Category: clubbing

Edinburgh Fringe Review: Hot Dub Time Machine

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Fun at the Edinburgh Fringe continues well into the night and dancing wise, NOTHING comes close to the Hot Dub Time Machine experience.

I’ve previously blogged about rock clubs being lazy and consequently losing custom in a difficult marketplace – this is by no means limited to the alternative scene, and HDTM makes a mockery of any generic club you’ve ever had the misfortune to visit. Over the course of 4 hours DJ Tom Loud mixes and mashes up tracks and videos from every year since the 1950s right up to the present day, making it extremely difficult for anyone to visit the bar for fear of missing another banger.

It’s the kind of night that sounds like an awful melting pot of styles, but somehow it works, and works spectacularly. The best club nights are undoubtedly always the ones that feel like a gig, where EVERYBODY is facing the stage and there is plenty for you to watch as well as dance to. This experience is normally reserved only for superclubs with big-name DJs, so to get *this* level of experience for just £12.50 is fantastic value for money.

It’s important to note that he is clearly mixing live too,and the fact that Tom looks like he is having the time of his life on stage doesn’t do any harm either. hotdubtimemachine.com for more details!




Meeting Fred Durst

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Last Friday I caught up with Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit, ahead of the final UK date of the 2014 Kerrang! tour. We talked about building the perfect Bizkit setlist, the two new albums they have in the pipeline (Stampede of the Disco Elephants and The Unbeliveable Truth Part 2) and breakdancing on stage!

Talking of Limp Bizkit, I’m looking forward to heading to Last Resort next weekend – a club night that certainly likes its nu-metal. If you missed my blog from last summer you can check it out here.

Elsewhere, I’ll be heading to the Garage this weekend to catch Manchester’s finest Sonic Boom Six – who I haven’t seen do a headline show in literally years. They totally destroyed the crowd at Warped Tour last November – with Laila performing the last track on top of a security guard’s head! If you like your music heavy with lots of rapping, screaming and breakdowns, make sure you get there early and catch The One Hundred opening things up.

I’ll also be checking out the new Lamb Of God documentary, As The Palaces Bun, which is out in cinemas today.




Cut my life into pieces…

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In recent years I’ve really gone off rock clubs. Too often they really do take themselves seriously, and so, so many of them seem to insist on playing the same tracks in the same order every week and making the minimum effort possible. An awful lot are TERRIBLE at online and social media and therefore fail to create any sort of excitement or buzz about their night. This is particularly troublesome with weekly nights, since there are inevitably going to be weeks where it’s extremely difficult to get the punters through the door, and a lazy approach to proceedings is hardly going to help. Many are struggling and/or shutting down up and down the country against a difficult economic backdrop and frankly, I’m not surprised.

However, for a couple of years now I’ve been following the online buzz of semi-regular rock night Last Resort but for one reason or another never made it down until Last Resort 9 in June this year. I quickly concluded that it is by some distance the best rock club I’ve ever been to, for a variety of reasons not limited to the below..

1. It doesn’t even try and take itself seriously.
2. The music is largely rock emo, nu-metal and pop-punk from the early 00’s when most of the crowd were growing up.
3. There are regular social media updates on Facebook and Twitter, not just from the official accounts but from the promoters themselves, creating a buzz from months beforehand.
4. Every night is a separate ‘event’ to be treated as such. It’s only on a few times a year, which means it’s always rammed.
5. The music is amazing. Yes, it’s not to everyone’s tastes, and (bizarrely) not everyone wants to hear 8 Limp Bizkit tracks in a night BUT equally nobody is apparently afraid to drop a Katy Perry, a Rihanna track or even bloody Usher when the moment calls. And why should they be? In this day and age nobody wants to hang around with people who think they’re too good for pop music, especially after a few drinks!
6. There appears to be about 20 DJ’s. Presumably they are only playing a few tracks each, but it means there’s a great buzz around the decks.
7. It’s completely FREE and is bang in the centre of London.
8. Oh and everyone, without exception, is completely battered.

The next one is Last Resort 10 on Saturday 7th September it’s at The Star of Kings in Kings Cross, and it’s completely free!

In the meantime, get involved with the banter on Facebook and Twitter.