Miscellaneous - Report

  by Olga Sladeckova

published: 13 / 4 / 2004

Article

The clock strikes one 'o’clock in the morning and the fifth Penny Black Music Night is all over. On the night of the 15th April we had the pleasure of putting on 4 great bands, Nectarine No. 9, Applecraft, the Scoundrelles and Air Formation, at the ever beautiful London venue the Spitz. This time around there was not only a mixture of music, but also of locations with the bands coming from all over the UK. The Brighton based Air Formation gave the night a very strong opening. In their live London debut they managed to convince a few early fans that they are, to quote, “amazing”. Think Slowdive, think out of this world somewhere far away, drowned in endless sounds and the feeling of never wanting to come out of it. Air Formation are following the success of this show with another London performance at the Upstairs Garage on the 25th May. London's he Scoundrelles then sliped in with their punky and playful music. Their front man, Tony Thewlis, actually comes from Australia where he played guitar for the legendary Scientists. Their guitars dominated the Spitz air. The band recently released their debut album ‘Molecules In Action!’ and their set gave us a large taste of this energetic album. Applecraft, whose members come from Bristol, Liverpool and Northampton , were a pleasant surprise to many fans of its personnel's other bands. Their line-up features Richard Beale, who is also known under the name Don Mandarin and an ex member of Head, Mike Mooney and Sean Cook, both current members of Lupine Howl and formerly of Spiritualized, and Jonny Mattock, also a member of Lupine Howl and ex member of Spaceman 3. A mixture of music from its musicians' past bands would probably describe Applecraft 's music the best. The band have just put their album ‘The Happiest Man Alive’ out recently and if I remember rightly it sold out on the night. The last word of the night came from Scotland's Nectarine No 9. The band’s roots reach as far as back as the late 70’s when its main man, Davy Henderson, formed his first band Fire Engines. Nectarine No 9 are now 12 years and have now released 5 albums, but their music sounds as fresh as it does confident. Half way through their set I noticed a group of people enthusiastically jumping up and down and strung around by the power of the music like puppets. Perhaps the only disappointment was that there was no encore. The latest news is that the band will play London again in May so you might want to get yourself down for that one. Nectarine No 9 have just put out their latest album ‘I Love Total Destruction’ if you can’t wait until the gig in May. The whole gig was over just after 11 but it took another 2 hours for us to leave the Spitz . Whether the gig was successful or not is not on us to judge but we hope that everyone had a good time. From the reaction of the fans who came on the night none of them I believe regretted tcoming. We are working on the next Penny Black Music Night as these lines are being written and hope to be back at the Spitz on the 10th July.

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