Issue 55 / May 2015

28
Bido Lito! May 2015
Reviews
Nightmares On Wax (Glyn Akroyd)
NIGHTMARES ON WAX
Hotplate and Madnice @ 24 Kitchen Street
Mention a garden party to the discerning
party-goer and manicured lawns and cucumber
sandwiches are not what spring to mind;
their eyes invariably light up in anticipation
of a heady and exotic mix of beats and brews.
Under a Garden Get Together banner, Hotplate
and Madnice have teamed up with Croatian
festival The Garden to put together a pretty
stellar line-up tonight in support of headliners
NIGHTMARES ON WAX, housed in the intimate
confines of 24 Kitchen Street, a venue which has
quickly established itself as a must-play on the
city’s thriving DJ circuit.
The headliners are represented tonight by
founder DJ Ease. Having been around since 1991
their live performances have varied in style over
the years, from solo DJ sets to performances
with a live band (minus a drummer, that is, as
Ease insists on maintaining a solid link to his
technological roots, stating that “the sound of
the beats is what makes Nightmares”).
He takes to the decks to great acclaim and
pronounces that “for the next two hours I’m
going to play music from my heart”. He launches
straight into a dub-heavy version of Bob
Marley’s Is This Love, provoking a great crowd
singalong, before launching into the Beatles’
Come Together, a guaranteed crowd-pleaser
around these parts. We roll through some
Jamaican dancehall, MC Kwasi skanking around
behind the decks, relishing every moment,
urging the crowd to greater heights, and into
another, very different, version of Inner City
Blues, prompting thoughts about the enduring
legacy of great music (and the incongruity of
the social consciousness of the 70s forming the
backdrop to today’s party tunes). Will tonight’s
sampled, cut and paste versions be around in
another forty years’ time?
Ease is a livewire performer, alternately
dancing and punching the air, or bent intently
over the decks, twisting, flicking, sliding the
controls – adding echo and reverb and all manner
of technical sleights of hand which subtly affect
the mood of a track. The back projections add
visual touches of social commentary in-between
some marvellous animation. The Magic
Roundabout footage is a highlight: Florence,
Zebedee, et al kaleidoscopically loom towards
us before sliding elusively off screen.
Throughout the set I catch snippets of lyrics,
melodies, and riffs that I know but whose
identity remains momentarily elusive (I know,
I know, get Shazam!). Ease slips Grace Jones,
James Brown, some heavy Clintonesque funk
and N.O.W. originals such as African Pirates into
the mix.
In the depths of my sobriety at 3.30am I do
find myself wondering why N.O.W. come on so
late and whether they should perhaps shave
thirty minutes off the set, but there’s not a
single other person in a pulsating Kitchen Street
who would agree with me.
Glyn Akroyd
THE DUNE RATS
The Orielles – Native Kings
Bam!Bam!Bam! @ The Shipping Forecast
The Maroon 5-meets-Royal Blood stylings of
NATIVE KINGS is met with a positive reception
by tonight’s crowd. It is clear that the half-full
Hold is packed with Easter revellers determined
to make the most of the longest weekend of
the year. Dave Knowles’ fat basslines are only
moderated slightly by singer Cameron Warren’s
sickly slick vocals, and the LIPA group’s riffs are
right on the money.
Sound problems during the first couple of
songs fail to dull the buzz which can be felt as
THE ORIELLES launch into their set. It’s unclear
whether frontwoman Esme-Dee Hand-Halford’s
ice cold presence is due to nerves or ambivalence
but either way it is more than made up for by
guitarist Henry Wade’s boundless energy. The
surf rockers capitalise on the excitement in
the room and look destined for a bright future.
Their set is finished with Wade wandering into
the crowd, almost initiating a circle pit as he
bounces off punters, all the while not missing
a stroke.
There is a clearly a requited love between THE
DUNE RATS and this rather sizeable chunk of
Liverpool’s gig-going fraternity. The Brisbanites
inform us that their first UK tour was christened
at Sound City in 2014 and they seem determined
to show their gratitude. Rock ‘n’ roll has long
been aligned with a degradation of brain
cells and these stoner punks will not do a lot
to counter this claim. But how much of this is
affectation is as unclear as it is irrelevant. Singer
Danny Deusa gurns his way through a breakneck
set of high-grade garage rock anthems with the
crowd’s chants of “Dunies, Dunies” punctuating
the songs.
The charm of The Dune Rats is best
exemplified in new album opener Dalai Lama,
bidolito.co.uk