Croeso i Gymru

 

Last Friday's gig was to be held in <gulp> a brewery! According to Marjorie the Satnav, it is just 1 hour 24 minutes from Darkest Cheshire to Colwyn Bay, and as usual, the damned thing was right - to the minute! So, bang on time, we rounded the corner in the single file track off a wooded lane, and there it was: Conwy Brewery in all its splendour.

If only everything could be as reliable as Marjorie...

 The venue itself was very well appointed, with a Jamaican food truck, great ales (which I didn't drink on account of driving duties), and a good live room, with cameras to record the event that would have looked more at home in a TV studio.

Ready for your close-up, Libby?

First up was one of the hosts, Matt Garnett A.K.A Sword Swinging Robot, with his blend of funky, danceable electro vibes, blending acidic lines, with house and even dub, and finishing with some very bouncy drum and bass.

Sword Swinging Robot with a funky electro set.

 J4K3 is a new one on me, but he produced some good-time funky old skool house beats. I can see him going down well at a live club event. In fact, I can see him storming it. 

J4K3 rocking the room with some old skool beats.

 

Tom Booth was likewise in da house, with a rock solid, driving, tribal sound that shifted subtly across his set. He would go down great at a festival.

A festival vibe from Tom Booth

 

Blueprintz wasn't on the bill when the welcome pack came through (yes, this was a very well-organised event!), but he certainly knew what he was doing. Starting with some classic OG jungle beats, and sweeping pads, he laid on a doom-laden set I enjoyed very much. Gradually slowing into a trance vibe and on into an industrial-tinged techno number, he finished on a mellower sound.

Jungle, trance, techno and industrial. Blueprintz covered a lot of ground.

And then we were up. A minute or so into "Gory Corners" I heard the sound begin to distort. Was I going into the desk too high? I tried turning the output of the audio interface down a tad. No, that wasn't it. Weird. Anyway, we played on. "Monday Can Wait" had the same thing, but I was sure I was detecting the tempo slowing slightly during periods of distortion. Huh? How is that even possible? By the time we launched into "Make War Not Sense", something was badly wrong. The sound was breaking up, and the tempo was slowing all the time. I stopped the song and announced we'd try that one again, but it was worse! I stopped again. "Something has gone badly wrong," I announced. It got a laugh. A woman asked if I'd turned it on and off, and also got a laugh. Not a bad idea, I said, but there was no time. I launched into "Machines of Ever-loving Grace", which is one we don't normally do, and it sounded OK, just a tiny bit of distortion. And finally into, our closer, "Three Liars". Libby thanked the audience as usual, and it was OK in the end. But what the hell just happened? 

I began the teardown by closing the laptop lid and saw the cause of the disaster: the power cable wasn't plugged in! But that shouldn't have mattered. The power profile I set up for running on batteries says, "Keep going at full tilt, but turn the screen off after 1 minute" This ensures we can still perform if I have forgotten the power supply. Turning the screen off alerts me that we've either suddenly lost mains power or I haven't plugged the laptop in. But the screen stayed on. Further investigation when I got home revealed the power profile had been reset! A few friends have suggested Windows Update does that sometimes. Grrr... So, my setup checklist now includes an initial step to check that we have mains power before anything else is plugged in!

I can only thank the audience for sticking with us. One chap came up as I was tearing down and said how much he'd liked what we did. "What you heard of it, you mean!" I grinned. No, he said, it was good. Nice one!

Anyway, they say it's not that disasters happen but how you react that matters, and rather than cringing all the way home, I laughed a lot, and wondered what other stories I'd have to tell in years to come. At the end of the day, stories is what it's all about.

And so onto the final act of the night. And were we in for something special. Live drum and bass, courtesy of the inimitable Loup Garou (French for Werewolf!). This is what the MPC Live was made to do, and he did it beautifully. Fingers flying all over the pads, conjuring up a complex beat including vocal snippets and sound effects. It was a bravura performance. At the end, he raised his head and grinned. And we all clapped like demented toddlers.

Loup Garou brining it home with a mesmerizing performance of live drum and bass.

 

And then it was time to head home, back down the track to the wooded lane and onto the main road. It was exactly 11pm. Marjorie the Satnav advised that there were roadworks aplenty on the M56, but it had calculated a route involving skirting around Chester and Northwich that would only take 1 hour and 21 minutes. I arrived home at exactly 00:21. Impressive!