I was literally within feet of the band, nestled in the House and Electro vinyl section of HMV, the UK's super record store, comparable to a 3-story Virgin Records. With 2 on the same block.
Matt Tong really does weird facial expressions as a drummer. Then again the songs from Intimacy that they played looked like the drums would give even the most hulky-looking bloke some serious wrist pain.
So I have no more reason to pay 22 pounds and take a 4 hour bus ride to Manchester (or see that town at all for the matter). And even though they only did a really short 8-song set (had to autograph new albums), it was really cool to see them for free and up close.The show was really kept low-key; it wasn't on their myspace, homepage, in the news or blogs or any events listings. I stumbled into it on Last.fm and IndieLondon when I was contemplating whether or not to invest in tickets. Nice break.
The thing about the people who came to see the show is that they were all pretty diverse; most of them really showed that they were die-hard fans, dancing, writhing, yelling, clapping and putting up lighters despite the fact we were in a very commercial, bright fluorescent-lit store. But the crowd included a very diverse cornucopia of people; teenie-boppers and gray-haired gents; english-speaking and english-as-a-second-language; hipsters and hippies; just a very eclectic array of skin and style tones.
check out the 16 pieces of flare on that bass strap