electrowerkz – Page 2 – Fooyah

July 18 2016October 17 2017

The Cosmic Dead – Electrowerkz

Smith and I went out to find some noise. Our initial heading was to the World’s End pub in Camden and the Underworld venue where a Japanese band were playing a two hour concept album. Can you believe it, the place was full. We weren’t allowed in. That was a shame so we went in search of food and ended up at a terrible Chinese buffet place. It looked ok from the outside but Smith couldn’t find much food that he liked. I liked nearly all of it. After that we returned to the World’s End. The Underworld club night was due to start at 23:00 but the music looked a little popular and boring. They were going to play some Arctic Monkeys FFS.

So, we decided to walk to Electrowerkz in Angel. It was about a 40 minute walk. It’s alway nice to walk around London, it feels more organic and natural compared to hopping onto a tube train. I guess I should have been surprised at how many people we saw standing around in parks playing Pokemon.

Now, we knew there was an event on at Electrowerkz, we just didn’t know what sort of music it would be. The current music taste of DBL-MF is industrial electronic. Almost everything else doesn’t matter. But, as we walked down Torrens Street we could hear noise and it seemed good. GBP15 lighter after paying to get in and we went into the downstairs music room. The band playing were called Bad Guys.

So, as you can see, two double guitars, no bass player, a drummer and a singer. It was rock type stuff. It was tolerable although the vocals were shit. After they had finished we had some drinks and pondered the nature of the post-referendum country [we are fucked] and what the next band could possibly be like.

Pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs were on stage at 01:00. Two guitarists, bass player, drummer and singer [who also played a synth which I couldn’t hear]. They weren’t great. They were energetic and played well but it was screamy shouty music and it bored me.

The two bands that we saw were ok. Nothing great. Nothing special and not my current taste in music. It’s quite difficult to find aggrotech on a usual night out in London, Slimelight is almost the only club night and that’s fortnightly on a Saturday. The crowd was a metal crowd. People dressed in denim and dark t-shirts. It was like being in a house that you’ve just sold and are waiting to move to your new home. The furniture was normal and in the right places but your new home awaits and it’s more exciting and a fresher place to be. I much prefer and feel more at home with the “alternative” crowd who attend AC and Slimelight.

Thank goodness there are trains every hour from Victoria towards Gatwick. That meant we could get home. There’s something quite wonderful about walking through the capital early in the morning, it doesn’t ever sleep.

Added 12:09 18 July:

It struck me that this communication is titled “The Cosmic Dead”. Well, they were the band on at 02:30. We didn’t stay that long, we didn’t think it would be worth it. All of my gig communications have been titled the Headline band so this one did the same. I’ll do similar with Mesh when I see them because I’m really going to the gig to see Aesthetic Perfection.

April 10 2016April 10 2016

God Module – Electrowerkz

Took my sister to see God Module at Electrowerkz near The Angel in London. There were three bands playing and they were all actually pretty good unlike last time. Unusually the room on the ground floor was used as the venue, I’ve been in here before but have only experienced the first floor performance room for gigs. The sound was good and the room was just the right size. There were the usual freaks and geeks floating around all evening.

First band on were Die Kur. They had a very heavy metal sound with some synth stuff. Most enjoyable. My one concern was that the songs seemed a little too start-stop and a little short. Other than that they were very enjoyable.

Second band on the bill were DKAG. It was three blokes with Apple Macs on stage “playing” stuff. It was interesting as my sister spent a while asking “what is going on”, she’s quite a metal/rock fan really. After a while she was dancing and enjoyed it. It turns out I had seen this band before, I though I recognised them and actually searched on this site to see if I had seen them. It turned out I saw them with Combichrist a few years ago.

Finally God Module came on. I’d spent about a month listening to their stuff a lot and although I like it and it’s my sort of stuff a lot of the songs seemed similar. The sound and structure of the music was pretty much the same for every song. Also, the singer had a distortion effect on his voice.

One of the things about the ground floor room is that there isn’t a backstage. The bands had to walk through the audience to get to the stage which leant a kind of common touch to the evening. All the band members were milling around in the bar area after the gig, they were very approachable. Not that I did. I like to think I don’t fawn and hero worship, but I think I probably do to a certain extent.

God Module did what they do very well. The singer is possibly the largest man I have ever seen in a band and he didn’t really move around that much [too much inertia]. But they played a few songs I kinda recognised and the crowd loved them. It was ok for me.

Electrowerkz has gone somewhat upmarket as the gent’s loos had this in them by the sink:

I’m looking forward to my next gig, which I hope to get out to soon. I must get looking for stuff to see and listen to. My sister liked the evening but preferred the metal sound of the first band. Maybe she’ll convert in time!

March 14 2016

Hocico – Electrowerkz

I took a trip to Electrowerkz to see Hocico with Smith. I’ve been to Electrowerkz a number of times, I really like it. It would have been good to stay for the Slimelight club but I had some stuff on early the next day and so we left after the gig.

First up were Spawn Of Psychosis.

20160312_195119035_iOS — Spawn Of Psychosis

This was the best shot I could be bothered to try and get of the band. They were shit. Seriously, they were terrible. The guitar solos were painful and the rest of the band didn’t do much better. Perhaps they’d just had a bad day but I really wouldn’t want to see them again. Having just googled their name it turns out they are from Maidstone, my nearest town. That’s a shame. I don’t think even my local interest would have saved this review!

The next band were called Biomechanimal. Here’s the best shot I have of them:

These guys were better. Much better. The songs were quite enjoyable. I can’t remember any specifics, which is a shame. Perhaps the terror of the first band hadn’t quite worked its way out of my head.

Finally we were treated to Hocico. These two guys are cousins from Mexico. Their music seems reasonable, but the vocals are quite distorted on the studio albums so I wasn’t sure how enjoyable they would be live. Here’s what they look like:

I definitely remember the song “Sex Sick” and some others from the recent album. Overall they were pretty good. The played for 90 minutes which was probably too long. There wasn’t a great deal of variation in their music and beat.

As you can see, I didn’t really go out of my way to try and get great photos. I was concentrating on listening and dancing rather than when to take the best shot. Also, the lighting at Electrowerkz tends to all come from behind the stage, there’s a low ceiling in front, and so it’s quite hard to photo.

The singer of Hocico had plenty of energy and was drinking wine on stage which I don’t think I’ve seen before. At least the wine was offered out to the front row.

Hocico were good and I enjoyed it. The atmosphere was really good. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at M’era Luna, should the timetable allow.

January 6 2016October 13 2018

Fucking Trousers

On the 2nd January 2016 I went to a Not New Year’s Eve party at Electrowerkz venue in Angel. Sally and I had been before to this event and really enjoyed it, details here.

Quality night out with @trusmoov Electrowerkz.

— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 3, 2016

We left home around 21:45 after spending a while getting ready in our outfits. There exist pictures from our previous outing but there are none of this visit. I had black nail varnish again and silver stripes over my bald head. We arrived near Electrowerkz about an hour later after driving in to Angel and parking on someone’s drive using the website Just Park. It’s not even a five minute walk to the venue. It was brilliant to be there again, it’s a really nice atmosphere, plenty of costumes, plenty of not-costumes and much good natured chatter and dancing.

There was quite a lot on and I was looking forward to seeing Shiv-r. I had downloaded two albums by them about a month before and I liked it. I also wanted to see the suspension performance piece in the courtyard.

Here’s what went on that night.

I was mostly interested in the Theatre of Sin shows. They were pretty good. The two bands were good. Pretty Addicted were great and had a punky sound with a female vocalist. Shiv-r were a slight let down live, the frontman wasn’t as good as the singer from Pretty Addicted even though the music was more my style. I missed Mynxie Monroe as Sally and I were probably exploring the main areas of Electrowerkz. There are quite a few rooms and each has a bar attached.

The courtyard has a bar shaped like a tube train and the exit to the smoking area along with a staircase up the back of the building which gets to the cloakroom right at the top. There’s a room downstairs where Purefuckingindustrial was hosted, it was good music, very much my new stuff, see this communication.

If you move up the stairs, past the area where they were showing Game Of Thrones episodes on a large screen, you see phrases painted on the wall. These are from the film Aliens and I think it’s a great touch to give the place some atmosphere.

Turn right from the landing and you enter an Alien themed bar and through that you get to the Hellfire room. Good stuff in here a DJ playing a good mix of music.

Keep going through the Hellfire room and head up a small flight of stairs to end up in the “aircraft” bar. I think this is modelled on an airplane but it’s hard to tell really. There are aircraft windows up on the wall and (not very) engine looking lights suspended from the ceiling. But, it’s a bar and we managed to be given an extra beer in here by mistake. Once through some more doors you end up in what I would call the main venue. It’s a small hall with a stage at one end. This is the top floor or the Theatre of Sin for the purposes of ClubAC.

Although Shiv-r hadn’t finished their set Sally and I went to the courtyard to see the dying mermaid from Cynth Icorn. There are videos available on the interwebs if you search, the one I found was on Vimeo. It was very curious to watch. A girl was suspended from the ceiling using two hooks through the skin by her shoulder blades. I think I understand now that skin is pretty tough stuff. I’m guessing it hurt quite a bit and towards the end of the performance you could see it was very tiring working against the pain. I was going to put a picture in here but you are intelligent enough to know whether you want to see it or not and can use the internet yourself.

Once it got to about 0400 we decided to head home. We both got goodie bags on the way out although mine was just an envelope and Sally’s was an envelope in a bag so I guess hers was a proper goodie bag. We got home around 0500 and went to sleep. It was a great night. Good people, brilliant outfits, reasonably cheap drink and excellent shows. Can’t wait to go again.

Oh, the title of this communication. The first visit to ClubAC was easy to title as Sally muttered fucking stairs a lot over the evening. This time there weren’t any major complaints, she had mentioned her trousers slipping down a couple of times, hence the title of this communication.

May 4 2015January 6 2016

Fucking Stairs

So, Sally and I went to the Electrowerkz venue in Islington on Friday 1st May for an AC Club night.

The event started at 20:00 and continued until 06:00 the Saturday morning. We spent most of Friday evening getting ready and then drove in to London where we had booked a parking space via Just Park. The route into London was easy enough and the parking spot was simple to find. After parking we took a three minute walk to Electrowerkz and arrived at around 22:30. It was quite cold but I left my jacket in the car I couldn’t be bothered to carry anything, but this meant I also forgot my hat, which I had spent an hour sewing and embellishing. That was slightly annoying!

Once in the club we wandered around the various rooms to see what was happening. There were three main music rooms, a chill out area and some specialist areas. I’d been to Electrowerkz before to see Aesthetic Perfection and Combichrist. I really like it as a venue, it’s small and dark, it has a real atmosphere about it. Much like cinema seats I would not like to see it in daylight.

The layout of the club required lots of walking up and down awkward stairs. Awkward stairs are ones where the rise/step calculations, while mathematically fine, do not induce a sensible physical step pattern. I was fine as I had big boots on. It turned out that Sally’s shoes were somewhat less comfortable for walking down stairs. She did last until 04:00 in her shoes though which is pretty good going.

The TheatreOfSin had the main stage was quite cold and well air-conditioned so we didn’t spend much time in there. The bars were all pretty nice places and the other two music rooms were full of happy people dancing. The atmosphere was gentlemanly and completely unthreatening. I’ve been to a couple of clubs [literally less than 10] and I often fine the atmosphere quite oppressive and angry. Electrowerkz had a friendly atmosphere and feeling about the place.

The PFI [PureFuckingIndustrial] room created a slight discussion about the music. I would never describe it as dance. I don’t even like calling it dark dance. But, if I am honest with myself, then I would suggest that the songs are constructed in the same way and have many of the same elements. I would then go on to mention that the lyrics are quite possibly as far from happy dance as is possible.

The HELLFIRE room was playing Rammstein when we entered and progress to some Ministry. Definitely the more “metalwith a twist” room. A live feed of the music was played into the Chillout Room which had a tube carriage doubling up as a bar. The Hellfire bar was decked out like the set of the film Alien, it was quite impressive.

At one point I was chatting with Pete. He was impressed with my outfit and also my mark of ownership. Quite randomly a man [who possibly is a member of a famous band] came along and handed Pete a very nice top hat, which then meant that he gave me his top hat. My hat problem was solved, although there were too many top hats in the club for it to be a cool look. I do need to get a decent top hat though, in time for the M’era Luna festival in the summer.

We left at around 04:30 to get home just as the sun was coming up. Overall it was a really enjoyable night and I am looking forward to doing it again. The recovery time is longer than I can remember from my days at university, but then I am quite old now!

The evening will be remembered for many great and wonderful things, but this communication is entitled “Fucking Stairs” because that’s pretty much all I heard every time we walked from one room to another!

I can’t wait to go again. It was great.

August 18 2014August 22 2014

Aesthetic Perfection – Electrowerkz

So, Alt-Fest got cancelled. Rather gutted about that. I was looking forward to a weekend seeing some favourite bands and also discovering new music and bands along the way. I guess a number of bands had already organised travel to the UK as a (much) smaller festival turned up at Electrowerkz in Angel.

The SOS Festival played over this weekend and many of the bands who were booked to appear at Alt-Fest played here instead. One of my favourite bands played on Sunday 17 August and I travelled there to see them. I also took my niece as I was going to take her to Alt Fest for her birthday.

Here’s the timings sheet from the front door of the entrance. It’s blurry because I took it in a hurry.

This bothered me slightly! The last train home was at 23:43 from St Pancras, just over a mile from the venue. It wouldn’t be worth it to leave early, or to get the tube, the quickest method to get to the mainline would be to run. We decided that was what we would do.

Jared Louch and Mark Plastic were good fun. Mark Plastic was a guitarist and he played along to a backing track while Jared Louch sang. The songs were reasonable but it was the segways what were great. Jared Louch was an older man of rock and didn’t care. He was funny.

Next up were Global Citizen. As a band they were good but the music didn’t do a great deal for me. There were two keyboardists, a drummer and the singer. The structure of the songs didn’t really have any bass lines. The bass sounds were created using a chord progression on the keyboards with a choral sound. It just didn’t work for me.

XP8 were playing their last ever gig. This is a shame as they were really good. According to Wikipedia they are from Rome, which surprised me somewhat as they sounded perfectly English, but then, what do I know? There songs had pumping bass lines and a good fast and hard dance beat over the top. They had a video show in the background to which I didn’t really pay attention. Their songs were interesting, well structured and both of them seemed to be having a really good time. A minor thing is that the not-singer seemed to look a lot like Greg Wallace from Masterchef and this was a little off-putting, although more my problem than his. I’m not sure what they are going to do now, but I was pretty impressed with their set. They did over-run by about 20 minutes!

Finally Aesthetic Perfection were on. This was causing me slight problems as they were due to do a seventy minute set and they were late. I didn’t want to miss any AP but then again, I didn’t want to spend the night in St Pancras station waiting for the first train home [I’d done that plenty as a teenager].

Aesthetic Perfection were excellent. All of their songs were good and they had great energy. I do have a problem with their live sound. This is the second time I have seen them and some of the best bits of their songs are the high pitched “twiddly” bits. When playing live these seem incredibly quiet in the mix. A lot of the timings in the songs come from these sections and I feel that something is a little lacking. This *could* be my problem, maybe my ears are too old, but my niece also couldn’t really hear those bits. She had a great time, and even got to hold the singer’s hand.

There was slight confusion on stage as they played a song and then announced that it was their last one. I’m pretty sure the club has a curfew and so the band had to finish. I was starting to get worried that we wouldn’t see all of the AP set. They had about ten minutes before we had to leave. AP left the stage, we called for an encore and then they played two more songs.

After the last song, which conveniently was “Spit It Out”, I say conveniently because I think it’s their standard set finisher, my niece and I ran out the door, down the steps and then the mile and a bit to St Pancras station. We got there with just enough time to buy a bottle of water and get on the train before we departed.

Here’s how far we moved over the entire day:

December 23 2013October 25 2019

Combichrist – Electrowerkz

Saturday 21 December. A date that will live in my memory and on this communication. Andy and I travelled to The Angel to see Combichrist at Electrowerkz venue.

This is the running order, taken after I went to the “rest rooms”.

The whole venue was a bit weird. Pretty much a dark room in a strange building with a bar and unisex toilets. The black painted walls were painted with phrases and sayings and my favourite was the one that said “Hadley’s Hope” – the terraforming city on LV426 in the film Aliens. The mixing desk was hanging from the ceiling and the bottom edge of this construction was just at head height.

The first band on were shit. I reckon my staff band at work were better than them. They said they were from Coventry. Not sure if that’s a causation thing or not.

One of the things about listening to the type of music I like now is that the whole musician thing is constantly questioned. The eighteen year old me would hate me. I like electronic music which can be played using a laptop. Das Kapital (below) had three laptops and bopped around behind them. My issue with this is that although I might enjoy the music I don’t understand the creation process. Surely if your music is samples and drum tracks why don’t you just press play? Perhaps I need to see more of this type of music created. If only there was a festival dedicated to alternative music, somewhere like in Kettering next year.

Combichrist consisted of two people. Singer and mixer-dude. They were very good. It was brilliant to hear the old songs played – the gig was billed as the Old School Electro Set. I didn’t take any photos as I was about two rows back from the very front. As much as it ashames me I held my hand up and got to hold hands with the singer twice. I am such a teenager.

Songs I remember them playing:

Body Beat
Blut Royale
This S*it Will Fcuk You Up
Like To Thank My Buddies
Electrohead

There were others and I am sure I could find them if I searched the internet thingy but I can’t be bothered.

Andy gave this gig a 10. I am bordering on 10 but at the moment more than likely it is: 9.9 < r < 10. Don’t know why, there was just a little something missing and I’m not sure what that was.