Tsunami Relief

support Rhesus + Abdoujaparov + Jim Bob + Ciccone + Video Club + Stephan Smith + Salvo + Barrel
author PP date 20/02/05 venue The Windmill, London, UK

Bands from nearly each genre of the music industry had showed up to The Windmill Pub in Brixton for the Tsunami Relief gig organized by Rhesus' frontman. All profit (5? per ticket) tonight was donated for charity in relation of the recent Tsunami disaster in Asia. So that meant that all of the bands tonight (all unsigned, record labels HINT HINT!) were playing without any compensation! Thanks for all bands and all of the people who came by to the 60-80 capacity Windmill Pub tonight!

Salvo

The night was kicked off by Barrel who I didn't see due to British transporation problems. I arrived just on time for Salvo's set and they sounded even better live than on their demo. Their punk influenced garage rock was at it's best at a venue like The Windmill, which closely resembles The Moose in Denmark. All of the walls are covered in spray paintings which contributes to the punk/garage atmosphere. Salvo played all of their songs from their old demo as well as some new songs that hadn't been heard before. Songs like "Drown" and "Faultline" were greatly appreciated by the (lack of) crowd who was present already at 6pm at the Windmill. There is no reason why Salvo couldn't sell out big venues like the Mean Fiddler with songs like "Bleeding Shins" and "Drown". As soon as Salvo enter a real studio and get their songs to sound properly produced, they will be huge. Watch out for this band!

8

Stephan Smith

Next on line was Stephan Smith with his violin/acoustic guitar solo-effort. He played some incredible violin solos that could easily beat all of the students at the Sibelius Academy in Finland. And the violin solos weren't all. He was also capable of creating some captivating acoustic melodies to add it all up. But that wasn't enough to live up to the bar that Salvo set before him.

5

Video Club

Fifteen minute break, and Video Club was on. With their electronica infused double keyboard set they showed that the 60 person crowd was filled with a whole variety of different music tastes. Earlier we saw people who loved Salvo's punk influenced garage rock and others who loved the acoustic set of Mr. Smith, and now we saw several people who were really into the techno/electronica scene. Anyway, it's very limited what you can do on the stage with two keyboards and a singer over music that is generally very repetitive in it's genre. Honestly, Video Club didn't fit on tonights stage despite the few fans they had within the crowd.

2

Ciccone

Fortunately, Video Club didn't end the night. They were followed on the stage by the female fronted Ciccone. Basically, Ciccone sounded at times like The Hives and The Strokes, at other times like The Streets or Anouk and they even managed to get some Hole and No Doubt sound into their set. Ciccone was probably the most energetic band tonight on the stage. Their music was mostly fast, honest punk rock with much resemblance to The Hives. And that was perhaps their biggest problem. They didn't have their own sound. They sounded like 5 or 6 other bands during their set, which made their musical style unclear. Are they trying to make a garage punk band in the style of The Hives or The White Stripes, or are they trying to make a ska-punk band a la No Doubt?

7

Jim Bob

Ciccone was followed by Jim Bob, the second acoustic solo act tonight. Jim Bob's stuff sounded like an acoustic version of Eagle Eye Cherry mixed with Oasis' acoustic ballads without much success. Unfortunately Mr Bob didn't bring anything new to Oasis' over copied concept of acoustic ballads which is why I have to award him a

3

Abdoujaparvo

Abdoujaparvo were the most original band tonight after Salvo. Just like at Salvo's set, you could hear that this band doesn't really sound like anyone else out there. Fair enough, there were slught resemblances to bands like Fall Out Boy and New Found Glory but mostly they had their own skapunk influenced poppunk/punk style, which got a large part of the crowd moshing (something that hadn't happened earlier).

6

Rhesus

Unfortunately I wasn't able to see tonight's headliners Rhesus but I would guess they were good as they were headlining. There was one thing that shined out in all of the bands tonight: The underproduction of their songs was obvious. You could definitely hear that none of these bands had recorded their songs in a studio before, which gave a garage like sound to their set. Should some independent labels decide to give these bands some studio time they would have a bigger chance of making it big in the UK, and perhaps internationally as well!

7

Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.