Somewhat late with this appraisal but it's better late than never...
Typical East End boozer downstairs with the Friday night Covers band/s etc, and then through the 'side door', up some stairs you have cosy sofas, a fireplace, Indie kids and a tidy bar area with nice big windows offering day light. A really nice space actually.
The night was opened by Time.Space.Repeat. Sonic Doom was doing a solo set this evening with just a Marshall Amp, pedal board and Guitar. As we understand it, Time.Space.Repeat play shows with anything from 1 to 5 members. SD announced at the start that he had no planned set list and was just going to play. I for one sensed an impending disaster but in the end should have had more faith. It pulled you in and was surprisingly coherent and listenable in the best way a single guitar & voice making a racket can! Definitely like to see them as a full band.
The Penny Sweets were an entirely different bag. I only caught half their set as we had to pop out for a bit. Violin, Keyboards, Female Vox and programmed drums, this was anything but a usual OUS gig match up. Really well crafted songs, each with a construction far beyond anything we would ever attempt and thoroughly pleasant sounding. It's difficult because this isn't my sort of music and therefore it doesn't seem fair to critique somehow. Everyone was given a free CD at the end along with some sweets. I battered the sweets immediately and will check the CD out in the next few days. Steve for one was raving about them on the way home.
After that, Kent 3 piece Sky:Lark! stepped up & 10 points for the Jazzmaster straight off! They were brutally loud, and after the first song had one of the promoters running over, fingers in ears, frantically adjusting knobs! You know you're doing things right when people who listen to bands night in night out get cold feet at the volume. Sound wise they are post rock with a tad of math in there. There's loads of bands with that sound knocking around and some of them are very average. Sky:Lark! are not average. I managed to capture 2 songs from their set. The sound is bad, mainly because the little Panasonic couldn't handle the volume, but you should be able to get the idea. 1. 2.
We had an average gig but thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Byron found an interesting new way of positioning his guitar at the end of Hackeyed...check it out here if you like.
Many thanks to those of you who turned out and to those who were seeing us for the first time and made the effort to say hello.
Anyway, next show is 11th September at the Miller, London Br. with Jesus Knives.
More when there's more...
NS
