i-chillout – The UK Tour: Nottingham
October 15th, 2003 by soyo
Whilst hammering away on a keyboard in the seclusion of my dim little spare room, I still keep grinning about the fun night out that was the Nottingham leg of the i-chillout tour. The Rescue Rooms, a newish venue in Nottingham city centre, was the perfect place for the gig; outdoor seating to catch the remaining weak autumn sun; a food and bar area serving nice pizzas, and a nice little staged area where bands/DJs and VJs can get intimate with the audience and do their stuff.
Alucidnation and Amukidi were the first tag team on warming up the audience with a combination of sweet-sweet ambient music and beautiful visuals. These guys know their stuff, the duo’s sheer quality and artistry shining through the dingy room. Its just a pity that the crowd had not started to fill up the room a little more to witness it.
Next up were Hint with visuals by The Ombudsman. What a perfect combination. Hint playing pastoral flavoured hip-hop beats from his acclaimed album ″Portakabin Fever″ coupled with The Ombudsman’s images of suburban skies, inner city office blocks and Irish dancing feet! Despite Gremlins trying hard to ruin Hint’s set at the beginning of his stint, all in the room were seduced. At the close of his set, gremlins long since dead, Mr Hint, Jonathan James, smiling, modestly told the audience to rapturous applause ″If you can believe it, I have a record deal with Ninja Tune and an album out!″
On next was the Chillfather himself Pete Lawrence, fortified with pizza and Guinness he hid away and sat behind the decks at the darkened back of the stage. The man knows his tunes, seamlessly and surreptitiously playing a continuous stream of one way un-polluting traffic into the ear holes. Pete, avoiding anything approaching hands in the air, bounce up and down stuff, started slow and kept it that way for most of his set. It was only in the latter stages did he get heads bouncing with some slightly faster stuff and bit of reggae. It’s a good job he conserved our collective energies for next act!
For anyone that was witness to the Ralph Myers and The Jack Herren band on the main stage at Eastnor this summer I don’t have to explain the energy Erlend Sellevold, Tarjei Ström and Thomas Lonnheim have on stage. Up close and personal the experience is akin to standing in front of a trio of hot, but friendly dust devils, blowing crazy happiness over you.
I turned to look at the crowd to see the expressions on their faces when the band were in full swing. Every person without exception was grinning from ear to ear at the bands antics. These included heavy metal hand gestures, cheesy drumstick twirling, working men’s club resident drummer facial expressions(!) and Animal from the Muppets drumming action.
In fact after seeing the drumming style of Röyksopp and RM&JHB, both residents of Bergen in Norway, I am convinced that Animal is spending his retirement in the town teaching the art of drumming to an eager and receptive audience. Indeed it is the twin drummers that give the bands live sound a totally different feel to the ″Special″ album, creating an infectious get-up-and-go stylee is incredibly infectious and had everyone dancing like fools.
Wonderful sounding, but RM&JHB hardly fit into the ″big chill″ category, but then again to those in the know it is what the big chill does best – crossing and redefining the chill out genre, sending it into a place where the only real labelling that fits properly is ″ great music″.
Soyo
