Transgressive Hot Summer Tour comes to London
Cross Kings is I think one of London‘s better venues, about it order It has that sticky floored authenticity that we have come to see as a pre-requisite for an unpretentious musical enjoyment. At the Transgressive night the place was packed and the crowd was a nice mix of people, trendy, but not hoxton try-hard trendy.
Photo by Ben Broomfield
The venue is blessed with a basement that is just as big as another venue, which is great as it means that more bands can play rather than hanging around waiting for the previous band to pack up. It was this basement that we precariously crept into, as if entering a coal mine, reading the words, “all ye who cross this point must abandon all faith“ on the way. The happy crowd seemed not to have taken heed of this warning, nodding their heads watching So So Modern. I say nodding their heads, there were a fantastic few people at the front who were getting spazmodic in some new crazy ways.
So So Modern are everything the Klaxons should have been. They cross punk and electro in such an intelligent way that means they could never be typecast as either of the two. Three guys have a guitar and a keyboard each and thus the loud dirty riffs and crazy futuristic noises made are perfectly in sync with eachother. The lead singer (screamer) is clearly so absorbed in the music that it would be possible to tell by his movements if the drummer missed a beat. Catcthy melodies would at times work their way up to a gloriously incompresensable din, followed by a pause, followed by a scream, followed by more incomprehensable din! Fantastic!
Then we watched Esser, at first I was mostly confused by them, the lead singer looked a little nervous which felt strange given the humour in the lyrics. However Esser had some really good songs and throughout the performance totally won the crowd over. “Headlock“ had people singing along. I thought their loony friend dressed as a skeleton dancing around with a glitterball on stage was wonderful, but the london crowd didn’t really bat an eyelid at him.
Photo by Ben Broomfield
A couple of whiskeys later and I was enjoying the sound of Jeremy Warmsley’s voice, when he draws back from the microphone slightly it gives a new echoish quality to his voice, which had you never seen him live could be thought of as a recording trick but live it is really apparent how natural it is. “Dirty Blue Jeans“ was my favorite song of the night though the beautiful piano tinkling and heavy voiced “I knew that her face was a lie“ almost knocked it off the top spot. I was genuinely sad when the night ended without him playing “I believe in the way you move“. Transgressive is a brilliant label doing something truly different and after this night I would certainly go one of their gigs again even if I had never heard of any of the artists playing, I’d be sure of having a great time.
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