lawsonlawsam90-blog

[lawsonlawsam90-blog]

Get Your Lighters In The Air!

Gone are the days of raising your lighters high in the air, instead, why not welcome the days of swerving your head around the digital sea of morons!

Why on earth do people film entire gigs on their phones or ipads?! Picture the scene, they film the show, get back home, (most likely never to look at it again) crank the volume up and get a wave of tinny treble piercing noise back through the slits on their devices they call speakers. Then, they pass it around to their mates and say “Check this out, what a gig, oh, oh here comes the best bit,” and their friends are left with nothing but disappointment, and a rolling of the eyes as the gig goer beams like a Cheshire cat whilst he listens to the sound of one being brutally murdered through his “speakers”. Ludicrous.

Jack White on Beats 1, the Apple radio show, expressed his feelings about why he banned mobile phones at his shows and the main point of focus was about engagement, maybe not what you were thinking perhaps? One would assume he was going to go in hard on not wanting unreleased songs being shown over the internet through a shoddy quality or setlists being revealed, or even the phones being a distraction. No, it is all about engagement with the show that if you remember these people have spent their money on, AH! Argument one, done.

Who cares that it’s the gig goers own hard earned money and they can do as they please? Why on earth travel, spend money to stand or sit around thousands of other people who have also done the same, only to look mindlessly into your brightened screen, ridding you of any life changing moments that could be happening before your very eyes. Instead, these people are scrolling for life changing moments in this minimised gratification machine - when the bigger picture is just a head raise away, straight ahead.

No one can take away your memories but a phone can, and it’ll go because hey, we all want a new phone once that contract runs out don’t we? And who are we kidding, do we ever keep awful sounding, shaky videos from two years ago once we change phones, or even if we don’t, we cling onto it but never take a second glance.

Beautiful moments are to be cherished at a live show, an experience that will never be repeated quite the same again. Cheesy and cliche, maybe,  but look at how many people propose to their loved ones at a concert? We can be cynical and say it’s purely for show off purposes, but I point you in the direction of the people filming this gig and uploading it to their socials, what reason can that possibly be for, come on, it’s show off purposes, people living their life like an open wound, wanting the comments in the inboxes “So jealous, man!!”, “That looks amazing, hope you’re having a great time!!” and your night is made, but not quite. Pan back to the newly engaged couple and you’re seeing an experience felt through love and music and that combination is prodigious. Go on be brave. Put the phone down.

[lawsonlawsam90-blog]

Gatvol “We want to play our own version of music we like”

I spoke to Guitarist, Thomas Hazel of prog metal rock band, Gatvol to get a further insight into what makes this band the fresh hype in the Surrey area!

Gatvol is made up of 5 members, Tyler Higgins-Drums, Adam Quinn-Bass, Sam Macpherson-Vocals, Pablo Roldan Jaen-Guitar and Thomas Hazel-Guitar.

Thomas tells me the band was formed when him and frontman Sam by pure chance ended up living together in 2017 he says,

“Me and Sam just started writing music together, Sam knew Tyler then invited Adam down for a jam,we just really connected”

He continues to tell me how 5th member Pablo came to join the band,

“After our first gig, Pablo was watching us and came over to say how much he enjoyed it and that he really wanted to be in a band like ours, so I sent him our earliest demo of our latest single Dystopia and he wrote some insane parts so we had to have him in the band. Now we can live without him!”

The members of the band are from all over the globe, Pablo being from Spain, Adam bringing some of that lucky Irish charm into the band and Tyler inducing his Cape Town franticness into the drums. Thom and Sam representing the UK in this all you can eat Metal platter. If that doesn't make the band intriguing the certainly the name does, I asked Thom where the name originates from as it very unusual.

“Gatvol is an Afrikaans word loosely meaning to be fed up of something. The name came from a T-shirt our drummer, Tyler was wearing at an early practice which said Je suis Gatvol and Adam simply said let's call our band that and it just stuck”

With the band being so new but making waves already I asked if there had been any stand out moments for the band, Thom recalled a great memory,

“Our very first headline show will be a great memory for us, it was so intense and the crowd really got behind us and it was just incredibly fun, even if I did break a string into the second song” Thom added, “we pull in so many wide influences, so really there’s something for everyone from metal fans through to more straight ahead pop fans”

The bands second latest single Dystopia went down a storm locally where the based in Guildford, the band are a DIY band and in fact Thom also produces the band as well as plays guitar.

“Everything has been recorded and produced by me and everyone has a really strong stake in writing”

With the band having a strong brotherhood ethos, Gatvol are gonna keep smashing you with face melting music and a soaring vocal, that given the bands name meaning, you will not be getting “fed up” with these guys anytime soon.

[lawsonlawsam90-blog]

Smashing Pumpkins Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol 1: No Past, No Future, No Sun Album Review

18 years, finally open arms could greet these Pumpkins again.

This is a far cry from the bands original line-up final album, MACHINA/The Machines Of God in 2000. “Burn like a rocket” sings Billy Corgan on the opener line of second track Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts), and soaring they seem to be in this new album Shiny And Oh So Bright (It’s short title) and with that Vol 1 suggests there will be a volume 2 and open arms could greet that volume 2 if this Vol 1 is anything to go on. Running as the shortest ever album length the band has ever released with a time of 31 mins, it leaves you wanting more and perhaps this is exactly what Corgan had to do to keep the fingers holding onto the cliffside before drowning into the shambles of music they were ever so close to falling into.

Solara being the first single released from the album is certainly a high point within especially for anyone wanting some of that nostalgic Pumpkins sound and Jimmy Chamberlin's machine gun type chops reminding you why he is one of the best drummers in any rock band before the band roar into the solo, leaving you wanting to smash your guitar through a window with pure euphoria. The punk rock element slides in nicely here with the songs Marchin’ On and closer track Seek And You Shall Destroy, you can breathe a sigh of relief once this album ends knowing that this could mean very good things for the Mellon Collie rockers returning from the slump of the last 4 albums.

[lawsonlawsam90-blog]

Bloc Party Live Review

Back to 2005, was it worth it?

Bloc Party, are currently on a tour of playing their entire debut album from 2005, Silent Alarm and recently they played Alexandra Palace to sold out crowd to celebrate this occasion.

Now, the reason for this tour is, well, not explained, it’s 13 years since the album was released so not a milestone year, and nor is it a reunion tour as Matt Tong and Gordon Moakes are not back on rhythm section. With no answers in particular just speculation we can do no more than just simply enjoy the tour for what it is (whatever it is.)

They skimmed through the album at very quick pace, before you knew it, it was over, but of course playing some extra deep cuts and hits at the end as encores. The nostalgia however, wasn’t as present as you’d expect, fans were hyped up and the old aggressive fans came out to play in spirit of what the first album held back then. But was it worth it? Frontman Kele Okreke seemed to be soaking up the reaction from fans but you couldn’t help but get a sense he was phoning it in maybe. Highlights for sure were songs, So Here We Are with it’s beautiful bridge section with the appropriate lyrics screaming, “I figured it out!!” when reality was, none of us had figured this all out and of course the hit single from the album, Helicopter which has been played at the end of nearly every set they have played so this humongous reaction came as no surprise.

The only assumption left to take from this evening was from the words that Kele spoke at the end before leaving the stage, “We’ll see you next year guys”. New album? With this tour Kele certainly has built up expectation, see you in 2005 maybe guys?