Together @ Turnmills

The recent news regarding the imminent closure of Turnmills didn’t deter the young, glittered faces of Together’s multifarious friends. The itching revellers were baying to get busy. This was Together’s 2nd birthday bash and, as such, a grown-up kids party ensued. There were decorations, there were goody bags, there was even ice cream and jelly.

All partisans reacted with gusto, donning bright, gaudy, ridiculous costumes for effect: giant afros, native American headdresses, wedding gowns, Postman Pats, leprachauns, sharks. The variety in fashion was as erratic as the music itself.

In the big room, resident Anil Chawla made subtle dashes into dark, swirling, shadowy tech so as to not frighten the guests away too early. From there, Hot Chip’s beardy Joe Goddard laid down a subdued set - perhaps one more suited to an over-the-waves, sunny Thai beach than a sweaty London birthday party – thus saving the raucous, whooping, hollering behaviour for the headliners. And sure enough, just as Fischerspooner introduced their special electro-popping New York art, the punters began to glaze over.

For those that didn’t automatically buy into the big indie names plastered all over the flyer (Fischerspooner, Foals, Maccabees, Hot Chip) a louder, more crunchier filling was available in the satellites. Although the big boys did a sterling job, the discreet “(DJ Set)” scrawled next to their billing meant they were always going to be simply silver medal.

The minions of the night, the ones that actually DJ for a living, were prolifically more indulgent than their supposed superiors. Evil Nine’s punk rock breakbeat and John Kennedy’s kickstart electro storm were both assuredly humming yet neither were as gratefully received as the rare sighting of Rex the Dog. Cordially dropping their remix masterpiece, ‘Tony The Beat’ (The Sounds), their pure knob-twiddling, feel-good, mash-mania brought the temperature to a gritty boil, whilst skimming the danceable realms of Daft Punk’s computerised disco. Plonk, bang, whizz, beep.

Disappointing crowd controls at both the entrance and the toilets meant considerable queuing hurdles throughout the night. But, the sheer volume of the unfaltering crowd undoubtedly maintained the freshness.

Klaxons

Indie rave, is it? Electro punk, is it? Klaxons only have one album - Myths of the Near Future – so why are they claiming this mighty stage, this Academy of Brixton? Just look at it’s majestic vastness. Nothing but memories can fill a hole this big. The fear on these grinning faces says otherwise, though. That is heightened anticipation they’re drunk on, yes? Perhaps they’re dazzled by their own fluorescent jackets. Ridiculous! Nice, dry comfortable clothing is the way. Easy does it, people. Let’s get settled for the band. Here they come now. Dressed like Mad Max royalty and gay Robin Hoods. Hmmm, maybe nice, comfortable clothing wasn’t the best bet after all.

Whoooa, belligerent bass is kicking things off. Must be ‘The Bouncer’. Perfect for an ironically large crowd to chant ‘Your name’s not down, you’re not coming in’. The addition of a live drummer seems to be helping, those punchy warehouse beats are filtering right up to the rafters. The sirens are ringing out, it’s the second movement - ‘Atlantis To Interzone’ - and things are getting a little bit lively. Watch out, there’s a surge of ‘little people’ lurching towards the stage. Look at them, appearing from nowhere. It’s cetainly getting warmer now. Someone on stage is bigging-up the crowd for ‘making this dream come true’. So what’s the reward? Another bout of dynamo destruction, falsetto singalong ‘Golden Skans’. Boy, they’re tight. They bleeding should be. They’ve been playing these songs for a year and half now. There’s a fair few arms aloft, it’s a lushuous lawn of arms. The first shrieking bars of ‘As Above, So Below’ are sounding out and these kids don’t seem to be tiring. Bang, another song, this time the high-octive wailings of ‘Two Receivers’. That’s taken the sheen off the nice, dry clothing. This is breakneck stuff. Perhaps a breather is needed. Oh wait, maybe not. What’s this? Is it the synth-lovers perfect combination of rave, pop and heavy rock - ‘Magick’? Now, this is Klaxons at their chaotic best. Phew, the temperature is really shifting. This audience isn’t just participating any more, it’s performing a hedonistic air raid. Forget the lawn of arms, this is a wild plain violently swaying in a thunderous, klaxon-like wind. And the pits are getting ever-so clammy. Various neon missiles are being launched toward the stage, despite glowsticks being implicitly prohibited tonight, at the band’s request. They must be done by now, there’s nothing left to play…..EXCEPT the post-punk carnage of ’Gravity’s Rainbow’. Frenetic euphoria is everywhere, coated with a thick glob of sweat. Heed the warning of last song ‘It’s Not Over Yet’. Ha, it’s NOT the final instalment. That pleasure is left, rightfully, to the apocalyptic ’Four Horsemen Of 2012’. Then, yes, finally, it’s over. Breathe easy. Returning to life. That Mercury prize is definitely deserved.

Hadouken!

Politicians, environmentalists, citizens of Mother Earth, gather round for some important news: base.ad has discovered the world’s first truly renewable energy source. This scientific breakthrough revealed itself during a recent atomic demonstration at The Astoria. It was shown that with just the right quantities of 7-Up and Day-Glo, every teenager on planet Pop has the potential to power the entire European community. The first step is to simply fasten an electroconductive device to each youngster. The second is to introduce high levels of radioactive rave and grime. The explosive reaction produces gigantic measures of heat and kinetic energy, both of which can then be harnessed.

The level of anticipation was akin to that of the day before summer holidays, leading to all Dads and journalists taking safety on the upper balcony. Even before Hadouken! entered the arena, Late Of The Pier’s heavy doom-synth support resulted in a cascade of fluorescent colour being lauched towards the stage. It’s fair to say the kids were hysterically excited. And quite rightly, too.

The sold-out show amounted to only 45 minutes in running time, but any longer and Chernobyl would’ve looked like a picnic. In a room so hot even the air conditioning was sweating, Hadouken! appeared to the sound of sirens, useful in drowning out the high-pitched wails of their audience. Beginning with an assault on the mainstream - ‘The Bounce’ - the GameBoy geeks raced along at breakneck speeds, determined to make the wheels fall off. James Smith’s savage but sonic lyricism was flaunted in the Aphex-cum-Dizzee ‘Liquid Lives’ and the Sex Pistol anti-style rant of ‘Superstar’. With each passing moment someone’s life was in danger.

The pixelated punks lost their crowd, very briefly, during a crash test of new material. Smith opted to sing in showtune style, whilst his band did a synth rock impression of Europe stuck in ‘The Final Countdown’. Nevertheless, the lull gave medics the opportunity to extract the bodies of those that had perished in the carnage.

Singalong favourite ‘Tuning In’ and new single ‘Leap Of Faith’ brought the crowd back to a mere stampede. And only moments before they departed for bed - they all had school in the morning - the crowd endured the accelerated square bass lobotomy of ‘That Boy That Girl’, which would’ve made even The Prodigy cry.

It’s a little over a year since Hadouken! played their first ever gig. For a band that doesn’t even have an album release yet, this was testament to the capacity of the internet. Hadouken! and their generation have embraced one another with fierce DIY aspirations. That, plus the wear fluoro like they invented it.

Powerful stuff.

Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip

Take one plain face and give it some large, knowing muttons chops. Take another plain face and add a weighty, insightful beard. Now put the first face next to an Apple Mac and the second in front of a pen and some paper. Ignite, stand well back, and enjoy the spectacle.

The first face is Dan Le Sac, a production robot from the planet Gameboy. He sees our world in binary code. For him, sound is merely a calculated output resonating from a user interface. He, therefore, only ever communicates through pings and bleeps.

The second face is Scroobius Pip, a pugnacious scribe with an arsenal of words. His pugilist blows come not from his fists, but from his mind. His wit is so sharp it cuts deep, real deep, leaving victims wounded and spurting jets of liquid hip hop.

At first glance they seem the most unlikely of pairings and at first listen it’s clear why they never work together off stage. Yet, as the inventor of the first peanut butter and jam sandwiches must’ve said, don’t knock ‘em till you try ‘em. And the masses do love to try ‘em. Glastonbury, Reading, Leeds and Bestival have all swollen with the hype surrounding this hairy, label-less twosome.

As a band, it was clear they were revelling in the headline kudos of Scala and it showed as they swaggered through a think-tank of rarities. Le Sac’s lo-fi Hot Chip geekery fused a kinetic structure upon which Pip delivered his poetic, belligerent sermons. Dishing out lesson after lesson, this was a vision of the future, machine telling man what he would otherwise not consider: the hidden beauty of Tommy Cooper’s death; the story of ‘Angles’, a suicide revenge murder with many points of view; the dissatisfaction of God with Man (“I was a simple being that happened to yield such powers, but I just laid the ground, it was YOU that built the Towers”).

Despite this, the lecture was not just insight and inciting: there was romance in ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ as a naked electro thump coupled with Pip’s synthetic yearnings; there was political surrealism in ‘Fixed’ (“I got a holster, I keep biscuits in”); and there was infectious sarcasm in the novelty single ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ (“Thou shall not judge a book by its cover, thou shall not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover”).

Due to the absence of a tangible album release (Xmas is the word on the street), the set list was Keira-thin. To flesh out the body of the show a few theatrical props were adopted – a Bible, an intricate detailing of the periodic table. These were then aided by a couple of surprising covers - Prince’s ‘Cream’ as an encore and Public Enemy’s ‘Bring The Noise’ in an old school mashup competition against supporting hip hop swingsters, The Anomalies.

Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip are not just a band. They are sent messengers, harbingers of computerised enlightenment. All hail the faces of DLS Vs SP.

Feist

If ballads were to take the form of liquid then the alt-folk fluidity seen washing over Feist’s audience recently could have filled an entire ocean. The experience was so aquatic in its inclination that the mermaid queen herself, Leslie Feist, covered her protruding tail with a floating black dress and an oversized whale of a guitar.

A packed out, and largely female, Shepherd’s Bush Empire had readied itself for the delicate siren by setting all phones to silent. Cast adrift somewhere between Kate Bush, Cat Power and Joni Mitchell, her fragile voice could only be sustained through the attentive gaze of the many.

Standing alone and shoeless beneath a shimmering disco ball, she commenced the underwater dream sequence with a shy quartet of slow numbers. Every time she surfaced for air, she constructed the swirling currents of ‘Honey Honey’ by layering repetitive loops of echoing wails. Steadily, she became enamoured with her sigh-heaving admirers and gliding into the uptempo beat of ‘Mushaboom’ she had them calling back to her in unison (had she not, the solo cascades of tender vibrato would surely have drowned in a sea of their own sameness).

The arrival of the highly adept and multifaceted band was therefore a grateful addition of pace. Combining brass, drums and a brace of piano, their wave of jazz created movement in the stream and despite a brief foray into seemingly ill-calculated blues, the crowd’s awe never faltered. Indeed, it was following the badass tale of ‘When I Was A Young Girl’ that the Canadian received her most convincing appreciation.

The whooping, hollering and open-mouth gaping continued after popular favourites ‘I Feel It All’, ‘My Man My Moon’ and cool-enough-for-Apple’s-latest-ad-campaign ‘1234’ were released. The similarity of these tracks to one another, and all three’s pressence on her latest album, highlighted the onlookers’ fishbowl forgetfulness. Although they sound the same, they’re actually different – a blissful disregard of the album’s ironic title, The Reminder.

However, if the hungry sharks circling the show were still too unimpressed to bite, they didn’t escape the net of gimmicks that she threw out throughout her performance: cover versions of songs by Sarah Harmer and fellow Broken Social Scenester, Kevin Drew; a four-part harmony involving all four floors of the “insane” Empire building; and a piano-playing marriage proposer that completely upstaged poor Feist, hook, line and sinker.

The Rumble Strips

The Rumble Strips shouldn’t have anything to prove, really: headliners on this year’s Topman NME New Music Tour; support slots for Amy Winehouse, The Young Knives and Dirty Pretty Things; top ten highlight band (alongside Klaxons, Mika and The Twang) in the BBC’s Sound of 2007 panel-presided compilation. So why would they need to ply their bouyant blend of ska-folk-indie at a gig ostensibly arranged for ‘the industry’? The imminent release of their debut album, Girls and Weather, possibly has something to do with it.

Recently, under the giant orbiting disco ball at Canvas, the West Country four-piece stood in tasselled sailor garb and Tex-Mex trucker facial hair in a manner befitting The Blue Oyster. However, all ‘YMCA’ presumptions dissipated once the brass-kicking, à la Dexy’s Midnight Runners, began.

Thrust onstage at near last-tube o’clock, The Rumble Strips were forced to follow an heightened sense of eclectic support from the experimental wanderings of Tunng to the metal-cum-prog antics of Datarock. Sadly, though, their high tempo exultant melodies were lost on the inebriated VIP gremlins quaffing on free Moët.

Their opener, ‘Hate Me You Do’, was jolly in its immediacy but lacked the command that later materialised during the ponderous track, ‘Motorcycle’. It was then that parts of the crowd were stirred into a cockney knees-up.

The band’s performance, although ebullient and highly proficient, was surpassed by the booming vocals of frontman Charlie Waller. The former Vincent Vincent And The Villains member roared his way through the feet-pounding sax appeal of ‘Alarm Clock’ and the stirring ascendancies of ‘Oh Creole’ (an ardent pining of Zutons’ ‘Valerie’ proportion). Straining boggle-eyed and taut, it appeared as though the previous owner of Waller’s down-the-market 2nd hand clothes was attempting to use his body in a paranormal voodoo séance.

The Strips’ overall onstage presentation was as chaotic as an evening with The View and as blustery as a Maccabees-powered wind tunnel. The only problem was the lack of vitality shown by the distracted audience. Deserving of better, The Rumble Strips could draw worthy comparisons with the kings of gypsy, Larrikin Love, especially during their pre-album/pre-production period.