, but go stream some off their myspace now!

After that we had the pleasure of a truly monumental DJ set by a man who was calling himself 'Matthew !WOWOW!'. Despite the fact he was wearing gold sequined leggings (no, he really was) he was able to drive the crowd into an all-out frenzy. The highlight had to be Justice's 'Phantom I and II' as remixed by Troublemaker, which he managed to keep spinning for something like 10 or 12 minutes, with some rather wonderful glitchy rewinds and reverses thrown in.

Foals took ages to actually come on stage, and I spent most of the time rambling to one of the musicians in The More Assured (who had decided to turn up for some reason) about how much of a shame it was that I won't be able to attend their gig next Saturday (also at 229), because I'm going on a fun fun fun weekend in Dorset with my family. When they finally took the stage even the boring people who'd been posing at the sides and back joined the crowd and everyone got really horribly crushed to death, myself included. Rattling off recent singles 'Mathletics' and 'Balloons', the band were clearly enjoying themselves, climbing onto stacks of speakers and jumping high in the air. The crowd were also going mental, and crowdsurfing was increasingly common towards the end. The set closed with killer (and i mean killer) track 'Hummer' bringing the venue to a complete standstill. I actually cannot wait for the Foals album, rumoured to be released sometime in early 2008.

DOWNLOAD: Justice - Phantom + Phantom Pt. II (Troublemaker Edit) (zShare)
DOWNLOAD: Foals - Hummer (zShare)

Oh, and this kid's shirt is too cool not to put here: