The Bays at Concorde 2

Last night, it seemed that no one under the age of 25 had heard or experienced the excellence and majesty that is The Bays at the Concorde 2 (why they bother keeping the number I'll never know). It was a bit of a late for a band as the line-up had some very experimental warm-up acts including Fidgital (great name but the violin and hip-hop starty-stoppy act wasn't my bag), Puncture Kit (I don't remember seeing them stage but apparently use a bicycle as a bass drum. Wouldn't the spokes get in the way?) and new favourite Brighton DJ for us, Natural Self. Most of the crowd waiting the Bays were enjoying the DJ who I could only describe as using those moody, breakbeat, tech-step (I have just created a new music genre?) rhythms and sounds that perhaps DJ Shadow or UNKLE used to use. I see he's done his own hip hop album taking on himself to do rap vocals. Checking out his Myspace page and the featured tunes are not the dance pace we experienced so a tiny bit disappointing. Quite liked his 'In the Morning' track remixed by Paul White though. Will definitely look out for his future DJ sets.

Finally, The Bays came out in a cloud of smoke and moody blue light with some grooving house beats and built the atmosphere up like a mind-reading super DJ. Its a real shame they don't sell any albums as the house 4/4, breakbeat, into drum and bass sounds really did hypnotise us. Since we saw them at the first Loop festival, we've never been in the right place at the right time for their other ground-breaking stuff like their live soundtrack performance to Run Lola Run or their collaboration with the Heritage Orchestra. I've taken some video footage and will upload it at some point if its any good. In the meantime there's some great YouTube stuff out like the example below:

Eddie Izzard at Brighton Centre

Before battling the wind and rain for the cross-dressing comedian that is Eddie Izzard, we had a quick tapas meal at La Bodega on Church Street. I didn't enjoy it too much personally as we've been spoilt by Hove's Latino through the range of choice but everyone else liked it. If you've been to Pompoko you'll understand the minimum décor to expect as well which made shuffling around tapas plates and multiple bottles around the table challenging for four people.

The evening's tickets were bought way back in February for Kerry's birthday (April). The seats themselves were the last row in the highest balcony next to the disabled section. At least we had the row to ourselves and had a great view of the stalls and impressive stage. Its possibly the biggest comedy event we've been to with a set looking like an ancient pyramid and an animated cell window showing the sun passing then an eye peering in changing into what felt like travelling through space.

Eddie (@eddieizzard) had been hitting the Twitter headlines recently with his marathon running across the UK and used a Twitterfeed of those sending him a message projected onto two massive screens that flanked the stage. It was a nice feature with international followers joining in and Kerry and I managed to Tweet in time, though the mobilephone photos to prove it are a little blurry. The background image was actually the audience being filmed by two cameras switching from embarrassed individuals to hand dancing nutters.

Mr Izzard came out to a blaze of lights and got to work on his set based on how humans came to evolve, religion and language. Someone described watching his performance as having to strap yourself in for the flow of imagination and humour. With only seeing some clips on TV, the performance certainly had imagination and his dinosaur raptor raised a few smiles and giggles with the character later returning in other scenarios. Maybe it was the remoteness of our seats having to rely on the huge display screens took away the atmosphere (the previous night's antics also caused some drowsiness) but the second half was certainly a better experience. The appendix joke really got me plus his come-backs whenever the audience groaned at his cheesy punchlines were well-timed and rehearsed (friends seeing him on the Sunday night had the very same experience).

The whole performance was nearly 2 hours, which is quite good value for a comedian and by the end of it I wanted to hear more. Would I see him again? I think there's other comedians and theatre with fresher ideas and routines out there that would be more worthy to see first. Save your money for Spymonkey's Moby Dick  or their next stage project I'd say.

Swedish hero

Sam40 party

After weeks of preparation, design work and a lot of UV paint, our London mate Sam turned 40 in the most glowing, raving and Trade worthy way possible. Thanks to Paul and Sarah for hosting the event which saw possibly the most pink balloons you could get in one room. The décor downstairs looked fantastic thanks to Kerry and team, and with the smoke machine turned on and lights behind the DJ booth adding that little bit extra, the disco dungeon was transformed into sweaty, beneath the arches illegal rave. Below are some highlights to the evening whilst you can click on the title above to see my Flickr photo set:

Birthday girl!

Kev finally comes out of the closet!

 

Pirate Paul's Disco Dungeon in full UV glory.

Twittering volunteer

Thanks to the Brighton New Media email group I'm a member of, I volunteered myself to help SCIP (Sussex Community Internet Project) with their stand at the Brighton and Hove City Council event called Get Involved. I was expecting to show charity and community types how to use Twitter, YouTube and blogging but with the lashing rain and wind it seemed that everyone stayed at home.

As soon as I arrived I was asked to interview one brave soul then upload it to their YouTube channel. The second person was a little more interesting, a guy called Jason Kitcat who as well as being the main web bloke for Mums Net, he is the Green City counciller at Brighton and Hove. You can watch the video interview at YouTube and listening to my excellent questioning technique!

Otherwise it was a case of getting to know the other volunteers as there was hardly anyone at the event, possibly due to the stormy weather. A few name checks: killer_bunnie (Claire Stokoe who describes as herself as a social media engineer); BrightonArgosJo (writes for the Brighton Argus newspaper and who actually recognised me and already follows me on Twitter); beckie_williams (local celeb for her Facebook campaign against M&S's unfair larger bra size pricing policy); scipmark (the organiser of the stand working for SCUP). Apart from that one of the main council chiefs asked me if I could teach his 7 year old daughter how to use Facebook!

When Trev and Pom got wadded via webcam

Congratulations to Trevor and Pom who got married yesterday (or should I say 'wadded' according to the translated invite). Through the magic and trickery of the internet, Trev televised the ceremony, held at Pom's house in a town in Thailand via a webcam. We invited most of the Brighton crew to view on our big TV. Not sure whether we missed the first half as the camera was fixed on four of the seven Buddhist monks praying and giving their blessings. We didn't get any sound either but it was great to see them both looking like Thai royalty and a couple of cheeky waves from Trev. I heard the rumour that Trev had financed a road to be built and there's a local Tesco planned for next year for his Stella addiction.

All the best you two!

Your next meal will be Inamo

Thursday of our week's holiday was up to London for some Christmas shopping (early I know) and to have a special dinner at Inamo, the asian restaurant with the interactive, electronic display menu (and other cool features) on the dining table.

Our shopping wasn't the success we had hope for. Whether we've just spoilt each other for so long at Christmas, outdoing the last or it was just a bit wrong to think about buying presents, there was nothing that  really inspired us to buy. The Mercedes McLaren F1 in Selfridges got close, promoting some luggage but seeing Martine McCutcheon book signing didin't. At the moment I'd be happy for a monster bag of Malteasers and Kirin.

Halfway up Wardour Street in Soho is Inamo. The table projection and décor was every bit as futuristic and desogner cool as I'd hoped for. With a quick demo of the table controls we were changing the virtual table cloth colour and pattern, viewing the kitchen webcam, ordering drinks, scrolling through all the menu options and playing battleships! Obviously, Asahi was my first, natural choice, my second drink order had to be confirmed by a waiter as the system could only handle a vodka and coke as separate items, and starters we tried Wild Boar Rolls, Seared Scallops and Truffle Marble Beef. For our mains, we shared Berkshire Pork Neck (with confit of apple, and a spicy chocolate sauce), Cinnamon Chicken and Kerry even managed to force down the Duck with Pancakes. Only the late arrival of the duck marred the experience and the Cinnamon Chicken only worked with the lime juice. Otherwise it was the pork that took the prize of best dish of the year.

DJ Hero

It wasn't really an eventful weekend to start our week off. Most of the time we worked on Sam's 40th birthday party decorations to the theme of Trade. Otherwise it was a visit to Croydon for a few hundred lighter off. We finally gave in and bought it. After a visit to a friends and a journey of furniture tedium, we spent our Nectar points on DJ Hero. The deal struck between us was to decorate through the day then DJ at night.


The mock DJ deck and mixer is a great bit of kit with a nifty cross-fader and Technics like platter. When you are scratching you have to hold the wheel of steel with the coloured button and thumb to get the best action. When you have to do rewind/spin-backs its also better to hold down the coloured button again to wind it round one revolution otherwise it will just spin out of control.

The tutorial is very easy to follow and master whilst the beginner and easy levels are also simple and fun to play. It's when you get to the medium level that the faster tracks combine the cross-fader and scratching together it all gets a bit much especially when the cross-fader needs to be either half the whole way across and you get it wrong. If you can do the belly-rub and head pat trick you'll have no problem.

Choose of tunes are quite good. They've tried to suit all dance and hip-hop tastes though would appreciate less Rhianna and more House and Techno. Hopefully future download packs will improve that. Personally, the amount of Daft Punk tracks are spoiling us rotten even if you have to play it for 6-8 hours to unlock them all including their animated robot versions. Samples are quite good and are unlockable every so often. I also like the effects rotatable button to drop the bass/mid/treble.

The graphics are slick with a lot of options to customise your chosen DJ, their look, their decks and the location to DJ. All these are unlocked as you play through the game. Some of the animation will look a little odd as the dance crowd dance to a different beat as an observer but you won't really notice that as the DJ as you concentrate on the button tapping, cross-fades, stabbing, samples that are indicated on the record stream.

Halloween in Brighton now more like Hell-oween

After last year's full-on party (back-breaking preparation and flu chaos) and the previous week's White Night partying, Halloween took a back-seat like an evil midget hitcher with a blunt pen knife. Brighton was full of part-time zombies (turning up with a bit of blood and ripped clothes isn't really a costume mate) and wannabe Timewarpers for the world record attempt. I still had a bit more mileage to use from last year's costume so the Crazy 88 look (not the Green Lantern) got a public appearance. Kerry wore some impressive make-up to go with her new red hair dye but the rest of us didn't bother.

It was chaos in town with zombies and Frank N Furters and if you weren't dressed up then you looked a little out of place. Audio was our only appearance out but after 2 minutes a psychic decision was made not to stay even after escaping the main room for the DJ back-room which wasn't as glamourous as you'd think. A smoke and a drink upstairs just confirmed everyone's need to get away from the tourist/student rabble.

Back at Paul's and a few more friends had turned up and a few too many DJs meaning sets were reduced to 30 minutes each. I think my tough set of Vitalic, Etienne de Crecy, MSTRKRFT's Vuuvuu etc. went down quite well with the Disco Dungeon old regime, clearing the recent disco cobwebs but was followed too closely (for some people) with Motown soul disco. Kerry's cocktail idea of Liquid Bubblegum shooters (blue curasco, creme de banana and Baileys) helped break the ice between the old school ravers and disco-loving locals as well as the other party prescriptions.

Sunday was another write-off watching the very impressive Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (though quite a dull race), eating a banana then having a white-out having to go to bed at about 6:30pm.