FULL GIG REVIEW – The Prodigy at the Brixton Academy

"End Of The World Extravaganza"
18th December 2012
Support: Gedo Mega Bitch, South Central, Jaguar Skills, Caspa

To celebrate fifteen years since the release of their third album, The Fat Of The Land, The Prodigy generously treated their fans to a re-release of the album (with additional Added Fat remixes) and three (almost) all night raves at London’s Brixton Academy. They lined up a whole host of support acts, with Caspa playing all three nights, and Jaguar Skills, Araab Muzik, Shy FX, South Central, Gedo Mega Bitch, Devious D and I.R.O.K. sharing deputy support responsibility at various points over the three dates.

Kicking off on the first night, the first support act up was Gedo Mega Bitch, who happens to be the wife of The Prodigy’s Keith Flint. The show started tentatively, swinging from trance to dubstep and drum & bass, with opportunities for epic drops being sadly wasted as she, almost timidly, played through her set. The audience didn’t seem particularly excited except at one point when the set crashed into an unplanned silence.

The following set from South Central started with more promise, particularly as you could see on the projected screen that they were doing more than just cueing tracks up. They glitched and mashed their way through their set, playing Pendulum riffs over the top of the tracks and making the most of drop opportunities. The crowd cautiously left any reticence behind and started to warm up, and by the time the third support act (Jaguar Skills) emerged, things were starting to go off in the audience.

Jaguar Skills presided over his impressively genius set from what looked like the side of an ice cream van. Mindful of the audience before him, he mashed metal classics from Motorhead and Metallica (much to the glee of an avid metal fan behind me) with old school jungle and rave classics like Original Nuttah and Sweet Harmony, and even finished, slightly bizarrely, with Madness’ One Step Beyond. By the final throes of the set the crowd was fizzing and eagerly anticipating the main event of the night.

And so, just after midnight, The Prodigy finally took to the stage and launched straight into Voodoo People. The crowd went nuts. What followed was a set that infused classics such as Breathe, Omen, Poison and Firestarter with a fresh dubstep-style undertone. With production genius Liam Howlett at the helm of The Prodigy’s control centre, wild-eyed Maxim and scary-haired Flint roamed the stage barking and snarling lyrics, much to the obvious elation of the audience.

While they were on a roll, the band sporadically threw in new tracks Jet Fighter and AWOL from the new, eagerly anticipated album, How To Steal A Jet Fighter, the former of which had been previously aired at Download Festival in the summer. These were well received, as was brand new track The Day, with the crowd moshing and throwing themselves about as enthusiastically as when other favourites like Thunder, Run With The Wolves, World's On Fire and Spitfire were played. During Invaders Must Die Flint disappeared (or at least that seemed to be the case to those of us trapped in the Circle seats), and Maxim distracted the crowd by encouraging everyone to do the classic hand movements to Queen’s We Will Rock You.

Suddenly, as Diesel Power struck up, Flint appeared in the gangway about 10 feet away from me, at the front of the Circle. How he got there I have no idea, and at this point I’m not sure how the Circle didn’t collapse due to the excited hopping and grabbing that ensued! Far from being the scary mentalist he seems to be onstage, Flint obliged by stopping for pictures and clasping the hands of his adoring fans and then, as swiftly as he appeared, he vanished through the exit and reappeared back onstage in time for the final epic track of the set, Smack My Bitch Up.

After opening the encore with Take Me To The Hospital and another new track, Dogbite, those of us who have loved the band from the beginning were treated to Hyperspeed and (my personal all-time favourite) Out Of Space from their first album, Experience. Whilst I would have preferred that they had played Fire from that album instead of Hyperspeed it was still a perfect journey back to the old school rave classics that started off the band’s 22 year career. And with that, the band disappeared into the murkiness at the back of the stage and left the audience, exhausted but happy, in the hands of their last support act, Caspa.

My only other slight disappointment with the set was that they didn’t play Warrior's Dance, which is puzzling since it was such a huge hit for them. But whatever their reasons for omitting that track, the rest of the set was a shining triumph, and they certainly put their Brixton Warriors through their paces!

My review score: 8.5/10

GIG REVIEW - Skunk Anansie at the Brixton Academy

Brixton Academy, 1st December 2012
Support: Arrows Of Love

For their last European tour date of this year, Skunk Anansie chose to do a homecoming gig at the mighty Brixton Academy. The gig had sold out early, leaving unsuccessful fans desperately trying to find tickets for what promised to be a cracking gig.

Those who were able to get tickets were not disappointed, except perhaps by the support band, Arrows Of Love. Unfortunately they failed to engage with, and win over, the majority of the audience. They suffered badly from technical and sound issues, and this was not helped by the fact that you could really only see the outlines of the band members in the haze of dry ice and poor lighting. Most of the audience continued to chat (loudly, to overcome the wall of noise emanating from the stage) and ignore the band, and the band eventually slinked off stage.

Over an hour later, it was a completely different story. Kicking off with The Skank Heads, the band burst onto the stage to projected footage of a car racing through traffic, with their "fearless leader", Skin, appearing in a black, feathery looking outfit resembling the image on the front of their new album, Black Traffic. From the moment they started, the audience was in the palm of their hand. A couple of tracks later Skin ditched the feathery effort, and bounced back onto the stage in sparkly hotpants, proving that she is one of the only people who can pull off this look whilst still remaining the epitome of a rock chick. She then joked, "Some of our songs are a tiny, teeny, tiny bit political...", raising laughter and cheers from the eager crowd.

The band played effortlessly, with drummer, Mark Richardson, providing a solid, relentless backbone for bassist, Cass, and guitarist, Ace, to power their way through a really tight set. After I Will Break You, I Believed In You and God Loves Only You, and bringing it down a notch, the band played their new single, I Hope You Get To Meet Your Hero, before Skin whipped the crowd up into a frenzy with Twisted (Everyday Hurts), marking the start of a number of surfing voyages over the heads of the lively audience. A few tracks later Skin cheekily told the frazzled security guards to give up as she urged all of the audience on the balcony to their feet, and launched herself into the crowd in the stalls, only to be lifted up above their heads so that she looked like she was on a rather unsteady podium, to sing Weak with absolutely flawless vocals.

After returning to the stage for Hedonism, Skin then introduced another singer (Erika), and the two of them sang Our Summer Kills The Sun to a projected backdrop of speedily growing flowers, after which Skin stated that she was coming back to the audience for some more surfing and teased the audience about grabbing her backside during her previous escapades. Alternating between crowd surfing and throwing herself around the stage (all, I hasten to add, whilst delivering perfect vocals) she and the band sliced their way through the following few tracks, including I Can Dream, Spit You Out and Because Of You, before Skin jokingly chastised the audience, during Sad Sad Sad, that there was way too much camera phone action, again raising cheers from the crowd. The band's final song of the set was the mighty Charlie Big Potato, which was enthusiastically received by the audience, and was delivered uncompromisingly by the band, to bring the set to a shuddering climax with much clapping and cheering from the crowd.

Coming back onstage for the encore, the band delivered Tear The Place Up and the downbeat Secretly before Skin introduced the band and urged drummer Mark to take his t-shirt off. This revealed "scientific shit" (as Skin put it) by way of a contraption resembling an heart ECG to monitor how hard he was working (which, given the heroic performance that he and the other band members were providing, must have been sending the device into a frenzy). After thanking the crowd, Skin once again threw herself into the stalls for the final song of the night, Little Baby Swastikkka, making it all the way from the stage to the sound desk. After standing on top of the desk and posing for photos, she returned to the stage to finish the song, and the band left the stage to deafening whooping and clapping.

The whole gig was spectacular and memorable due to the tightness of the band, the flawless vocals of Skin, and the band's ability to identify with the audience and get them involved. It helps, of course, that their back catalogue is brimming with energetic, solid tracks. They really are a must-see act.

My review score: 9/10

Did you see the gig? What did you think? Leave your comments below...

GIG REVIEW - Crystal Castles at the Brixton Academy

Brixton Academy, 24th November 2012
No support

For me, Crystal Castles is one of those bands that must be seen live to be appreciated. Whilst their albums tick all the boxes when it comes to punky electronica, a fifth dimension is added when those tracks are heard in the confines of a dark, sweaty festival tent or gig venue, because you experience their rib-shaking bass overlaid with ear-splitting chiptune synth in all of its glory.

I'd heard great things about Bo Ningen, their Japanese punk band support act, so I pitched up early, ready to see what was on offer. On entering the Academy the stage was already occupied by an old skool style DJ, complete with obligatory female in white hotpants who was raving and shaking her beer. The support time slot came and went, and the DJ continued. I took to Twitter to investigate, and all I could glean was that Crystal Castles had decided that they didn't want a support act tonight. Slightly baffled, I carried on nodding my head to the DJ set until he disappeared. Then finally, quite a lot later than planned, Ethan Kath, Alice Glass and their live drummer took to the stage in a frenzy of lights and synths, kicking off their set with Plague from their new album, (III).

As Alice shrieked and cursed through the first few songs it was apparent that something wasn't quite right. There were silences, and Alice seemed pre-occupied. It was at that point she knelt and lit some candles on the stage next to some flowers. She finally raged, "There's no hell. There's no heaven. There's f***ing nothing." She was visibly upset about something.

The band seemed to rally at this, and they powered through tracks from all three albums. In a haze of furious drums, ferocious bass, raging synths and snarled lyrics, Alice threw herself around the stage and into the crowd, and then climbed on top of the drum kit in a swirl of lights and spat out the lyrics to Crimewave. The sound was phenomenal, probably because the sound guy was banging and bouncing like a mad thing at the sound desk, and you could see that he was absolutely absorbed in the music and sound. It is not often you see the sound guy raving like a club DJ, and it magnified how easy it is to get caught up in the live Crystal Castles experience.

The biggest crowd pleasers of the night were Celestica and Not In Love, the latter of which finished their set, with the band disappearing, without a word, backstage. The crowd seemed a bit confused, but eventually started baying for the band to come back out for more. Finally they returned to top off the night with three further tracks, two of which were from the new album (Insulin and Sad Eyes). And then they disappeared, again without a word, although I should point out this is not particularly unusual for Crystal Castles. Again the crowd were slightly baffled, unsure as to whether the band would appear for a second encore, but it was not to be, and the crowd shuffled out.

It bothered me that there was something amiss, something lacking, that you normally see at a Crystal Castles gig. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but it felt a bit like the band were going through the motions, certainly in the first part of the set. Following further investigation I now know that the band tragically lost a friend the day before the gig to terminal cancer, hence the candles, flowers, the silences and Alice's rant. How they performed at all I will never know, but given the circumstances, and on reflection, I think that they gave their all for the gig in very difficult circumstances.

Whilst it wasn't the best Crystal Castles gig I've been to, it was still memorable. I hope Ethan and Alice take comfort in the fact that they did their friend, who was an avid Crystal Castles fan, proud.

My review score: 8/10

Did you see the gig? What did you think? Leave your comments below...