Thursday 17th - SQUAREPUSHER!
To be honest, after getting busted up at Public Enemy I had been giving serious thoughts as to whether or not to bother with this gig. I was still in a fair bit of pain and the whole bloodied face thing, cool as it was ;) wasn't exactly ideal...but I figured meh, I'll go anyway as I'd managed to get half a day off of work to allow the painkillers to kick in so at this point I was all floaty anywho ;p
Shaun & I met up with rivetmike in Quinn's for some pre-gig drinkage, and were also joined by Max & Donna (who I haven't seen for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages!) and their friend Adam, and then also by Hazel and some of her friends who I can't remember the names of :-/
As we wanted to catch Luke Vibert Shaun, Mike & myself headed down to Koko for about 8:30...but once inside we discovered that Squarepusher weren't gonna be on til 11ish or midnight! Eeep! No getting home for me then!
The venue was pretty spanky as it's been made over since it's days as the Palace, it's now all "ooooh!" and red...or as Mike puts it, like a brothel. Lol.
Anywho, we managed to find ourselves a nice li'l spot up in the heavens where we stayed for the night :) Really good view, plenty of room to move (which was handy as the place was RAMMED) and not too far from that all important bar ;) Got to meet missyk8 too, which was a pleasure :)
Phil & Lee were supposed to be coming to join us but alas Phil couldn't get a ticket so they gave up on that idea.
The gig was wikkid, if a little drawn out! Being at Public Enemy the night before really hadn't helped Mike or myself for being energetic either! Also had a nice chat with Max during the gig which was kewl (^_^)
Luke Vibert played some fantastic tunes, which made us all wish that the night was on at the weekend as opposed to a Thurs. We all wished that we were down in the crowd jumping around.
Squarepusher came on about 11 and played three very different sets...
1. This consisted of him playing with what looked like some fucked up Meccano set up! This was truly impressive stuff...he had various cogs and spinny things, all making the sounds that made the music (including a pole with li'l nodules on it that played a mini keyboard!). To change songs, he changed cogs etc...As you can imagine, we were all in a bit of awe at this! Thanks to K8's memory (I'd forgotten *rolls eyes*) I came out with the line "Why have techno when you can have technics!"
2. This set consisted of mr.pusher (hehe) on bass, a drummer and a dude on sax playing freestyle jazz. This was the least well received set, a) cuz it was freestyle jazz, and b) cuz at this point people had been standing around for sooo long we just wanted the hardcore shit! Not saying it was bad, I mean on a technical level it was great...just left everyone feeling a bit "meh"
3. Here we go! mr.pusher on bass again, this time with the heavy electronic broken beats tearing it up! The dancefloor below went BALLISTIC and became a giant mosh! lol. T'was worth it all for this :) He even played my favourite track, E8 Boogie (^_^)
Think we left the venue about 1:45am ish and made our way back to crash at Shauns (much thanks to you mate!)
Friday night it was all about the going home & chilling! :)