Mehdi, Set, Go

Although London may be the only city in the UK where you are expected to be grateful for paying £700 a month in rent for a flat without a front door, there's nowhere to match it for live music. Canada's Chromeo are in town for Fabric Live on the 17th of August, lining up alongside Ed Banger's DJ Mehdi. Mehdi's album slipped out underneath the radar last year but it's being re-released to capitalise on his label's post-Justice publicity surge. The attention Chromeo are picking up in the press at the moment shouldn't hurt either as one of the standout tracks is a collaboration between the two.

DJ Mehdi ft Chromeo -I Am Somebody

Chromeo's compatriots Crystal Castles are playing Camden's Barfly a week earlier with The Teenagers. As someone on Youtube noted "Crystal Castles = LIFE". Believe.

Camden is, of course, most famous for its British guitar groups and, these days, British guitar groups are most famous for being rubbish. There are very rare exceptions, thankfully, and The Picture Show is one of them. The most pressing problem with the genre seems to be an incredible narrowness of scope with too many people using the same frame of reference. It's enormously refreshing to hear a band drawing influence from somewhere completely different - in this case the work of iconic Soviet rock giants Kino and Nautilus, the legacy of lead singer Alexei Haigh's formative years split between Russia and the UK. The result, a combination of Slavic folk-rock and Anglo-American indie, makes them perhaps the most intriguing unsigned band in the city at the moment. They're playing at the Water Rats near King's Cross on the 13th.

The Picture Show - The Revolutionary


One of the gigs of the year so far took place last night at the Forum in Kentish Town as the legendary Os Mutantes held two-thousand, mostly Brazilian, fans spellbound for ninety minutes of stunning tropicalia and psych-rock. They inspired the kind of devotion in their army of followers i haven't witnessed since Mylene Farmer in Paris last year, exemplified by the girl-on-girl fist fight for prime dancing space down the front. Support act Bonde do Role were terrific too - the highlight of their set being the wonderful Funk da Esfiha, a ridiculous Salt 'n' Pepa vs Grease car crash that presumably didn't make it on to With Lazers for clearance reasons.


Bonde do Role - Funk da Esfiha

Os Mutantes - Bat Macumba