God Don’t Like It, run by Anthony Chalmers, is putting on a series of farewell shows this week as Anthony looks to pursue other interests and draws a close to the GDLI name. The first of the three shows at the Lexington in London featured Drum Eyes, an immensely noisy band who feature no fewer than three drummers, supported by the similarly noisy weirdness of Christmas Gimp.
Here’s a double-whammy for you. New York punks Cerebral Ballzy played at the Macbeth in Hoxton a week ago and I caught the action for Drowned in Sound. Flash was a no-brainer here, really, as it was rather dark and there was quite a lot of running around going on, as you can imagine. Sheffield’s own Grazes warmed the crowd up with a bonkers performance.
Then, last night, almost exactly one year after I took my first set of gig photographs, I shot Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, supported by Gabby Young and Other Animals, as part of London Jazz Festival — two bands who brought the house down. For an all seater venue, there was an awful lot of dancing going on, and at one point the audience were even invited onto the stage, much to the dismay of the house staff who were trying desperately to retain a sense of order…
The launch of Plaid’s latest album, ‘Scintilli’ at Shoreditch’s Village Underground was probably one of my more challenging shoots this year. Plaid make all their music from three Apple laptops perched on a console in front of them, and their performance was (apart from the music) all about the visuals projected onto the massive brick wall behind them. So I decided that, rather than getting as close to the stage as possible, I’d stand at the back of the room, back to the wall, and get long shots of the combinations of the projected graphics and the play of the spotlights in the centre of the ceiling. It was a mesmerising experience.
Scala is a former cinema located in the Kings Cross area of London, and is now a thriving music venue. I went along to shoot Dry the River for a Drowned in Sound ‘In Photos’ feature.
The Line Of Best Fit’s Scandinavian showpiece Ja Ja Ja returned to the London calendar last night with a temporary change of venue. At the Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen were Norwegian all-girl Ska group Razika, Finnish sisters LCMDF (‘Le Corps Mince de Françoise’) and, kicking the evening off in style, Icelandic dance trio Sykur, with guest vocalist Agnes Björt Andradóttir.
