Robyn @KOKO

February 28th, 2008

Really good gig by the lady Robyn. Crowd was good natured and well into it (especially the ubiquitous gay attendees) and she put on a really good show.

This entry was written by Chris, posted on February 28, 2008 at 8:31 pm, filed under Gig, Music and tagged Gig, robyn. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Simian Mobile Disco

Pushing aside the throngs of nu-rave teenies having it large to warm up act The Whip, I felt that I may be getting a little to old to be up to this sort of lark on a school night.

All feelings of enfeeblement soon disappeared with the arrival of SMD onto the stage at the Astoria.

Serious face-melting massive beats, awesome lasers, and the two protagonists either side of their clunky DJ rig on stage proceed to blow the venue apart and slowly build it back up. It was great dirty electro stuff that had the crowds hands in the air and singing along with all the hooks.

Stand out tracks were a ten-minute version of It’s the beat , sing-a-long-atastic Hustler and topping it all a mental version of Tits and Acid.

Please note: I wasn’t watching them in prision as the picture might suggest! It was just taken from behind the lighting cage..

This entry was written by Chris, posted on February 14, 2008 at 10:10 pm, filed under Gig, Music and tagged Gig, Music, simianmobiledisco. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Mr Hudson & The Library

Absolutely ruddy brilliant!

My favourite album of the year, and live were all that I hoped they would be.

The venue was KOKO which is a great old-school theatre style place. Really suited to the scale and intimacy of the set.

A mashup of lounge jazz and hip-hop (with some steel-band thrown in the mix) what could be a self-concious mish-mash comes across as vital and pretty cool. Posh boy Ben Hudson has the charisma and musical chops to carry off his slightly magpie musical vision.

In his mind, Ben Hudson is Dre producing Bowie, but he’s more like Cole Porter remixed by Mike Skinner, or Chet Baker haunting the grooves of Sway. #

Stand out tracks: Upon the heath, On the streets where you live, Ask the DJ

Links: Official site

This entry was written by Chris, posted on October 19, 2007 at 9:25 pm, filed under Gig, Music and tagged mrhudson. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Maximo Park [11/10/07]

Geordie boys Maximo Park at the slopey floor of the Brixton Academy.

I’ve never really been much into the ‘Park. I suppose I always saw them as a me-too guitar band following in the footsteps of Snow Patrol, Muse etc..

I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised. They are a great live band with plenty of energy to carry off a reasonable catalogue of choons. In fact I’d say they are three really good numbers away from being a great live band.

One minor gripe: I love the Academy (a short-arse like me can always geta good view) but the sound was fucking appalling..

Stand out tracks: The coast is always changing, Velocity, Books from Boxes

This entry was written by Chris, posted on October 11, 2007 at 8:27 pm, filed under Gig, Music. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Oi Va Voi [09/07/07]

The musical gig odyssey continues with Oi Va Voi who are very hard to describe. Um, well they are pretty Jewish (lot of their stuff is based on the Klezmer style), quite of lot Eastern-European influences all bound up by electonica with a bit of hip-hop thrown in for good measure.

Me and Rammo saw them at Werchter 2007 and they livened up the rainy graveyard shift in the afternoon. Also, they have a stunning and firey violinist (who I find out is called Anna Phoebe), so I thought there was no harm in blowing a few quid to see them..

To be honest they were very good. Pretty weird and eclectic, and after an hour and a bit I was about Oi Va Voi’d out, but their sound is so distinctive it kind of works.

Stand out tracks: Yuri, Further Deeper.

This entry was written by Chris, posted on July 10, 2007 at 11:38 pm, filed under Gig, Music. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Euro-festival madness..

Let’s rock, baby!

So Rammo and I ventured to Belgium for 4 nights of Euro-festival at Rock Werchter….and a great time was had by all.

Being the old men we are we only had 2 nights camping and spent the last 2 in a hotel in Leuven.

Top 10 band’s I saw in reverse order of awesomness:

10. Damian Rice

Much better than I was expecting. I thought it would be your all whiny stuff but he’s obviously got a bit of a harder edge in his live shows.

9. Beastie Boys

The Beasties would have scored a lot higher were it not the fact that i was more concerned with staying alive than listening to the set. The pyramid tent turned into a serious mosh-pit and i only managed to last about half and hour before retreating from the fray.

(more…)

This entry was written by Chris, posted on July 2, 2007 at 7:22 pm, filed under Gig, Music and tagged rockwhercter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

The Sounds [12/06/07]

How to describe The Sounds? Post-punk New Wave from Sweden probably sums it up. Nothing ground-breaking, but pretty solid knock-about stuff.

The gig was at Astoria 2, which is a grotty little hole but the crowd of crazy moshing scandos made up fo it.

The Sounds put on a pretty wicked energetic peformance, helped by the lovely Maja Ivarsson who is one of those coolly-blond swedish front-ladies (think Robyn with more attitude) who ‘ad it from start to finish..

Stand out tracks: Song with a Mission, Dance with Me, Living in America

Movie - Quality is really bad

The Sounds
from chris rothschild

This entry was written by Chris, posted on June 12, 2007 at 6:30 pm, filed under Gig, Music and tagged thesounds. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.