This is our first visit to the new 12 Bar club now it has relocated from Denmark Street in St Giles up to Phibbers bar on the corner of Holloway Road and Liverpool Road in Highbury & Islington. I like the bar and layout of being in an L shaped room with a balcony that allows probably three or four times as many people to see the bands as in the Old 12 Bar club.
The venue still has some things to sort out before it can claim to be a great venue however; the main one being sorting out the acoustics and making sure the staff know how to make the bands sound as good as possible.
We arrived just at the start of Pretty Ugly's set. They are an all-female trio playing grungy punk and the first song we heard was an instrumental that reminded me of UT. It followed by was it Dirty Cherry: a rather ramshackle song that seemed to be missing half the bass sounds and when the backing vocals were meant to come in they couldn't be heard at all. At least where I was standing.
Navy Blue sounded like they want to be a bit Babes in Toyland and have timed it perfectly as all the early 90's girl grunge bands get back together. It also sounded a bit like Cay. Wolf stayed in similar territory but very lo-fi before they finished with as ramshackle a cover of Sugar Sugar as is imaginable. Indeed they made Alex Chilton's version sound tight!!
They have some potential if they can get themselves enough support slots and get to play without so many technical issues.
Next on was She Makes War. This actually one woman playing Ukulele and sampling herself and looping things live in a similar way to Gemma Ray but without her songs or talent. She also suffered from the soundman struggling to get the balance right so that her vocals went up and down in the mix and a couple of times the sampler seemed to get dropped out altogether. I'm not sure if The Best or Delete Myself would have been improved with better sound but they may well have. We'll give her the benefit of the doubt.
Paper Thin was about the best thing in her set and that certainly didn't sound right the whole way through. She finished with an instrumental cover that we were meant to recognize, but from what I heard of it I haven't a clue what it was meant to be and didn't believe the person who suggested it was the Dr Who theme either.
Next on were Cauldronated, one of the many bands featuring Dave Barbarossa on drums. This time with the uber cool Italian singer Eva Menon who also played drums and Dave Harmon I'm guessing on Bass and gadgets. Sadly right from the start the set was hampered by sound problems with the gadgets and samples working intermittently or just dropping out of the sound mix. Again.
They opened with Ibossa: a dark goth-tinged rumble of a song with the dual drumming making them sound like Rema Rema if they were fronted by Yoko Ono in singing rather than screaming mode. Buy This Thing was next and it had great shouted almost rapped vocals that battered into us about the state of a society where everything is for sale and you need to buy all the time.
Ring Of Khan had some real sound issues as the backing gadgets went in and out of the mix and the bass, as funky as it was, needed the backwash to make the song. By this point Dave Barbarossa was giving some looks towards the sound booth I was hoping the guy to sort the mess out. Inside My Mind saw Eva get very animated and throw some very Klaus Nomi-style moves as she told us not to look inside her mind. It was great.
Raymond Zane has a chorus telling us to "stay Insane" and I'm sure after the false start, the band were really trying hard to stay sane among the mess of noise. Somehow, though, they still managed to sound pretty damn cool. Though In Hell added an edge a bit like Bow Wow Wow meets Play Dead and the drumming pressed that feeling home.
They finished with In This World during which Eva insisted she comes from Argentina. It had a brilliantly funky bassline that carried the whole thing along. The packed crowd went a bit nuts at the end and they stayed on stage for a reprise of Buy This Thing which was also the first time Eva really spoke to the audience. The second version sounded angrier than the first and it was a great close to a set by a band well worth checking out. Find out more at Cauldronated online.
Finally it was time for The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. Their set was being filmed by Channel 4OD who I hope have a chance to mix the sound properly in the edit suite as from where I was standing, Andrew O'Neill's guitar could barely be heard at any point in the set and his vocals were way too low in the mix.
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They opened with a bass-heavy version of Charlie that quickly became all about the rumble coming from Marc Burrows and Andy Heintz lead vocals as most of the packed club joined in the lyrics. Margate Fhtagn was next and it looked like Andrew O'Neill was giving it all he got on the growled parts but it sounded like he was whispering, which was a shame as the performance was all there, even if I couldn't hear his guitar solo!
Inheritor's Powder was the next song to suffer in the mix and somehow still sound cool. It's one of the songs about to be recorded for the band's third album and it sounded a bit more angst-y than the version they played at The Islington at Xmas.
Miner was the next of the new songs and Jez Mille'rs drums really cut through on this one to give it a really cool drum and bass feel. I'm sure the guitar could be heard somewhere in the 12 Bar just not anywhere near where we were standing.
I think it was before Doing It For the Whigs that the band made sure we knew they have mixed abilities mosh pits as they didn't want any more fans breaking legs like they did at The Garage last year. Still, it was a proper knees up of a version and just about everyone screamed back at them the line "No More Tory Politics". I think they introduced the next song as The Fog but it might be called Turned Out Nice Again. I'm not certain, but what was certain was the soundman was still struggling to get to grips with the sound.
Third Class Coffin was up next and really allowed Andy to ram home how inequality remains in death as it does in life if you are travelling on the old Necropolis railway. Here's hoping we all get first class funerals when the time comes. The Worst Sideshow Ever seems to have become more animated since its debut at the Xmas show as they run through all the rotten attractions on offer to those unlucky enough to witness them.
Boilerplate Daniel got a big mosh pit going as per usual and it might have been the first song on which I could actually hear some guitar in the mix finally. Vive Le Difference Engine then came blasting at us and it still sounded like it's in development. It's almost there and with the guitars added to it I'm sure it'll sound great. Damn, we all need some Gin by this point and I'm sure we were all ready to raise our glasses to the wonders of Gin once more.
Not sure what the next song is called but it's the one with "No God No Ghosts No Afterlife" for the chorus. Everyone was singing and well, it seemed like the ghosts were in the machines preventing them working tonight. Even so, the moshing really went wild for Not Your Typical Victorian, but then who is? Maybe it's Bazalgette: the man who saved us from the Great Stink? I hope so.
Well as I was taught as a kid, Manners Maketh the Man. I'll take this chance to apologize to the sound man for giving him a kicking in this review in the hope that in the coming weeks and months he and the rest of the 12 Bar staff sort the sound out and make it into a great venue. Even if the band made fun of it when someone heckled about the appalling sound, still the song went down a storm with or without a great guitar solo.
Zombie Albert was soon stalking the room as he should do and making the dancefloor go nuts. At the end of which they told us that was the end of the set but they weren't leaving for an encore but instead just stayed on stage while we cheered a bit. They then launched into another new one whose name I didn't catch or work out before they closed with a storming version of Brunel that sounded pretty cool.
I hope all the sound problems didn't affect the filming too much and can be sorted quickly as I know I'll be spending plenty of time at the new 12 Bar and it would help if it has good to great live sound. Sorry for the moaning.
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