The Mekano Set

First off, thank you so much to everyone that turned out to see us @ Brixton Telegraph. Such fun! Totally brilliant night. And a strange night, in that we failed, for the first time, to talk about our usual array of weighty philosophical subjects {soup, cake, body parts}. Also, we were supposed to be bottom of the bill to a night of three other bands. We were the only band to make an appearance.

The venue itself turned out to be absolutely superb - a nice size, excellent sound system, sizeable stage, loads of monitors, and an attentive soundman who did us some tasty delay on the vocals. Excellent.

The headliners' van broke down apparently. God know how the promoter felt. He didn't introduce himself - but then his bands all cancelled so it's understandable. Funny how the only people in the venue were there to see us. I think the least they can do is have us back.

We did feel a bit bad about everyone having to pay full price just to see us - and we only had enough beats for half an hour or thereabouts.

But it felt really good to have the stage to ourselves, with no superfluous drum kits and amps taking up space. Warming up the speakers with whatever came to hand {some Kate Bush and the odd 60's - 00's pop tunes}

A quick trip to a brilliant nearby Jamaican 'curries and birthday cakes' Bakery and we up and ready.

I think that's possibly the 'best' we've sounded. At least from where I was standing.

Beth had loads of room to groove around in, Saint's bass made the stage vibrate, my guitar sounded really crisp and hopefully didn't cloud the sound. I'm really starting to enjoy gigs recently.

As soon as it looked like we'd have the night to ourselves I really got very carried away. I seemed to spend the night hollering away from the mic, adding a few more 'licks' than usual to proceedings, leaving more space, and fucking around with the laptop far more than was necessary.

Wonderful. I cannot wait for the time when we get to play for longer than an hour. We have more than a sets worth of tunes and I can't imagine how much fun we'd have once we're warmed up.

Free-wheeling.

We dragged all the furnite around to encircle the dance floor and I muttered nonsense into the mic for the first three minutes - no idea what I said. What can I say - we're gifted at blowing our own cool and if you think otherwise you ain't been paying enough attention!

That's probably the most confident I've felt, even with the seriously false start instigated by the soundcheck - in which everything sounded superb until my foghorn like singing came in and drowned out everything else. 'erm, by the way, you have to turn Milk down... loads...' As soon as I hear what I'm doing louder than everything else I totally bottle it.

It was nice to hang around afterwards too.



The Mekano Set