Aggrolites - 333 Club, London, 13/9/2006

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 30 / 9 / 2006

intro

Daniel Cressey watches American ska/reggae act the Aggrolites play a stunning set to the sadly only partly-filled 333 Club in London

Bringing their distinctly American brand of ‘dirty-reggae’ to London’s rain swept streets must have seemed a bleak prospect to the Aggrolites on this night. The small, grimy, only-partly-filled venue is hardly the sort of place they deserve to be playing. Let us be blunt here – the fact that people aren’t queuing round the block for this one is a sad indictment of our country. Shame on you all. For the Aggrolites tonight are simply stunning. A riotous, and righteous, blast through instrumental wig-outs runs seamlessly into vocal numbers that sound like they’ve come straight from some Trojan records collection of back-in-the-day classics. This is old fashioned, slick reggae, driven by a bravura performance from their outstanding keyboard player Roger Rivas and capped by a frontman in Jesse Wagner who can only be described as swaggering. It may sound commercial when set against much modern output but it is also as infectious as the most virulent disease and the basement of this low-budget pseudo-super-club witnesses a major outbreak of lunatic grinning and enthusiastically bad dancing. Only the most botoxed Hollywood madam could fail to crack a smile at this performance. Half-way into their set it hits you: this is what it must have been like to hear this music for the first time way back when. It still sounds fresher than just about anything else. Like someone has cleaned your musical windows, washing away your carefully refined filtering – stop thinking about what it is and dance. Come back soon, boys.

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