I was lucky enough to have two of my favourite bands playing within minutes of each other in East London the other night with an hour difference so I spoke to a few people and arranged my own little line-up.

First up was Neon Highwire at Moustache Flash, at The Workshop. The Workshop (downstars at Roadtrip) is fast becoming a popular little venue for all kinds of bands you’ve yet to discover. Having been greeted at the door with stick-on moustaches and Hannah Montana Top Trump cards in a kind of music fan speed dating arrangement, we were early. And Elephant12 were on-stage. Intense and brilliant, Canadian-styled talky hip-hop with intelligent lyrics, a fabulously-talented threesome pumped out punky synths and spat out lyrics all over the shop. And they played late. So we only saw a tinge of Neon Highwire. Which was a shame, they’re getting more and more well-known over London deservedly so make sure you hunt them down. They’re one of the most fun bands on the scene with their swaggery synthy electroindie serve-up and such nice guys to boot.

And so to Brasstronaut.

Brasstronaut have been on my WOW radar since SXSW 2010 where I snuck into a Canadian Blast party. They formed in 2004 and since then, they’ve made a few visits to the UK (one to play a Never Enough Notes night). This time they played two London dates in a row. We caught them at Electricity Showrooms where THAT lit-up dancefloor had to be dimmed partway through the set as it wasn’t particularly atmospheric when indeed that’s exactly what the music was.

Unfortunately this set was mostly a revisit of last year’s album release, Mt. Chimera and no new material. But I can never hear that album enough. However do check out their latest single, Opportunity here (click to read our review):
Brasstronaut – Opportunity

We were treated to Six Toes, Slow Knots and Hand Behind before we had to vanish…and I had to be dragged away from the full room.

I know it’s widely accepted for bands to appear on-stage later than their ‘proposed’ set-time but I’m going to whinge about it anyway. BECAUSE I WAS TIRED. Both bands tonight were on at least 35 minutes later than they stated, meaning we had to leave set A (Neon Highwire) early to get to Brasstronaut and then set B (Brasstronaut) to make sure we didn’t risk getting any last tubes home/risk dying of fatigue from 6am starts the next day.

Still, it was worth it.

The music of Juan Zelada actually saved lives, this is fact and I will tell you how. First let me give you some background information. One, I am prone to the odd bout of rage and two, due to a large cut on my head I am currently donning four stitches. The day of which these were put in required the wearing of a huge plaster, and took place on the same day I am invited to two rather cool gigs. I find myself at the Hoxton bar and kitchen, as you might have guessed in Hoxton Square,London. It’s that part of town where I tend to feel somewhat of a dork anyway, I could never really pull of asymmetrical haircuts or jeans which cut of the circulation to ones legs but I generally try my best. However it is even harder to project a sense of cool whist wearing a plaster slapped on my spam of a forehead. In the end I pretended I had a home boy in prison, much in the style of Nelly.

I got to the venue in time to catch a set by Lotte Mullan. Her quirky stylings and cute folky sound made her very likable. I could easily see her music being featured on American TV soundtracks, which is a compliment, I love American TV.

Before we knew it, the room was crammed with people eager to see the headliner of the night Juan Zelanda. The mood of the acts and of the crowd was jubilant, Juan Zelanda was in fact celebrating the release of his single ‘breakfast in Spitalfields’ as well as being added to the A list of Radio 2’s playlist

Now, I being the type of forward thinker that I am, had positioned myself in my preferred spot ahead of Zelada playing, near the front and off to one side. However as he took to the stage I was suddenly besieged by his fans, I was getting a bit tetchy. I was getting bumped and could feel a mood coming on, but then Juan Zelanda started to play. His music is what I would describe as quintessentially Sunday morning music, his sound was calming and cheerful. It made me feel unfair, being grumpy and begrudging the enjoyment of the fans, so I calmed. However, in a simultaneous strike both my view and hearing where obstructed. Next to me stood a woman, perhaps no taller than a garden gnome, she was however in possession of the shrillest and most piecing of voices. For some reason, she decided it was really important that I should hear every shieky syllable that she said to her boyfriend. It was then I realised that I had finished drinking the bottle of cider in my hand, leaving me with a perfectly good blunt vessel to strike her with. But Juan had stopped playing to tell the crowd a tale, it was of him backpacking on the mountings of somewhere or other and meeting a young man who could only watch an hours worth of TV a day. It was a story designed to cause people to swoon.It worked. It also saved the gnome next to me.

It was around this time I realised that apart from playing upbeat music, Zelanda was a very talented singer and musician; he began his set with an acoustic guitar and then moved onto the keyboard laying down some classy piano sounds. His demeanour and dress was classically handsome and I could see my mother jumping over my poor dad to get to Juan. When he addressed his audience he exuded charm and cheekiness, sharing his thanks and gratitude with all the swagger of a London boy and dashingess of a Latino lothario.

I would have said he was easy on the eye only at this point in the evening the two tallest men in all of the land had decided than the only possible place to stand, would be directly in front of my five foot self. What was worse was that the same said fellows had the biggest of white boy afros. It was like being stuck behind the forgotten members of the hair bear bunch. I found myself reaching for my lighter, I was in the mind to start a bush fire on his scalp, then Zelanda once again saved the day with a timely shift to up-tempo tunes, this gave the audience a reason to shift spot to dance. It gave me a chance to gain a degree of freedom but also to get my shapes a popping. Dancing has always been a tremendous source of frustration management, and so I groin trusted myself to a calm state once again. I really liked Juan Zelanda, he has the qualities of a genuine music man who can play a crowd as well as the musical instruments he had at hand. His lyrics where playful and full of narrative.

Due to the heat and aforementioned groin-thrusting, I had worked up something of a fine dew on my spam of a head; this made the corner of my plaster to peel. It was not a good look, by this stage I was was more like Nelly the Elephant man than Nelly the rapper. This being so, I was going to slip of home, happy in the high quality gig I had just seen. Then the glamorous gal responsible for the event informed me of a second gig I could go to, I politely declined on the grounds of needing to tend to my injuries, she whispered that said event was to include an exclusive performance by X-factor winner Matt Cardle.

Obviously I followed. He was part of Guy Chamber’s night Orgasmatron. Yet more cool kids and good lookers, the scene at organsamtron was speckled with the odd celebrity here and there, it took everything I had not to ask the Phonejacker if wanted to give me his bank account details or by a cheap DVD.

Cardle was instantly recognisable as he made his way discretely through the crowd, due in no small part to his wearing his trademark hat. With guitar in tow he took to the stage and performed a brilliant rendition of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. In spite of the musical politics that surround X-factor acts, you cannot get away from the fact that this man has a beautiful voice, and just as good in the flesh as he was on the X-Factor.

All in all, in spite of my earlier rage and less than flattering medical wrappings, I had a brilliant evening. Each act was genuinely talented in the most classic of ways, good voices, good guitar playing and good looks to boot.