Live music listings: March 2008

Doors 7.30
£7 advance via Ticketweb and Music Glue

This show is open to over-14s.

Sometimes, you have to go back to arrive at the future. Whether it’s a hip-hop producer looking for a new beat, or a band looking for something fresh, if they look for it hard, the smart ones will always find it in the past. That, at any rate, is what Vincent Vincent & The Villains have done, and now they’re forging a musical future – playing decidedly modern, decidedly British rock ‘n’ roll. Vincent is accompanied by three fantastic musicians; drummer Alex, guitarist Tom, and bassist Will. He collectively refers to them as “the boys”. Born out of the conviction that a live band – however sincere their music – should make an effort to engage with an audience, this is a band on a mission to entertain. For them, it’s a serious business.

Oh yes – and the songs sound great. This is a songwriter with a sense of humour, and a great eye for detail. Never wanting to simply emulate the glories of rock ‘n’ roll hits past, Vincent has arrived at his style – as say Jonathan Richman and Johnny Thunders did before him – because he thinks it’s the freshest and most direct way to communicate his ideas, and offers the biggest contrast to any other music around today. It could reach the young, for sure. But Vincent doesn’t just want to want to appeal to them – he wants to appeal to everybody. “The truer I can be, the more people are going to relate to us,” he says. “If you can come up with something that people relate to then that’s part and parcel of being a great band, I think. I can find salvation through a song.”

Rochelle's story came together in Leeds, a short, short time ago. Meeting at one of the city’s colleges, the group began making music in the summer of 2006. By the winter of that same year they’d been joined by Lydia, and the band took off. From the start they were prodigious, recording batches of songs inside of an evening. They worked hard, they shared a good chemistry, each member brought something different to the party. They threw Kylie, Kraftwerk, The Beach Boys and Daft Punk into the punch bowl. They mixed it all up.

Just as quickly as it started, people began to take notice. Rochelle were playing dance music that appealed to people who liked pop and those who were fans of indie bands. They were a captivating act as well, something you could watch, and Leeds music fans saw them cut their teeth at venues such as the Faversham and The Cockpit. Soon enough the band had won a competition to perform a set at the Leeds leg of the Carling Weekender which was closely followed by a UK tour as main support to Bristol’s Kosheen, playing in venues such as Camden’s Koko and Manchester’s Academy II. Then, just last November, Rochelle undertook their biggest gig to date, performing to 2000 people in the city of Barcelona.

“It felt great to do all of these things,” says Lydia. “But more than that, we felt like we were ready to do them. Because we’d worked so hard we felt like we’d earned the right to play at Leeds festival, or to perform in front of a hardcore dance crowd at 3 in the morning in Barcelona."

Now relocated from West Yorkshire to East London, Rochelle are ready to ensure that 2008 is the year they make themselves heard.

Main support Lo-Fi Culture Scene are made up of 5 13/14 year old boys who live in north London. The band started as Tom M, Angus and Callum. They played together for a while in a Park Avenue South basement, playing covers and making up some tunes which weren't that great, before Callum asked his friend Tom Herzberg to join the band. They decided they wanted to start writing their own songs, and for that, they needed a singer. Tom M and Callum looked around their school for someone who could sing and found Jacob. The band rehearsed and still do in Tom M's basement, and they have been around for around a year in all but for around 7 months seriously. Since their first gig at Nambucca for clubnight 'Oops', they have done a hell of a lot in a short space of time. They have played The Astoria, supported Bloc Party, played Truck Festival, and are now discussing the release of their first single.

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