Enter Shikari @ The Alban Arena, 08/10/08

(Photo from a totally different concert, but included here for aesthetic and 'show you what the band look like' reasons)

Enter Shikari are a band I have never been wildly enthusiastic about, but half of them went to the same school as me, and this show was about a mile and a half from my house and I've heard they are quite good live. The rumours were true. Never in my life have I got so battered at a gig, nor have I ever been that violent in a moshpit. I usually just dance in the middle until someone runs over and floors me, but this time I was going for it, flying into people and punching and kicking and screaming. School on thursday was not a very fun experience, but it was definitely worth it. Support from one local band who I didn't think were very good, and a drum and bass called DJ Pdex who was probably not all that brilliant but at the time was very fun to jump around to.

Musically, Enter Shikari are only slightly different to pretty much every other ridiculous emo band, despite the fact that they like to make a big fuss about the fact that they use a bit of synth every now and then. The singing, when it goes into a full 'screamo' mode is, a bit horrible, but they aren't badly-written songs and if you pretend Enter Shikari's fans don't all have myspace names such as "<3 GEORGIA♥[ravetingz]FTW <3" it's possible to almost enjoy some of their songs, but only in a really S-Club 7 guilty pleasure kind of way.

Enter Shikari - Kicking Back On the Surface Of Your Cheek
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///Update: If you've found me through a search engine looking for photos, as far as I know there was no official photographer but a girl called Lorien took a few decent shots and you can see them on her Flickr

Underage Festival 2008

(All photos by me, please don't use without permission!)

The one-day extravaganza for all of London's annoyingly fashionable topshop-lovers returned for its second year. It was bigger, louder and more chaotic but I'm going to be honest: it wasn't as good as last year. This is mainly due to the fact that the line-up did not include as many bands I loved, but also there were way too many stages, and it didn't seem to be as organised as before. I managed to score myself a photopass which was a very interesting and fun experience, but from it I have also learned that the actual fun in gigs is definitely from jumping round and getting horribly sweaty. So, no more photopassing for me I reckon. Unless someone wants to pay me, but this is quite unlucky to happen.

First act I managed to catch was Kid Harpoon, but he was pretty boring so I headed off to see a bit of Nick Harrison, and to be honest I cannot actually remember for the life of me what I thought of this band, but they were probably OK. After this I saw Polly Scattergood playing in a shed for about 2 songs, and she was really good. I hadn't heard of her before but she is honestly really good.

From there it was Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man. This is a group I have been casually aware of for a while, but hadn't actually got round to listening to, and upon seeing them live I have no idea why anybody would want to listen to them ever. The singer, who runs around calling himself Frederick Blood-Royale, puts on this ridiculous moaning posh voice, like Antony Hegarty but about 10 times worse. The songs themselves seemed reasonably well-written but the rest of the band need to find a new vocalist.

From here I saw Pull in Emergency who I didn't really have an opinion about and still don't, White Williams who I thought were really intresting and inventive, and if we are going to go along the Santogold/MIA method of describing bands then they are a bit like a cooler New York version of Metronomy. I didn't stay for the whole set because I wanted to check out a bit of Poppy & The Jezebels who I though were OK and then I saw Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds in the Topman tent and they were absolutely fantastic. Really good slightly shouty indie dance-punk. After this one of my friends persuaded me top see a bit of Count and Sinden, who were good in terms of the actual music but they had a really annoying rapper person just sort of repeating 'yeah, yeah Count and Sinden' on top and this totally ruined it.

Care Bears on fire were crap. They were yet another band of american 10 year olds. There was one of these last year and they were crap also. Nobody had heard of them or liked them or decided they were good after watching them. Sorry, I am being horribly mean and nasty to these spoiled american tweenagers or whatever the disney channel is calling them at the moment but whoever decided to fly out this rubbish band and put them on the main stage is a fool.

I decided to go see FrYars, and have now made up my mind that I do not like his music, because it is annoying. Team Waterpolo I thought were reasonably listenable but slightly too middle of the road to appeal to me, Those Dancing Days were awful and then I saw some very small new unsigned band called A Girl Called Kate which is a rubbish name for a band but they were really good. Then for about 5 minutes I saw SCUM and they were the most amazing noise terroroists and it was fantastic, but based on the music on their profile, the recordings bear no resemblance to the live show. Then I spent a short while being slightly more impressed than I thought I was going to be with ridiculous emo outfit My Passion before i headed off to take about a million photos of Florence and The Machine, who was amazing in just about every way every way possible. That's all there is to say really.

After that I saw a bit of Sons & Daughters. i was quite impressed, but not so much that since then I've actually bothered to listen to any of their stuff. XX Teens are crap. In every way. Goldilocks was quite good, but rap when it's not knowingly taking the piss out of itself I never find that exciting. After that it was back to the red bull bandstand to see a scary girl metal band called Kasms. I think my obsession to weird scary electro bands is translating into also having the ability to appreciate non-electro scary hardcore music, which I find slightly worrying. Next time you see me I will look like this probably. Then it was off to see Ipso Facto, who aren't that good, but for some reason in my head I think of them as nice people even though they wear strange black and white outfits. From here it was Dizzee Rascal, who in terms of musical skill is not a great live performer but everyone was dancing and having fun so we will forgive him for that.

I left Dizzee early to check out the amazing Bonde do Role, who were incredibly fun to watch and came across as really genuinely hilarious people. From here I saw Foals, which was absolutely insane. The tent was so packed that the crowd barriers were actually bending, and some safety-conscious stage manager decided to temporarily stop the set and get all the photographers OUT RIGHT NOW, ALL OF YOU, IT'S FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY YEAH ETC ETC. Which was quite annoying. After this was headliners Gallows, who were not exactly something to listen to whilst doing your homework but the insane onstage (and eventually offstage) antics were a sight to behold.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. More than a month late, and badly written as well, and no mp3s either. I am spoiling you people I really am.

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HEALTH live at Pure Groove, 10/06/08

Readers, it's been a while, but now my GCSEs are finally over. Summer's here!



Seriously, Health are amazing. On tuesday I decided to skip revising and go see them play a free instore at the new Pure Groove store that's just opened up this month. I was not disappointed. The shop is literally tiny, and the band took up basically the whole of the stage with their piles and piles of crazy equipment. And as they launched into their first track 'Girl Attorney', John Famiglietti the guitarist immediately started jumping and spinning round through the crowd, and nearly whacking us in the face with his guitar. It was a half hour set of what could be described as solid noise, but as performers they are incredibly interesting to watch just to marvel at their equipment and techniques. The lead singer Jake Duzsik had two microphones, one making normal sound and the other making a shrill, high pitched scream. And despite their eagerness to do a bit of 'crazy dancing', and the slightly chaotic nature of their songs, you can see they are amazingly well-rehearsed and slick.

Usually at concerts I consider about 90% of the fun to be based on jumping around, getting very sweaty and slightly injured; but this was a lunchtime concert full of 30-somethings and vinyl. The strange thing (for me at least) was that the lack of dancing was a good thing. Most of their songs are completely chaotic and strange anyway, and with the band getting so into what they were doing it was nice to be able to just observe, if that makes sense. The volume was incredibly loud, and the songs really took on a new dimension in a live setting. They played pretty much all their album, sadly omitting 'Lost Time' and possibly a few others, but there were definitely a few new tracks I'd never heard before.

The band's UK tour finished last night, so UK readers will have to wait until august to see them again, whereas any Americans I urge you to see them on their US tour which is starting next week!

Love Music Hate Racism Carnival @ Victoria Park, 27/04/08

(Truly awe-inspiring cameraphone photography by me)

Mmmkay. Sunday was fun but overall the day was quite badly organised, and whoever thought it would be a good idea to encourage every act to badmouth the BNP at every possible oppurtunity was foolish. Obviously the BNP are stupid evil racist nazis, but I didn't need to be told that by twelve different people at 20 minute intervals. Some of the politics were also a bit wonky too, such as the festival's organiser saying the BNP should be banned as a party, which is obviously wrong. If the government just goes around banning political groups on the basis that their political beliefs are wrong, then how can this country be any better than Nazi Germany, Apartheid era South Africa or McCarthyist America? Anyway - rant over - I spent most of the day jamming out in the dance tent to a load of trance/grime/dubstep/bassline/garage and old nineties house music, breaking all the rules of 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' and dancing like an easily amaused moron but it was very fun. There were a lot of 'Gyals wiv Attitood' who I can only assume hadn't been to the kind of musical event that might be described as a 'gig' before, and some of them got very annoyed at people like me who wanted to jump around. There were more than a few times when it looked like someone who'd accidentally stepped on someone's toe was 'gonn get slapped' for 'disrespecting ma family' or something. But it was alright on the whole.



After a bit I made the mistake of thinking it might be a good idea to check out Hard-fi, seeing as I figured the people dancing there might be a bit tolerant of getting brushed against by accident, but after spending about 5 minutes saying 'excuse me' I was at the front and I realised nobody was dancing or was going to. There were several thousand people crammed in like sardines with their eyes on the stage and no intention of moving. Ever. Which, all in all is not their fault because Hard-fi really are the worst band in the world. Ever.

With reference to me saying it was badly organised, I asked a million stewards when Patrick Wolf was playing, and it turned out they hadn't even decided which stage he was playing on until about an hour before he took the stage. It took a lot of asking to find out when he was actually on, but when he finally took the stage he was really good. We arrived a bit early and saw the last ten minutes of Akala, and heard a few tracks from his new(ish) album, and one bit where he managed to rap a whole song a capella at a rate of about ten syllables per second. Which I thought was quite impressive. Back to Mr Wolf - it was quite a short set, starting with 'Accident & Emergency' and closing with the brilliant 'Magic Position'.



The show started off with Patrick wearing a black shirt and trousers combo but in the middle of one song he threw them off revealing some rather brilliant Union Jack pyjamas. It was quite an upbeat poppy set, with a full backing band and Mr Wolf dancing round the stage armed with a microphone only. Last time I saw Patrick Wolf, at the Underage Festival (also in Victoria Park), it was a more piano-based ballady show that eventually I left to go rock out to Boy Kill Boy instead, because I couldn't see anything or hear it that well. As Patrick introduced the track 'Vultures', a massive pit opened up behind me and the rest of the set became a big euphoric crowdsurfing pile-up, as opposed to a million teenage girls trying to get as close to Mr Wolf as possible. It ended with Patrick Wolf climbing all over the crowd barriers and flailing around Alice Glass-style, and it was really fun.

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
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And the fact that I heard this song about 20 times means I am actually starting to like it. Please don't hate me, I am already full of enough self-loathing as it is.

T2 Ft Jodie - Heartbroken
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OH EM GEE: Crystal Castles // These New Puritans // The Horrors // Ulterior, @ The Astoria, 16/02/08

All my evil evil plans to go to many many many gigs this half term went along the way of track 4 of Lightspeed champion's debut album (look it up), but at least on the final saturday I got to go do some crazy dancing. The first band, Ulterior, seemed to be genuinely horrible people. Their sets started and ended with them positioning an electric guitar directly in front of an amp and leaving it there for a few minutes. Their myspace biography drones on about how they will preserve originality and ‘destroy the cult of the past’, which in theory is a good thing, but in real life they sound like an almost-as-good version of The Presets - whose debut album ‘Beams’ is soooo good, I can’t believe I missed it until a few weeks ago! (Oh, and they also have a new one out in April – more on that later.) Long story short, Ulterior have a few decent songs, but they could possibly work on their crowd-pleasing skills, instead of being tortured artists and 'invalidating all kinds of imitation'.

These New Puritans set started out slowly, but the crowd was full of goth teenagers with backcombed hair and too much eyeshadow who made themselves busy trying to look moody and unimpressed - it's hardly fair to blame the band for the complete lack of dancing. These New Puritans make leftfield indie music - their album is really good, with the exception of a few absolute rubbish ones. 'Numbers (aka Numerology)' is one of them. It is horrendous. It really does amaze me that a band good enough to produce some truly killer tracks ('En Papier', 'Colours', 'Infinity Ytinifni' for example) can make such an error of judgement that they think a 'Numbers' is worthy of playing. After being subjected to the worst song that band has ever made, things finally got moving when they played lead single 'Elvis'. I'm not going to run through everything they played as I have already forgotten them all, but the set was really very fun.

The venue was nearly overflowing with excitement when Crystal Castles took the stage, even some of the eyeliner and straighteners brigade got their backs off the walls. It was surreal, Ethan (is it Ethan or Ethin? or some people say it's actually Claudio) kind of sneaked on stage and made a few scary electronic gurgling noises before Alice ran on and the amazing 'Atlantis to Interzone' started. While it's technically a remix, in a live setting it can technically be regarded as a whole new song. It's amazing. One of the main complaints people generally have about Crystal Castles live sets is that they never play long enough, but this time the set went on for about an hour. 'Alice Practice', 'Air War', 'Mother Knows Best' and 'Crimewave' were all present - there were a few omissions (Where was 'Love and Caring'?!) but realistically when you're a band with about 30 different songs you're not going to be able to play them all. Due to my overestimating the robustness of my digital camera at some previous concerts I was megapixel-less for the show, but I bought a nice disposable camera for £2.50 and I'm currently waiting to see how the pictures came out. Probably crap. Oh, and it turns out my phone's video functions cannot cope with loud noise AT ALL, which means all the effort I put into trying to video one of the songs was wasted, because the backing track is solid white noise.

The Horrors played a set that was a complete anticlimax. All of their songs merged into one blurry graveyard screaming session. Knowing that I was not a massive Horrors fan I decided not to devote my efforts to being as close as possible to the stage and the band, but instead on voluntarily getting as hurt as possible in the moshpit (which I regretted a bit the next morning).

A quick note: If you are a person with massive white rasta dreadlocks, please do not combine this with being a person who jumps around at gigs. Everyone within a metre radius of you got whipped in the face with your massive disgusting hair and it actually really hurts a surprising amount and it's horrible and they smelt and there was a bit when part of one got caught in my teeth and a bit ripped off and got caught and I was nearly sick and of all the things that happened that night, the dreadlock in teeth moment was the one that came closest to ruining my weekend. Please consider others, and either stop going to gigs or get a haircut.

Lightspeed Champion @ Bedford Esquires, 02/02/08

It was really fun. The first band was a kooks-wannabe local indie band and weren't really all that interesting, but I will forgive them because I'm sure they'll get better. Next up was Semifinalists, a band made up of a small japanese man wearing even smaller jeans, a drummer in massive headphones, a lead guitarist with the worst haircut seen this side of 1996 and, somewhat inexplicably, Dev Hynes on bass. They were really weird and nobody seemed that impressed. But, their one redeeming feature as a band was their very cool band t-shirts (I can't find a picture of them anywhere on the net, you're going to have to trust me on this) which were, unfortunately, on sale for about £13.50 more than the shrapnel in my pocket.

Anyway, enough bashing the support bands, Lightspeed Champion put on a genuinely entertaining and lovely set. The first few tracks were performed 'acoustic' - meaning just Dev on guitar and another guy on violin (note to self: find out who) and even the occasional bit of harmonica thrown in. A few tracks in, it finally went 'full band' - half of 'Semifinalists' joined in, contributed some backing vocals, and a drummer girl appeared out of nowhere. Things started to get a little bit crazy during 'Galaxy Of The Lost', when roughly three quarters of the people in the venue all decided to try to get as close as possible to the front of the stage at exactly the same time. It didn't exactly become a mosh-pit, but things got pretty sweaty. In between songs was filled with cheery banter, such as before 'Everyone I Know is Listening to Crunk', which was introduced as 'a reasonably stereotypical song about, um, breakups and stuff. Oh, and it's also about hip-hop.'

All of the songs performed were from the recently released ‘Falling Off The Lavender Bridge’ album, with the exception of the encore track that we were specifically asked not to write about on the internet and one other. Written on the tracklist as ‘Prostitute Song’, Dev had to explain to us that the song as of yet doesn’t actually have a title, but it was about a Brazilian prostitute and that was there to remind him. It was really good and even though nobody had heard it before, by the end of the track everyone was singing along to the chorus. We were told it will be on the next album, but until then there’s ‘Falling Off The Lavender Bridge’- definitely a must-have for this spring!

Buy the album from Rough Trade

DOWNLOAD: Lightspeed Champion - Everyone I Know is Listening To Crunk (zShare)

And just for the LOLZ, here is some actual crunk.

DOWNLOAD: Missy Elliot ft Fatman Scoop & Ciara - Lose Control (zShare)

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:

Partyshank @ Boston Dome, London

Partyshank @ Boston Dome, London, originally uploaded by OMG TOM.

After the incredible disappointment of not seeing Hadouken! and Late of the Pier" in Bedford on Tuesday, I had an awesome night seeing Partyshank at the Boston Arms Dome on Friday. I'd never been ther before, and the venue's website made it sound like the tiny back room of a pub. But it was HUGE inside. The lineup was a ska band followed by rap outfit Sabotage Party who were actually really good, preaching about not being a twat in the moshpit and always using a condom. (Sample Lyric: "We don't want no STD and we don't want no pregnancy!" - note the double negative, what is grammar coming to these days?)
After that there was another ska band, whose music was infuriatingly rubbish to dance to. However, they entertained in other ways, such as when the lead singer attempted a stage dive and the crowd completely failed to catch him.
What was good was that in between the sets the music was actually really good, supplied courtesy of the ADHDJ's, two kids my age who know how to put on a good tune, and remix it and stuff like that which will forever remain a mystery to me. At about half ten Partyshank finally took the stage, and put on an exhilirating set, starting with 'Untilted'. I am 99% sure this song is actually called 'Untitled', and they happened to spell the name wrong when they uploaded it to their Myspace, but for now I will have to assume it is referring to something that is not tilted. The venue was almost completely empty at this point, either because Partyshank were completely not anyone's cup of tea, or maybe people needed to catch a certain train. The last few tracks introduced a new aspect of Partysdhank performance I'd never seen before: screamo. In general I would say I am against screamo because it generally represents the more depressing emotions and generally leads to people dying their hair black and snarling at cameras for their Myspace pages, but by then I was too immersed in adrenaline to care. I managed to video pretty much the whole of 'Penis vs Vagina', lead track to the latest Partyshank EP, available off their Myspace. I got a bit 'funky' with the camera angles at times, but I'd hate for people to think I was the sort of person who could stand still with Partyshank playing a few metres away.

Jack Penate @ The Astoria, 26/09/07

Jack Penate put on a more than adequate set at the London's Astoria, but approximately half the crowd seemed to think they were at some kind of death-metal-football-hooligan-mud-wrestling fight extravaganza. It was the first time my parents had let me go to a gig on a schoolnight, and there weren't a lot of people my age there - for once me & my friends were actually the youngest people in the venue. There were about 3 seperate moshpit incidents that turned into fights, one leading Jack Penate to stop playing and lecture the crowd about how there was no need and it's not what his music is about.
The songs were really good, but there is something about Jack Penate that I find inherently annoying. It might be his Tony Blair-esque voice, or his slightly too rounded face, but that man incites levels of annoyance in me that I usually would reserve for people who are actually annoying. During slow number My Yvonne a female vocalist appeared onstage to do some additional vocals - at first I thought it looked like Adele, but my mate Harry swears she was wearing one of those gold name necklaces that said Julia. The main set ended with Torn On The Platform, but the encore included Learning Lines, a cover of one of those songs you sort of know of but can't remember the name of, and the excellent Second, Minute Or Hour.

DOWNLOAD: Jack Penate - Made Of Codes

There were two support bands, first folk-rockers Johnny Flynn who played a set that was reasonably pleasant to listen to, but not exactly danceable. The lead singer swapped guitars 3 times, and every time there was a smaller guitar. For the last song he got a banjo out, which almost ruined my whole evening. Please do not question my hatred of banjos - I will not go into details, but I do not like banjos. At all.
The second band were terrible. When I saw the poster, I thought 'Yay, Wild Beasts are playing.' Then I remembered that I had never heard of Wild Beasts, and that the band I was thinking of was in fact Foals, and Wild Beasts I had never heard of. The bass and lead guitarists both came on wearing turtleneck jumpers, and the singer did this cringe-enducing dancing that seemed to be based on copying the style of an angry pigeon.
The opening songs skirted the boundaries of good taste, but a few tracks in the whining falsettos became too much to take and several empty beercans started flying, along with a few ones that seemed to be mostly full. I didn't throw anything, but this was for the simple reason that I have the most inadequate throw of anyone I know, with about the same throwing skills as a newborn baby; I didn't want to embarass myself. It is a pity the band didn't feel the same way. Dressed up like a fourpiece Simon & Garfunkel both having bad hair days, I am considering starting a petition to make Wild Beasts illegal.

In other news, WOO YAY St Albans won the online monopoly board vote by a ridiculous margin. Getting more than twice the number of votes than the second place Exeter, locals voted a total of 104,107 times. Arguably St Albans only won because we are the most internet and Myspace obsessed town in the UK, but it does also show that people in St Albans love it so much that to us it's worth staying at home, making up addresses such as *keyboard smash* @ *keyboard smash* .com a million times a day for 3 weeks. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a certain boardgame to beat my brother at.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? w/ We Smoke Fags + AutoKratz @ Bedford Esquires, 15/09/07

I saw Does It Offend You, Yeah? supporting Hadouken in June, and they were awesome to the point of almost upstaging the headline act. Now on their own UK Headline tour, I saw them in Bedford on Saturday and they did not disappoint. With their own brand of electro-punk they totally rocked the tiny venue that is the Esquires, they actually brought the roof down.
Unfortunately, the bouncers were clearly not in a good mood for some reason, and I was thrown out of the venue twice. Somebody had thought it might be nice to hang a million glowsticks from the ceiling, and understandably perhaps, everyone was trying to reach up and grab them. So when some of the more enterprising people decided to jump on each others shoulders to pull a few glowsticks down, an evil evil bouncer decided to send us out. The scum. It was OK in the end, because after taking off my glasses and hat, and changing shirts with a friend, I managed to sneak back in.
As well as this, there were two "dancing-related injuries" over the course of the evening. One of them was my mate Kalyan, who (the poor, poor bastard) managed to dislocate his shoulder someway through the first song of the first act, and was ambulanced off to hospital.



But anyway, onto the music. The first act was 'electro skunk rock' three-piece, We Smoke Fags. Quite what their name can mean in a literal sense since the smoking ban is dubious - I, for one, did not see them smoking any fags. Despite the injuries sustained by the crowd, they put on a solid set, kicking things off with the excellent 'Eastenders', and finishing off with their amazing, singalong-even-though-you-don't-know-the-words stomper, Lust Puppet.

DOWNLOAD: We Smoke Fags - Eastenders
DOWNLOAD: We Smoke Fags - Lust Puppet



After an interval during which they turned all the lights on and I spent most of hiding from the security in a corner, wonky electro outfit autoKratz stepped in. All their songs were reeallly long, and a bit repetitive, but they were kinda fun. To be honest, the music sounded more like it was more suited to some kind of drug-fuelled illegal rave in the centre of Berlin, and the crowd weren't all that keen, but they kept the momentum going for a half-hour set.

DOWNLOAD: autoKratz - ReaKtor


At about 9.45, Does It offend You, Yeah? took the stage. They were completely wicked-awesome. Even the song that I thought was boring in mp3 format (Doomed Now) was good. I saw all the songs, except the final reprise of 'We Are Rockstars', because the prick recognised me from earlier and decided to chuck me out again.

DOWNLOAD: Does It Offend You, Yeah? - We Are Rockstars (Kissy Sell Out Remix)
DOWNLOAD: Does It offend You, Yeah? - Battle Royale

Partyshank & Frankmusik @ New Cross Inn

Partyshank make crazy 'toystep' music by somehow wiring together hundreds of brightly-coloured childrens' toy instruments to create something that sounds like it was made by Crystal Castles, if Crystal Castles were cartoon characters from Japan.
Frankmusik makes emotive powerpop layered over neon synths and 808 drumbeats. As well as having a voice more haunting than ex-Simian and now Black Ghosts vocalist James Ford, he also has the most amazing haircut ever to be banned from most schools. Frankmusik is the male Robyn, if Robyn was a man wearing huge white glasses.
Saturday saw an all ages all-dayer with both performing awesome live sets in the tiny venue that is the New Cross Inn, with support from insane shout-rap outfit Puppy Bucket & Donny Choonara, and a fourpiece of 15 year olds who seem to have a lot of potential and were really nice.

I'm not going to post any mp3s of Puppy Bucket & Donny Choonara, because I have heard them and they are really badly recorded, lacklustre and sound rubbish. To the contrary, their live set was actually really fun and full of raw energy. Me & my small group of friends were the only ones dancing, but it was still pretty amusante.

Next up were Lethal Concept, the aforementioned teenagers who've only got round to writing three songs, so spent most of their set covering other people's song, but made up for it with this infectious enthusiasm for performance. I think they'd payed all their friends to come to the show, or maybe they are just REALLY FAMOUS without me knowing, but the tiny dancehall erupted from the very first track. A young Enter Shikari in the making, perhaps. (Me saying that is nothing to do with the fact they played two Enter Shikari songs.)

Next up was Frankmusik, whose set we nearly missed all of, but from what I saw looked pretty awesome. For some reason everyone got the urge to stand on things at somepoint during the show, and I was no exception. Until the barmaid very kindly asked me to stop dancing all over the bar. Which was fair enough really.

Partyshank finally took the stage, one of them dressed in the obligatory hotdog costume, and the crowd was mental. I managed to lose both my shoes but made the decision to keep dancing and ignore the increasing pain in my feet and focus on the 'music'. The absolute highlight was when FrankMusik took the stage and there was some kind of crazy collaboration which should be a band in its own right, and they should call it PartyFrank. There was murder going on in the moshpit, and to be honest I was amazed that such a violent atmosphere could accumulate in such a tiny venue. Peace and Love clearly has no place in New Cross.

DOWNLOAD: Partyshank - Gary
DOWNLOAD: Frankmusik - Made Her Smile
LISTEN: Frankmusik - 3 Little Words (Partyshank Remix)@ The Partyshank Remixes Page
www.myspace.com/frankmusik
www.myspace.com/partyshank
www.myspace.com/lethalconceptband
www.myspace.com/puppybucketanddonnychoonara

Regina Spektor @ Royal Festival Hall, 07/09/07

Friday night was without doubt the most moving live performance I have ever seen. Despite the fact we were in a row so far back in a venue so huge that I for one could barely even see Regina, it was an awesome evening. Right from the second track of the show, I went into a sort of trance or something; and was nearly in tears for the whole night. Switching between piano, guitar and simply tapping the microphone in time to the beat, Ms Spektor's performance was electric.
Regina is amazingly talented, and seems to never stop writing new songs - she has literally got hundreds of them. The Regina Spektor discography is like a huge iceberg: I've got 30 of her songs in my mp3 library, (all of which I know pretty well) and this is loads more than any other band - yet I still only recognised about half of the tracks she had to offer. Personally, the highlight of the set was the unreleased 'Baby Jesus', a song that showcases Regina's amazing vocal range, as well as her superhuman piano skills.
All I need now is another Spektor album!
DOWNLOAD: Regina Spektor - Musicbox

Wombats @ The Green Room

On my first assignment for UK Undercurrent, I got free entry to the rescheduled Wombats gig in Welwyn Garden City. Myself and my friend Kalyan were collecting emails for the Wombats Mailing List and handing out badges. There were two support acts, the first of which I wasn't really paying any attention to, and which I remember as loud more than anything else, and the second, 'The Mourning After', despite having a really really horrendously awful name, sounded like they have potential to become good. A lot of the past gigs I've been to I have been around the average of everyone at the venue, and it was strange to be at a gig where almost everyone was about ten years older than me. It figures really, seeing as The Green Room is the upstairs to a pub.

Anyway, the band were on at ten and started out with what seemed an impromptu (yet clearly well-rehearsed) A capella rendition of 'Girls, Boys and Marsupials', to a rapture of applause. The crowd were relatively calm at the beginning, and understandably: the stage is about four inches of the ground, the ceiling is low, there's no crowd barrier - it didn't look like it was gonna be a night of wild dancing. However, a few songs in a moshpit erupted, and for some reason I thought it might be a good idea to jump into the swaying mass of twenty-something rugby types. Never Again.
They went through the majority of their songs in a set that lasted nearly an hour, and in between there was a lot of ruminating about the meaning of their songs, and general anecdotes. A memorable one was lead singer Matt Murphy telling us about how, on a train in Germany, they had seen some rabbits 'frolicking' in the distance, and a friendly bit of banter had started about whether or not rabbits are nocturnal. Several hours of internet searching later, they discovered rabbits are in fact most active in twilight hours, or to use the proper term, crepuscular.
There were lots of songs I hadn't heard before, including upcoming single 'Let's Dance To Joy Division', released in October. The finale track, 'Kill The Director', saw the crowd going so crazy the front row were falling over themselves and the second row putting a foot on the stage in order to avoid a massive pile-up, and the security acting as a human barrier. However, this was nothing compared to encore track 'Backfire At The Disco' that saw an all-out stage invasion. I must admit that I was one of the naughty few who spilled onto the stage (in my defence, it was mainly to avoid one of the rugby-types who'd had a few) but the band played on regardless. Absolute mayhem.
The Mourning After: www.myspace.com/tmaband
The Wombats: www.myspace.com/thewombatsuk
DOWNLOAD: Wombats - Derail And Crash

A Punch In The Face

Photo Credit: jez cave
After Lethal Bizzle, we headed to the Myspace stage to see Crystal Castles at the Myspace Stage. It was really annoying, because they had scheduled Crystal Castles at the same time as cooler-than-thou Parisian sex pests The Teenagers. Crystal Castles and The Teenagers are both blogosphere and personal favourites, and I was torn as which to go to. In the end we decided to go for Crystal Castles, because they were
a. WAYYY more energetic, and we were feeling pretty pumped after our half hour of shouty hip-hop.
b. From Canada, so therefore more likely to be elusive for future live performances.
c. Not performing in a circus tent, and we'd heard the Converse/Artrocker tent where the teenagers were in had a rubbish atmosphere.
Before CC came on, the crowd were rapidly filling with anticipation for their arrival. A screaming chant of 'CRYSTAL CASTLES! CRYSTAL CASTLES!' started out, and it quickly slumped into an all-out wail of joy as Alice and Ethan appeared onstage, sipping from cans of Stella Artois (Shock! Horror!) and eating from a pack of marshmallows.
I will now refer you to a review that appeared on blog bible Drowned In Sound:

"To really be effective, Crystal Castles’ malevolent, malfunctioning eight-bit terrorism needs to be loud enough to envelope the audience in its pulsing dark heart, to wash over you in ferocious, asphyxiating sheets of warped two-dimensional Gameboy glitches and bruising drum bombast that pierces your skull with their sheer shrill force, burrowing deep into the brain like a fever. As it is, owing to those considerate chaps at the Tower Hamlets council and the stifling acoustics of the inflatable stage on which they play, the would-be caustic choir of end-is-nigh sirens that layer the huge ‘Atlantis to Interzone’ remix with which their set begins sound more like a police car siren drowned at the bottom of a canal, Crystal Castles a shadow of themselves."
- Jack Shankly.

I Completely Disagree With This. The crowd were in a frenzy, the sound was almost deafening, and although I am no sound engineering expert, I am almost certain that Jack Shankly isn't either, so neither of us should comment on the abilities of an inflatable stage to project sound. I was more than enveloped in the music's pulsing dark heart, and the adrenaline rush was insane. Serious crowd surfing started, and the security were giving all crowd-surfers a decent telling off, (is it for insurance purposes or something?) whilst also finding the perseverence of some peoples' repeated attempts to surf to the front hilarious. The pit was open and as the ferocious, asphyxiating sheets of warped two-dimensional Gameboy glitches washed over me I was inspired to run in, fists waving, until I was pushed out by three different people roughly twice my size. Usually I am one to shy away from the actual 'moshing' but repeatedly I was going for it, especially when killer track 'Alice Practice' came on. This is one of those songs that is repeatedly referred to as having completely indistinguishable lyrics and for some reason I feel really proud of myself when I manage to work out what some of the satanic-sounding lines are, such as 'Drop it: it's dead' at the 1.57 mark. Despite the fact nobody could understand any of the words that vocalist Alice was throwing at us, a huge amount of the crowd were still shouting something along to the tune.

The set was perhaps the most surreal half-hour of my life: everything about Crystal Castles spells out something that shouldn't work as music. Incomprehensible screaming in place of singing, minimalist 8-bit instead of backing music - everything is wrong, wrong, wrong - yet somehow manages to be right. Looking at their t-shirt design, Madonna with a bleeding black eye, it's like they have taken everything about conventional music, boring popular music in particular, and punched it in the face. It's unlikely Crystal Castles are going to take over the world, and if they ever get a number one I will eat my own wardrobe. Thinking about it, it's a miracle that a band so truly innovative, unorthodox and downright weird have enjoyed the mainstream appraisal that they have. I love Crystal Castles!
DOWNLOAD: Klaxons - Atlantis To Interzone (Crystal Castles Remix)

Underage Festival

Two Fridays ago I went to the first ever Underage Festival in London's Victoria Park. To be honest, it was possibly the best day of my life. This is probably down to any number of the following reasons:
a. It was actually a really good event.
b. My tastes in live music are still a bit unrefined.
c. I am a very enthusiastic person about anything.
d. Maybe I just thought it was really cool and like being cool.
Anyway, I really should have written this ages ago but I went away for a week the day after and it is quite hard to blog from a depressingly windswept French campsite. The queue to get in was really long, and despite the fact it opened at 12 and we were queueing since 11.15 it was past one O'clock when we got in. This meant we missed the Errorplains at 12.20, but it's okay because the Errorplains really aren't that great. The security were thorough in checking everyone for contraband, including evil items such as chocolate bars, water and the public enemy that is hairgel. (Yes; a boy in front of us in the queue, who for some reason felt he might need to re-style his elaborate fringe, had his hairgel confiscated.)

Photo Credit: Photographer_Rz

We arrived in time to see Lethal Bizzle, a rapper who has recently re-styled himself as some kind of indie pantomine sideshow. He was wearing huge black sunglasses, a chunky chain made of wood, and a black t-shirt with 'LETHAL BIZZLE' emblazoned on it in bold white lettering. Lethal B is not my cup of tea musically, and I feel in no way compelled to buy his album, Back To Bizznizz, released earlier this year. However, he is pretty fun to go see live. The track that everyone remembers him for is 'Pow', which was released in 2004 and despite being banned by most radio stations because of gun references, reached number 11 in the UK singles chart.
The show was full of audience participation: as well as Pow, he performed new track 'Bizzle Bizzle' and MC Hammer's 'Can't Touch This'. With every track, the crowd were screaming the chorus lines and waving our arms like we were at a rap battle somewhere in the middle of 8 Mile.
I would be surprised if a single person there was taking Lethal Bizzle, aka Maxwell Ansah, seriously. His lyrics could have been written by a 12-year-old, and he was wearing a shirt with his own name on it. But it seems Lethal has found himself a niche in the market, as the grime sideshow at rock shows. This Autumn, he's touring with Gallows and then The Enemy on the NME Riots Tour. No mp3 links, because I do not reccomend listening to any of them, but check out his live show - I will be surprised if you don't enjoy it.
www.myspace.com/lethalbizzlemusic
VIDEO: Here is Lethal Bizzle performing Pow.

I could never be a drummer; I'd throw up.

Saw Cajun Dance Party on Saturday. I will not lie, it was very very amazingly good fun. I squeezed right to the front, close enough for, if I'd wanted, I could have ripped all the cords out of the keyboard CDP's resident pianist Vicky was playing.Towards the end of the night the singer was stage-diving, the guitars had about 2 strings still working and the crowd had managed to somehow crowd-surf the singer Danny's microphone stand all the way back to the auditorium.
It was the first night of Cajun Dance Party's UK tour. It was a pretty good start. The support acts were an icelandic band called Jakobinarina (pronounced "yack-oh-been-a-reen-a"), and a guy singing ballads on a piano. The poster said it was Jakobinarina and Tinseltown supporting, but after checking out tinseltown on MySpace, it turns out it wasn't. Whoever he was, he was good; and he handed out FREE shirts after his set. They were these off-white fairtrade organic cotton shirts (WHY ARE THE ECO FRIENDLY T-SHIRTS NEVER WHITE? MY HADOUKEN SHIRT IS ALSO ALL YELLOWY!) with "NICE GUYS DON'T PLAY GOOD MUSIC" hand-sprayed onto them. I managed to get a girls extra small size, and i am pretty sure it is roughly the same size as any t-shirt that my four-year-old brother might wear. Ah well, I can just tell everyone that it is the style to wear childrens' clothes. Or girls' clothes.

I can't remember tracklisting perfectly, but the finale was The Next Untouchable, soon to be Cajun's new single. It was an awesome gig, buy their single off iTunes, it's amazing.

DOWNLOAD: Cajun Dance Party - The Next Untouchable

I have a recurring dream in which I manage to single-handedly start some kind of illegal underground warehouse rave club scene in my middle-class suburban town just outside the M25. It's not going to happen, but every time I put on Pirate Soundsystem's Headspin Remix of Hadouken!'s 'Liquid Lives', there it appears. One word for this track: WAREHOUSE.
It's not music in the music sense of the word - I will actually eat my own hat if this EVER (even in like a hundred years) comes up on Desert Island Discs - but it's one hell of a dancehall-oriented track, and the bassline SCREAMS neon.

DOWNLOAD: Hadouken! - Liquid Lives (Pirate Soundsystem Headspin Remix)

And now, Regina Spektor. She's finally coming to London, so me, Wil and Jane are going down to see her at the Royal Festival Hall. Except, annoyingly, Kate Nash has decided to schedule the ONLY London date of her UK tour that very day, and somebody's offered me a free ticket. RARGH. The scheduled time of both shows are EXACTLY the same, and I've already paid for Regina Spektor. The decision was tough, but I'm going to Regina, seeing as this is her World Tour and she probably won't be in London again for at least a year. But argh, it's still really irritating.
Although, on the upside, as remarked by my sister after she heard Habanera, the B-side to Kate's Number 2 smash Foundations, Kate Nash is starting to sound more and more like Regina.
Habanera is a masterpiece. It's a little bit too arthouse to ever get the mainstream recognition of Foundations, but it's a solid tune. It builds up from Kate just singing some high-pitched dadadadaaas over a deep piano riff, in comes some drums and some lyrics. The real artistic bit is in the random noises that build up over the course of the song. There's a match being lit, coins being dropped and glasses being tapped. Or something like that.

DOWNLOAD:Regina Spektor - Wasteside

DOWNLOAD: Kate Nash - Habanera