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Live Reviews
Live Review: Diesel U:Music Tour in London on 1 Oct
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 6 October 2009
Last Thursday saw the arrival of the Diesel U:Music tour to London. Having already travelled through Berlin, New York, Tokyo, Oslo and Helsinki the two U:Music award winning bands – Heartsrevolution and The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt – were well practiced in whipping up a crowd.
Helped along by a free bar, the party really started when TTPDR took to the stage. The five of them, with microphones and crazy dance move,s were entertaining enough, though the floor show was the real winning element for me – homemade costumes and inflatables adorned an army of friends dancing through the crowd, surprising and delighting in equal measure.
Then, when the “warm up” was finished, the entire band stepped from the stage and entered the audience, literally running amok throughout the entire venue. One guy climbed the walls to sit in a rather precarious position atop a staircase while another appeared next to me as we watched from the balcony – if you weren’t paying attention this really was baffling – some of the faces when this guy went up and sang right up close were a picture.
Heartsrevolution didn’t have quite such an outrageous stage show but their brand of electro fun will possibly translate better to record with some pretty good tunes. But it’s difficult to compete with madness, and they did struggle to hold the attention after TTPDR.
After the U:Music finalists had done their stuff, we had some mediocre hip hop (which wasn’t helped by a fire alarm that seemingly went unnoticed by half the audience) to take us up to the headliners – buzzy newcomers The Big Pink.
This was, musically, by far the best thing on offer at this show, a set washed with noise but cut through with some great hooks. ‘Dominos’ is set to be one of those songs you’re going to hear constantly for the next few months – it’s already being used on a number of adverts and will no doubt soundtrack the new series of ‘Skins’, if there is such a thing.
Overall an awesome night in a hitherto unvisited venue for me, which was decked out in superb Diesel style. Oh, and I tried to get a quote from Lily Allen about the whole file-sharing issue, but between the two of us I think the free bar had taken its toll. She likes the Big Pink though, fact fans. IM
