Gigs galore

Past five weeks has been great for gigs. I can’t even remember all the bands I went to see. The most memorable was watching Mark de Clive-Lowe (@mashibeats) two nights in a row, at Mau Mau and a warehouse in Peckham. I think he’s the most talented musician around. His sets are conducted with such soul; I daresay, live he’s even better than Flying Lotus, who is huge-r than him. (I’m sure I took photos of Flying Lotus when he was at the Roundhouse – guess they disappeared!) Here’s Mark anyway – check out the double bass player in the drenched T-shirt! He works them hard.

Then at some point I watched Amadou and Mariam, a blind couple from Mali perform. Their gig looked like this:

They played to a darkened auditorium, which was infused with smells and had interestingly placed speakers. It sounds amazing in principle, but because we were all sitting down – to prevent accidents I guess – it was simply interesting and not amazing. There was some chair dancing involved and bumping into people.

Another noteworthy band I saw was Smashing Pumpkins. They were great actually, but spent half of their set playing lullabies! Maybe to stop the audience was going crazy. My mate and I bore the full brunt of the mosh pit when they played ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings‘ for their encore.

I also saw my ex-tutor Luke Hannam’s band Gramme at XOYO – so cool to see the guru in action!

Back in Oct I played 4 gigs in London in 5 weeks – hope to upload some videos if they turn out ok!