Raindance Underground

Patrick Entertainment, Music, UK Life

Lining Up under the tunnels of London BridgeLondon is one of those central hubs of the world (a few European and American cities come to mind as well) where dance music thrives, so it is only appropriate to at least get yourself to a dance event worth going to. This Saturday, I found myself standing underneath a row of lights beneath London Bridge Tube station with a bunch of mates, waiting in a massive queue only to get into the February Raindance. It was kind of surreal standing with at least hundreds of other people beneath the tunnels, wisps of smoke pervading the air and the occassional car, and not-so-occasional (read frequent) hawker trying to sell their wares (glo sticks and other stuff).

Inside RaindanceRaindance is a rave held three times a year somewhere around London. This time it was held at Seone and like most things in London, people came out in scores to visit. Though entrance was pretty low, be prepared to pay handsomely for essentials, especially the bottle of water (at £2.50 a pop!) but is still worth the fun night everyone had. There were several major rooms, each playing different types of music including Hardcore, House, Club Classic, Old Skool, Jungle Drum ‘N Bass, House, Hard House, and Breakbeat. My favourite room was definitely the D&B room but doubling as a major thoroughfare meant it was completely packed all night long.

Thanks to Grandpa Mushroom Joe and Mike for organising the entire night and the rest of the gang for making it an awesome and tiring night!

The Longest Running West End Play

Patrick Theatre, UK Life

The Mousetrap

Last night, Kath and I watched Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” play at St Martin’s Theatre. London has been showing this play since 1952 and it is the longest running one out of all west end plays.

The story is a combination of elements to form a typical Agatha Christie murder mystery – a guest lodge isolated from the rest of society by deep snow drifts, filled with guests, most anticipated and another who turned up out of the blue. There is a murderer on the loose and a policeman shows up predicting the murder of two more people, both linked somehow to the person who was murdered the previous day. A character finds the phone line cut and tension builds as the play slowly unveils a common thread linking several of them together in these suspicious circumstances. As per predictions, another of the characters finds one of the members of the household murdered and further hostilities ensue, as each member’s potential for being the murderer is uncovered.

The play introduced each character marvellously and you get a strong idea of the nature of each character very early on. The entire cast performed brilliantly in each of their roles, with perhaps the only misgiving being the stronger English accent coming from the man that was supposed to be Italian. I could not guess the ending of this play, and in true murder mystery fashion, can also not give it away. The Mousetrap is a legend on London’s west end and despite being the butt of many jokes and comics is definitely worth watching when you get a chance.

The Kua.com Rating: 9 out of 10

Blue Man Group

Patrick Theatre, UK Life

Last night I went to see the Blue Man Group (BMG) at the New London Theatre. I find it very difficult to describe the show the BMG puts on other than very original. The show, best categorised as performance art more than theatre, is composed of a series of skits and musical performances that are richly visual involving various types of mime, percussion and illusion. At the centre of each of the skits are three men covered in blue-coloured masks. Their generally expressionless faces would easily be recognised by most people since they fetured in a number of Intel ads several years ago.

Throughout the show I was either laughing or just simply stunned by the visual richness each skit contained. The show is not cheap at £40 but is something that no one else is capable of executing as well as them.

TheKua Rating: 9 out of 10.

New Toy

Patrick Music

Electronic goodies in the UK tend to be pretty expensive, and since Gerrod was coming from the US, I thought it would be a good time to invest in a new MP3 player. I have had several different audio devices in the past, including a mini-disc player and an IPod, both which i have used for quite some time. I had wanted to new mp3 player for sometime and had the following constraints:

  • Must have a replacable battery – As much as I have enjoyed my Ipod in the past, I disliked the fact that I couldn’t take it with me on long haul flights or long journeys without being too far from a powerpoint, or forking out additional money to be able to feed in more power.
  • Must have solid state memory – The capacity of microdrives these days is astounding but the moving parts still make it a liability when using it during simple exercise.
  • Must have at least 1GB of space – Solid state memory is getting bigger and 1GB is enough to have several albums and be reasonable as a way of transferring files as well.

After a bit of research I decided to go for the Creative Zen Nano Plus (it’s the bottom item in the picture below) which matched all of my requirements and had additional features like:

  • FM Radio Tuner
  • Recordable line in and from radio
  • Protective case and armband carrier
  • Simple drag and drop to load/unload music

Some of the things that it does not have but are not that much of a deal to me include:

  • No playlist facilities
  • No physical hold (there is a hold but you need to access it via a menu)
Creative Zen Nano Plus

Oriental Delight at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Patrick Entertainment, UK Life

Last night my sister and I went to see the Chinese State Circus and the Shaolin Wushu Monks at London’s Southbank. The Chinese Circus is unlike any other circus act you may have seen. Though it has nothing like the drama of Cirque du Soleil, the use of the Monkey King as the narrator for the entire show was effective in presenting all the different acts to the audience made up of the very young to the very old.

Though many of the circus acts when you list them appear standard such as acrobatics, juggling, contortion and tightrope, there is just so much more to the way that the Chinese State Cirucs managed to execute them. There was an elegant lady with long sleeves that was also used to throw daggers to pop balloons with precision, clay pot jugglers that performed some amazing balancing and juggling feats with heavy pots, a traditional dragon dance that was visually spectacular, and a lady that effectively become a human candelabra balancing five sets of lit candles all whilst rolling around on the ground in different ways. There was amazing hoop diving, fantastic tightrope walking/running/skipping/jumping not to mention the stunning feats of the Shaolin Wushu warriors.

It is an entertaining show that I think everyone of all ages could easily enjoy.
The Kua Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Fatboy Slim @ The Brixton Academy

Patrick Music, UK Life

Fatboy Slim at Brixton AcademyDespite being severely tired from the weekend’s activity and the week just gone, I still managed to attend yet another gig last night to see Fatboy Slim do what he does best at the Brixton Academy. This has been the third time I’ve been to the Academy, and not having bought the tickets, was surprised to be at the gallery level which is the unreserved seating section. Although this was one of the gigs where most people would not be seated for the majority of the gig, I was in away pleased to be away from the heaving body to body mass that was the entire ground level because I knew I just didn’t have the energy reserves for the entire night to make the most of it. There are other downsides to being upstairs (i.e. smoke heads towards the ceiling) but it did not damper any ability to enjoy the show of brilliantly mixed songs and the spectacular screen shows.

Fatboy Slim came on just after half past twelve and played a set that lasted until just after 3am. His decks were elevated to float in the middle of the stage, and were surrounded by panels on all sides including behind him. It was an extremely effective way for him to be a central focal point for the night even whilst giant smiley-faced yellow balloons bounced around the crowd and a small chorus of showgirls pranced around on stage for a while. It was yet another great evening out with a great bunch of people to watch yet another great artist.

Coldplay @ Earl’s Court

Patrick Music, UK Life

Coldplay @ Earl's Court LondonI just got back home after heading out tonight to witness Coldplay deliver another warmly received performance at Earl’s Court tonight and just had to write up my review. Earl’s Court is an interesting place to hold any concert, with the massive exhibition hall being turned into an area with standing and seating room, by our estimate, to hold about ten or fifteen thousand people. Our seat was up there but not quite in the nosebleed section and although we had to sit at an angle, still had a decent view of the band and screens.

Coldplay’s support act was Richard Ashcroft, from The Verve, and who I had just seen as a guest performer at Monday’s gig. I remember the band The Verve only by two songs, The Drugs Don’t Work, and Bitter Sweet Symphony, both of which were played in addition to a number of his own ones. His fifty minute act was pretty good, but was definitely shadowed by the stunning performance of Coldplay.

It only took about a half hour for them to reset the stage, which Coldplay quickly stormed with a string of their biggest songs including Square One (the opener from their new album), Yellow, Politik and the Speed of Sound. Each song had obviously been well choreographed with amazing visuals that complemented the mood for each song, with pulsating coloured squares, giant yellow balls bouncing around the crowd, and the lights that projected what looked like a star system around the hall into the entire crowd.

The set was a great mix of a lot of their new songs, a lot of their old songs and a number of tribute songs all of which the crowd evidently enjoyed as they sang along. The entire set, including encore was a decent length with a total of almost two hours of solid quality music.

By the end of the show, everyone was standing up in their seats demanding more. Though starting off on a slight mistake, Coldplay soon satiated this hunger by playing three mores songs including Shiver, In My Place and the hauntingly skin-crawling lyrics and melodies of Fix You from their latest album. It is a concert that will be memorable for some time to come and I can now thoroughly recommend you see Coldplay if you ever get the chance.

XFM Winter Wonderland Concert

Patrick Music, UK Life

Last night I attended the XFM Winter Wonderland concert at Brixton Academy, a charity gig for the Shelter organisation. I had bought the tickets off eBay a while back and hadn’t realised that it was the same day that I arrived back from Vienna, and despite being exhausted I still went to enjoy the awesome performances of The Go! Team, Athlete, Richard Ashcroft (from The Verve) and Supergrass. The event was actually spread over two days, with Sunday’s headliners including The Kaiser Chiefs, The Editors, Hard-Fi, and Maximo Park. All of the bands I saw were quite impressive, but still couldn’t quite top the one-hour set from Supergrass making the two tickets completely worth the £35 I paid for them. XFM writes up a better and more in-depth review here.