Last night I went along with Ben to see Porcupine Tree a band that Gerrod had put me on to a while back. It was my first concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, yet another Carling sponsored music venue in London. The venue itself is the smallest I’ve been to so far, but with a just a bit more capacity than The Arena back home. This venue has three floors with pretty much every seat or position having an easy view of the main stage.

I’m terrible at trying to describe bands, so I won’t try, but I think that if you like any of Porcupine Tree’s albums, I definitely can recommend you to see them live. Somehow their songs are delivered with much more vibrancy than what a recording seems to give them, allowing them to drive home their songs, if not sometimes perhaps a little bit too loudly. The front man last night held a much better conversation with the audience, all who seemed to be fairly big fans and predominantly older (think late thirties, almost early forties). It’s also one of the first times, I’ve ever seen someone perform in their bare feet.

After watching them last night, I realised that I liked a lot more of their songs from the In Absentia album over those from Deadwing, perhaps because I think the former tends to be more melodic with less of the heavier rock undertones I tend not to favour in the latter. It was a great night for a Wednesday and a big thanks to Ben for getting those tickets ages back.

I’ve had tickets to see Franz Ferdinand since early September and last night’s show at Alexandra Palace reminded me of why I wanted to see them so desperately. The Palace is yet another one of London’s heritage buildings, easily fitting the most people in relation to any of the other venue’s I’ve been to so far. However having said that its capacity is impressive, its flat floor also means that it is much more suited to the exhibitions and conventions it is normally the home of, and not so great for seeing someone as great as Franz.

The support acts for the night included The Rakes and The Editors, two excellent indie rock bands who I can now thoroughly recommend but whose performances were far surpassed by the main act. The only other time that I’ve seen Franz was when I went to my first Splendour in the Grass two years ago, and even then it was difficult to make it inside the tent. When I saw them that time, it was just as they were getting big with their first hit, Take Me Out, and their progress reminded me heavily of the success that the Australian band, Jet, went through.

I like to think that there are so many other reasons that make them such great performers other than their catchy pop rock tunes which no other band seems to be able to reproduce. I am always impressed by bands that acknowledge the quality of their support acts, and Franz thanked both of their support acts probably with the understanding that it is difficult to make it in that industry, while at the same time, demonstrating their humbleness. Another great reason to see them live is that they have a fantastic stage presence. Last night for example, the largish stage was quite bare, yet for every moment of the concert, it seemed to be constantly filled with all their energy and solidly performed music.

The set was extremely well planned, taking plenty of their new album songs and mixing it up with a lot of the hits from their previous album. It was also probably most ideal for an audience that has probably had the widest age range I’ve seen some time, with enough mellow songs to chill out on, interspersed through their harder rock songs that resulted in a fair amount of moshing in most of the audience. Surprisingly Take Me Out was played during their main act while they finished off their night with an encore consisting of Jacqueline (1st album), Evil And A Heathen (2nd album), Outsiders (2nd album), and This Fire (1st album).

The Kua Rating: 8 out of 10

The End is a club located right next door to AKA (which I went to for my birthday). I’ve heard great things about this club and I definitely wasn’t disappointed by the experience I had last night. I was heading there with a few friends and was stunned when I heard that Derrick Carter, a famous Chicago House DJ was playing. I wasn’t really expecting to know any of the DJ’s playing and was just thrilled to find out he would be playing the closing set from 3:30am in their main room. Cover is not exactly cheap, coming in at just over £15 but compared to most other clubs and with the prospect of finally seeing Derrick Carter live, was happy to pay the amount.

The End is not as big a club as I thought it would be but thankfully last night was not as busy as it apparently sometimes gets. There certainly seems like a lot more room than what AKA offers next door, with two main rooms and several bars serving the various areas. There are several areas to chill out with some comfy couches in the corners in one room, but with most people just cooling off in the little space between the two rooms.

On some nights (like last night), access is granted for some to move between The End and AKA (also known as ‘As One’). We briefly stepped into AKA but like the last time, found it was overly packed and the music was not as good as what was below in The End. After speaking with a few people at random last night, it seemed that some had come specifically listen to Derrick Carter, whilst many others were just happy to dance to the awesome music he played all night (morning?) long. The crowd was quite friendly and we had an awesome night.

Earlier this week I found out I won tickets to The Musos, a awards ceremony for musicians entirely voted for by other musicians. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with a number of smaller acts named to perform, and a realistic expectation that even if bands like Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Gorillaz were nominated, I’m sure they had better places to be. I had a pretty good night all around but I will admit that if I had to pay the £20 then I think I would have felt seriously cheated.

Everything about the night seriously screamed B-class although I suspected this going in. If anything, I hoped I would at least come away learning about some new band with the worst case being just another tube ride around London. The event was held at Koko, which in itself, was worth visiting. The club is located just around the corner from the Mornington Crescent tube (on the Northern line) and still looks like the Victorian theatre it used to be in the 1800s with three separate floors and numerous private booths along the side. The wall behind the bar on the bottom floor is backed by red lighting, casting an alluring shadow to all the bottles lined up on the glass shelves.

The awards went out pretty quickly and most of them, with no surprise, went to a few lesser known acts. Several went to some better known acts such as Gaz from Supergrass winning Best Vocal for 2005 and the Kaiser Chiefs for Best Live Act, but to no surprise, were not there to collect it. There were several bands that performed that night, most of them not really that memorable. I really enjoyed the act by the href=”http://www.indielondon.co.uk/music/mu_dogs_biog.html”>Dogs (and some other act I didn’t know their name) who were the most professional and probably better rock acts. I was stunned by the last band whose passionate, almost psychotic, lead singer seemed to strangely negate the lack of energy the rest of the band members exhibited. His jumping around, falling into the group of photographers and general strange behaviour won no credit from me. They also coupled with a visibly drunk Shane McGowan (from The Pogues) to perform an awful rendition of She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain. I was quite happy at that point to ease my way back through the crowd to make my exit.

Details: The Musos
Highlights: Free tickets to see some new rock bands. Dogs (and some other band who I thought were the Artic Monkeys) were pretty awesome acts as well.
Room for improvement: Organisation was terrible, it was extremely cold inside and Shane McGowan, one of the “bigger” acts was completely trashed.
The Kua Rating: 5 out of 10

After having moved into my room for a while now, there has been something completely missing – the ability to play any music that actually sounds decent. Proper hi-fi systems over here are pretty expensive, and ideally I just wanted something I could play music off my mp3 player or computer without it sounding really tinny through my laptop speakers.

Even though I enjoy listening to music, I don’t really know that much when it comes to speakers, and thanks to Gerrod’s help I was able to learn a few things and work out exactly what I wanted in a system. So this Friday I ended up going out and purchasing the JBL Encounter set of speakers where the satellite speakers look like alien heads and the subwoofer like a space ship. I set them up and tested them, especially to see how the loudness would affect my flatmates and I’m glad to see that our walls are really thick and you can barely hear anything. They look great, but more importantly they produce really fantastic sound.

One of the reasons I came to London was to take advantage of the opportunities see some more musicians do what they love doing and at a more reasonable price than the AU$70+ that some can charge back home. The first lesson that you learn when you first start looking is that it can take a while to actually get some tickets, with many artists selling out months in advance. This Saturday I finally got to see my first act, Mylo at the Brixton Academy.

The Brixton Academy has been voted many times as one of the better venues in London and understandably so. The building itself is an older building having been built in 1929 and its two floors has enough capacity for 4921 people (although it certainly felt like more on Saturday). The ground floor, and most likely the top one, is on a slight incline so that even if you are standing at the back, you have a good chance of seeing the stage instead of just the sea of people in front of you.

The doors to the Academy opened at 9 and like most dance acts, Mylo didn’t actually come on until after midnight (I think closer to 1). Before Mylo there were a few DJs that helped to warm up the crowd with a mix of some classic club tracks and even some cheesy 80s and early 90s songs. As for Mylo, I had heard and read that his performances were generally disappointing as it was just him DJing but it was obvious that he’d been working hard to change that perception. He had on stage with him a couple of other people doing various things as well as a massive screen and several tubes of light pulsating and cycling through images all in perfect time with the music. Mylo even had a go at playing a bit of sythn guitar to vary it up

To be honest I was pretty impressed with the entire night especially just because the atmosphere of the place was amazing. Mylo mixed all of his tracks from Destroy Rock ‘N’ Roll and predictably topped off his final encore with his most crowd-pleasingly tracks Muscle Car, and Drop the Pressure.

The only let down of the evening was probably the two night buses I had to catch home, taking me over an hour and a half to get home. It was still a great experience and certainly one that I would do again in a flash.

You go into a bar and you instead of a DJ, or a stereo, they’ve got an IPod plugged into a set of speakers! 🙂 Amazing!