July 16, 2004
16/07/04 – The Old Angel (Nottingham)
Kicking off with incredibly catchy, jazz influenced British indie/punk, with an over dramatic sound, were The Future. With loud, energy consuming drums, and plenty of cymbal use, the other instruments were slightly drowned out, but the awesome guitarist wasn’t to be deterred and demonstrated great use of technique and variation. The bassist, although showing his talent with continuous, flowing riffs, didn’t seem to like not being able to slap, after trying a few times randomly throughout the set. The frontman looked as though he felt at home on the stage, and acted in a way you’d expect Suggs from Madness to be at a gig. There were a few mistakes here and there, but they cover them up well and carried on as though nothing had happened.
Take a sound like a tongue-in-cheek Soulwax, add an array of props including a bar stool and a banana, which the vocalist slapped open on his leg and got banana innards everywhere, and you get The Future. They where certainly entertaining on stage, and they left you with a smile on you face. I think they would thrive in front of a bigger crowd, and on a bigger stage.
Moth began their set with a clip from War of the Worlds which has worked well as an intro for them, the last couple of time we’ve seen them at the Angel. Straight away the frontman’s strong and unswerving voice, and the head-banging thrash instrumentals smack you down and force you to enjoy every note of it. With the bassist piping up every so often with dark, aggressive backing vocals, and plenty of movement and energy injected into their stage performance, these guys work so well off each other, that even when they made mistakes, they were able to adjust and cover it over with an illusive layer of sheer rocking brilliance. Nothing puts them off their performance. So even when the vocalist broke a string, we were kept entertained by the bassist and drummer, then thrown straight back into the set as though there never was a 5 minute break. Moth have been around now for 5 years, and this is shown in the selection of songs that they are able to choose from during the set. Their comfort in their own sound is unwavering, they play around with the sound of their instruments, and you never quite know when a song has finished, because what seems like the ringing of guitars at the end of a song turns into another one of those head-banging thrash instrumentals.
Unfortunately there was a ridiculously small crowd upstairs at the Angel for this one, but happily this didn’t seem to make too much of a difference to both bands performances. And joy of joys! The Old Angel seems to have its sound sorted, it’s still not great, but it’s now a damn site better than our last visit.
Written By Steph
