Tinariwen at KOKO

Wednesday 26th October, Tinariwen playing live at KOKO.

One of the best gigs I've been to! KOKO was packed! Tinariwen played for about 1.5hrs, they had such good energy, the crowd loved it! Everyone was dancing and clapping, such a good vibe! It was almost emotional seeing everyone so into it and also such a mixed crowd, everyone loving it! Another super successful Soundcrash event!



If you haven't had the chance to see them yet, don't miss them next time they play London, I think rumour has it they should be back early next year.

Seasick Steve

Last Thursday I found myself at an unusual gig for me; Seasick Steve at HMV Hammersmith Apollo! The day of the gig my mate called me to tell me they had an extra ticket for the gig and if I wanted to go, I said... why not?! I'm so glad I said yes! No support group, which was definitely a positive, Seasick Steve was on stage for about 2hrs, and alongside him there were a couple of pretty cool appearances; John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin and Paloma Faith.

The gig was so nice! Seasick Steve and his band gave such a nice performance. The drummer was so cool, you could tell he was really enjoying it! John Paul Jones went on stage after the first track and stayed till the end, playing his bass and the mandolin. Paloma Faith sang on a few songs including the last one; Dog House, which seemed to drag and drag!.. He also got his three sons on stage; apparently one has written Whiskey Ballad, the other one has done the artwork for his albums and the third one has produced all his albums or maybe just the last one. Oh yes, at some point he got this girl on stage to sing a ballad to her, how funny! and a bit awkward...

Harmonic 313 & Kode 9 at KOKO

June 11, Soundcrash at KOKO in Camden.


Managed to get there just for the last 2 hours, so only saw Harmonic 313 and Kode 9. Didn't mind not seeing Alex Nut, as I've seen him a few times. Would have loved to have seen King Midas Sound, his live at Bloc was one of my favorites! And Dorian Concept, would have been a first...

Got there when Harmonic 313 was on. Such an amazing set! He kept switching styles, from bass to dancehall, so effortlessly! Then Kode 9, also really nice set. Played really really well. Such a shame it took me so long to write about this gig and don't remember details... I think the only dissappointng moment, if I remember well, was the track Kode 9 chose to close his set and the night, which now escapes my mind... 

Battles at Heaven

On June 8, I saw the Battles at Heaven. Before listening to the new album a couple of days before the gig, I was really looking forward to the gig... Once I listened to the album for the first time I was a little disappointed, it wasn't as good as I expected. Anyway, I was still really up for going to the gig, I had seen the Battles play live twice before in London in the last 9 years and was really curious to see how they would perform missing one of their members.

The gig was amazing! The vibe was good and the tracks sounded so much better live than on the CD. I really liked what they did with the guest vocalists, having them projected in the background.

Gonjasufi last night...

...was sick!

I had been waiting for this gig extremely excited since it was announced! I was so happy to be there last night and it was even better than I expected! No idea how long they played for... definitely over an hour... Gonjasufi was there with a full live band; drums, guitar, bass... and this guy who was on stage with them throughout... He first kind of blessed everything on stage; the mics, the pedals, the band, the speakers, then the audience... He then stayed on stage filming, taking photos, dancing around, hanging around and doing random stuff when Gonjasufi and the band were off the stage, which happened a few times. And at the end he came out to thank us for being there and send us home! Anyway, the gig was so good! It was really rock, played some of the classics of course including She's Gone, that I really like! Gonjasufi was amazing with his weird yet beautiful vocals and the band played really well!

Kutmah was supporting and played a really cool set... again he mixed everything he could mix... I think I liked it more than last time I saw him, same venue with Jehst, Kelpe, Lukid etc. Really like his style, I don't think there are many DJs that could do what he does; he just plays whatever he likes no matter how irrelevant the tracks are with each other and it's so good!

Mount Kimbie at Heaven

On Thursday 28 April I saw Mount Kimbie at Heaven. Great gig, nice venue, good sound, lots of people, quite young crowd. Didn't see any of the support bands or DJs, as I got there just as soon as Mount Kimbie were about to start. They played for about 45mins, would have been great to have seen more of them, but that was all. At the end when the crowd was cheering for more, one of them came out and made a rather funny statement... Apparently they would have liked to play one more track for us, but they had already played everything they had! Never seen anyone say that before on stage... But they did promise to go back to the studio and make more music for us to hear!

Kutmah at Soundcrash

Saturday 16 April... Soundcrash at XOYO...

I get to the venue around 10.30; so happy there is no queue. I go straight in and just about get to see the last two tracks of Ghostpoet. Such a shame, I even thought I was early... They really shouldn't have put Ghostpoet play so early...

Then... Jehst! Pretty cool actually, such energy and the crowd is loving it! Next on the lineup is Anchorsong, I saw him before a few months ago at KOKO. He was on stage with two or three violinists, playing just befoere DJ Krush. This time it's just him; really cool set, but it was more impressive when I saw him with the violinists, at least visually.



Kelpe live set is next, not much to say about it really, as good as always! Kutmah is the other one after Ghostpoet that I really want to see and is absolutely great! He's mixing all sorts of very different tracks and you can see that he's having such a great time! And last is Lukid, really nice quite dark set, I think Lukid is probably my favorite of all. It's a shame that quite a lot of people have already left and it's not even that late really. At some point while he's playing the sound goes down... then it's up again... and then of course towards the end, the security guy asks Lukid to finish his set. It always makes me wonder when this happens at clubs... how can you have the security harrass the performer to finish, surely it would be better to have the soundman signal to the DJ when the time is up, it just looks really bad and unprofessional ... Really great night though, which was expected with the lineup!

Battles at ICA

The Battles... I have been following them for quite a few years now, I think probably from the very beginning... I first saw them about 8-9 years ago, if I remember well, at the then dark basement gig space, now quite a trendy road level bar; Bardens Boudoir, in Stoke Newington and then again in 2009 at the Warp20 party at The Coronet.

Tonight they are playing their sold out gig at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. This gig marks the long awaited finish of recording their new album; Gloss Drop, which is to be released on 6th June. The last 2 years have seen the band struggling with finishing this album and losing their vocalist, Tyondai Braxton. I think tonight will be very interesting to see how they perform without Braxton and I'm also really looking forward to listening to the tracks they made with guest vocalists and of course to know which these guest vocalists are. Here is one of the tracks of the new album...

Ice Cream (Featuring Matias Aguayo) by BATTLES

Good news for all of us that didn't manage to get tickets for tonight is that... on Saturday 9 April the Battles announced a new London Show! It will be at Heaven on 8 June and it's not sold, that is... not yet! So go grab those tickets, I've already got mine!

And if you are interested in seeing what Tyondai Braxton is doing these days, you can catch him on 7 May at the Barbican, where he will be performing at the Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich - Session 3.

Tirk by Night

On Thursday night I went to Tirk by Night, an event organised by Tirk at Favela Chic, where Architeq and Free School played live with DJ set by The Time and Space Machine.

Can't really comment about The Time and Space Machine, as he was DJing inbetween the bands when I was usually outside or wasn't really paying attention when inside, so didn't really listen to what he played... I had never heard of Free School before, so had no idea what to expect, but I was happily surpised! Live band, three of them on stage wearing animal masks... They were actually quite good. And then I saw Architeq, who was the reason I was there. He played a laptop dub set, which lasted I think for a bit less than an hour and I really enjoyed! As always of course!



I expected though that the event would be busier, especially in Favela Chic, which is quite a small easy to fill venue. I think in the future Tirk should be looking at spending a little bit more on promotion and marketing. I only found out about the night when I went on the Tirk website looking for something else a couple of days before the event. Surely if the night had been well promoted I would have seen some poster or advert/insert in some magazine or ebulletin. Anyway, overall a pretty good night

PJ Harvey in London

PJ Harvey is currently on tour launching her 9th studio album Let England Shake. I was at Troxy last night at her 2nd London show as part of this tour with another 18 gigs still to come in Europe and the States.

The venue was full and the gig started only 10mins late of schedule, which gave the audience just enough time to get in, get their drinks and take their sits. It lasted about 1hr and 20mins. Most of the tracks played were from the new album and were truly remarkable! All the reviews I had previously read were really positive so I was really looking forward to seeing for myself. The new album has a completely different feel from her previous ones. Having read some of her interviews, I knew that PJ Harvey had focused her lyrics around themes of war, struggles of life, England... That made me think that the tracks would probably be quite aggressive. Instead, I found the music quite uplifting and the lyrics more nostalgic and soft than I expected. The album is very different than her previous ones, her voice is just so strong and the autoharp she plays adds so much to the character of the album. 

To get a feel of what Let England Shake sounds like you can listen to the 11th track of the new album...

Written On The Forehead by pjharvey

Not surprisingly most of the remaining dates have been sold out for some months now. There are still some tickets up for grabs for her shows at the Main Square Festival in Allas, France on 3 July, Piazza Castello in Ferrara, Italy on 6 July and the All Tomorrow's Parties event at Alexandra Palace in London on 24 July.

Darkstar in London

Darkstar, currently on their UK tour, with only three dates left, played at Hoxton Bar and Grill last night! (that would be Wednesday night...) I managed to get the last ticket for their sold out gig and was obviously well excited!!!

They set up the laptops and their equipment on stage, the lights are dimmed and they start... Very dark, very atmospheric, with the bass hitting you at the right moments, unique vocals and amazing visuals! Great great great visuals! The gig lasted about 1hr and really can't tell what my highlight was... probably the last track?!

Nice one guys!!! Simply great!