The Wonder Yeahs @ The Haunt

Photo by Sam Hiscox

Review originally featured in the Brighton SOURCE

The 90s was a great decade, Will Smith was cool, Super Nintendos were all the ‘Streets Of Rage’ and Joss Whedon gave us Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The music wasn’t half bad either and the Wonder Yeahs is here to remind us that kitsch can be cool, or at least, kitsch was cool.

It was a time when the baggier your jeans were, the better, and although it’s a shame 90s fashion isn’t an entrance requisite (just imagine) it’s obvious everyone here loves the pop-punk of Weezer as much as the G-funk of Dre. The young but not student-centric crowd gets down like our Noughties’ economy, reveling in the camp as much as the classic as the DJs drop Ace Of Bass after The Fugees.

Leave your navel-gazing taste at the door and delight in a night that continually has you yelling, “Oh, I used to love this tune!”

The xx - Angels

Arguably it's a bit samey to the stuff on their first album, but when the material's so undeniably lush and melodic who cares if it's samey. 'Angels' is a sparse track with more of the delicate vocals that we've come to expect from front girl Romy, the lyrics are uttered softly yet still retain a powerful poeticism as they drift over distant guitars.

It's a melancholic tune but at least we can rejoice in the fact that The xx are making more music.

Hospitality @ Digital

Review first appeared in Brighton SOURCE mag

It seems every genre of EDM is getting prefixed by the ‘future’ tag – future house, future garage, future step. Alright, we may have made that last one up, but drum’n’bass is getting ushered into the corner with all the exciting new developments in dance music. Hospitality, however, is here to prove that it’s still alive and kick-drumming.

Photo by Zac Colbert

Nu:Tone successfully warms up the crowd, as diamond geezers thrash about with their tops off and junglettes get treated to a bass heavy remix of Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’, before headliners Sigma take to the decks. Their productions err on the side of soulful liquid blends but tonight’s set opts for the grittier edge of drum’n’bass, best illustrated when they drop DJ Hazard’s ‘Mr Happy’. Digital’s raving elite gets their jubilee skank on for all of England as the ear shattering sonics pulse throughout the club. The place is rammed, so it’s safe to say that d’n’b is far from flat-lining yet.

Photo by Zac Colbert

Juice Box @ Life

Originally appeared in the Brighton SOURCE

Photo by James Kendall

Saturday nights can seem a bit specialist on the seafront, alienating those punters who don’t know their Rusko from your Roska, so Life launched Juice Box to remedy the situation. With a mission statement that reads, “All Juice Box cares about is your ability to recognize the fact that ‘In the Navy’ is just as much of a tune as ‘Insane in the Membrane’” you know the night’s emphasis is firmly on fun.

A night’s music policy can make or break it, too specific and you risk being elitist, too broad and the evening will be unfocused with no theme tying the experience together. Fortunately Juice Box’s policy of pure party jams holds up under dancefloor scrutiny – Life is engorged with revelers throwing themselves around to Jay Z vs Linkin Park.

As George ‘Poundance’ Nunners selflessly drops The Offsping’s ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ the upper floor throbs with banging heads and twiddling air guitar fingers, everyone’s having the time of their life like they don’t give a toss about the term guilty pleasures, and more power to them we say.

Dirtybird Records Showcase

Are you tired of moody dubstep? Is aggressive drum ‘n’ bass getting you down? Well Audio have the perfect night for you, a Dirtybird Records showcase. The label’s founder, Claude VonStroke, will be spinning his harmonious deep house and techno delights.

Then there’s Justin Martin whose mixes make us laugh as much they make us dance. This is a DJ with his tongue refreshingly in his cheek. With a label that denounces posers and places fun at the forefront of what they do, you know tonight will be pure dancefloor japery.

TEED @ Digital

 Originally written for that rag the Brighton SOURCE.

Photo by Zac Colbert

After the release of 'Household Goods' in 2010 and 'Trouble' last year, Orlando ‘Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs’ Higginbottom garnered the attention of Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw and was put on remix duty by commercial artists as well as underground, from Professor Green and Lady Gaga to The 2 Bears.

Tonight his soft voice sounds frail, drowning behind the easy going electro of 'Household Goods', but this is understandable, Brighton is the last leg of a sold out UK tour. TEED's notoriously elaborate head-dress of feathers, beads and tapestry bop to the beat, rhythmically rising and falling to the sunset synths of 'Trouble'. Digital's crowd push forward straining to see the DJ behind the barrier of keyboards, laptops, samplers and a drum machine, between which he’s constantly flitting.

The gracious 'Garden' has the 8 bit blips of Crystal Castles but without the screeching mania. It's warm and affectionate, ambling into our ears and gently coaxing us to dance. As one of his most recent releases it is perhaps also the most recognisable and the crowd begin to bounce with boundless vigour. They're packed so tightly towards the stage that they move as one, unified by necessity, arms pushed down to their sides or raised aloft, the sea of haircuts swell as lasers cut the smoke above them.

With his album set to drop in June we're treated to some new material. His latest tune 'Tapes & Money' has a luscious melody with a melancholy vocal and fast tempo. As with all his work he manages to create a harmonious sound from seemingly contrasting elements. As a producer of the future his bars are anything but Jurassic.

Even @ The Tube

Review first appeared in the Brighton SOURCE, which has a sexy new website.

Photo by James Kendall

Typically, headlining DJs only get an hour or two to entertain you, but Even throws the rule book straight out the window. The philosophy behind this club night is to book one big act and let them loose on the decks for as long as they want. Last year Ben UFO had four hours playing to the sweaty heads filling The Tube and this month Appleblim’s getting similar treatment.

Tonight it’s Space Dimension Controller, whose psychedelic techy-house productions on his astral album – ‘The Pathway to Tiraquon 6’ – demonstrated a cosmic love for disco, funk and deep house, as does the first hour of his set tonight.

It culminates with Bob Sinclar’s controversial ‘Gym Tonic’ before dropping back down into some stomping techno that chugs along like a celestial locomotive. His own track ‘Usurper’ finds its way into the mix, the palatial soundscape indicative of the interstellar epicness of all his tunes, before Siedah Garrett’s ‘Do You Want It Right Now?’ tops the night off nicely.

Nowhere to Run @ The Haunt

A lot of fun was had to a lot of good music. The review first appeared in the Brighton SOURCE.

Photo by Nina Elm

It’s been a tough 2011 and club nights come and go like boats at the marina. However Nowhere To Run defies all laws and reason, being consistently busy every time we poke our heads in. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of 60s music, it’s what we and the predominantly student crowd have been raised on – healthy amounts of Canned Heat, Dusty Springfield and The Rolling Stones.

The charm of pop classics is followed by the velvety timbre of northern soul while Russ Meyers’ Supervixens is projected on a massive screen hanging behind the DJs. The retro theme gives the students an excuse to dress up, as if they needed it. So we twist and shake among Twiggy and Lulu lookalikes while the guys split off into opposing factions of mods and rockers. It all makes for a groovy night of young love, bright flowers and Hollywood heartbreak that’s proving more popular with the kids than a drive-in movie theatre.

Bowski - Poppies EP

Bowski first drew my attention earlier this year with the excellent 'Hooves', which immediately gets your toes tapping via it's mischievious melodies, echoey techno bleeps and the "bom, bom bom" sounds sampled from his mates. Now he's got the tedious task of completing a degree out the way he's back with a new EP on Blood Music.

'Poppies' is a fantastic track, demonstrating Bowski's jaunty finesse with its bouncing beats and minimal techy bumps. It's got a breezy build up that breaks down into a tremoring sink hole wobble that wouldn't sound out of place on a dubstep track. But for me 'White Russian' is the best example of his post-club pre-coital micro house. It's got a warehouse ethic, lighthearted yet unyielding, his attention to detail is scarcely perceptable but is exactly what makes it so irresistible.

You can pick this up from Blood Music on December the 12th and then bump it out your iTunes rather than playing it from my shitty blog. LOVE.

Friends - I'm His Girl

Hells yeah you are. You're his girl. This ultra hip joint from Brooklyn band Friends is super sexy and cooler than the other side of your pillow. 'I'm His Girl' follows up from their double A side 'Friend Crush'/Feelin Dank' which was released way back when, in March 2011. It continues their bubblegum funk sound, a brand of NY pop that's sweet and sickly, not dissimilar to Sleigh Bells, just sans the grungey guitar riffs.   

Samantha Ubani's vocals are like candy floss with a hint of venom. She's confident delivering the sultry lines, "When you see me walking around with him/ I'm not just another chick/ I'm. His. Girl." The video's made even smoother with it's retro flavour, from the gold bling and 80s tube top, to the boombox and lackadaisical Super 8 camera.

'I'm His Girl' is out on 7" and digital download on Lucky Numbers.

Jack Beats - End of Love

They've been making bombastic bass driven fidget house for a while now and this tune is the epitome of everything they stand for. It's got a preposterously funky bassline following a beat that keeps you guessing, switching from dubstep to house and back again, while a Leonard Cohen sample toasts "to the end of love".