| Having made a mad dash from the Badminton World Championship at Wembley I missed the first of the six act brought to The Old Blue Last by Werewolf Promotions on a warm August Sunday afternoon/evening… The first band I managed to catch where the Racket, given the event I’d just watched a Chinese clean sweep at the name was highly appropriate… And their quirky take on punk rock was a great start – entertainment came both from the stage and the exuberant dancing of a particular member of the audience. With titles such as “Let’s Fall In Love” and “I Don’t Like Your Friends” the topics of the songs where much more up beat than some of those singing in the same genre – I don’t think the Vivian Sisters would have had the same take on the situations that were the inspiration! |
Next on stage where the Irish We Are Losers, they continued the up beat spirit – more pop than the Racket, but there guitar base sound is far from being lost. I can see why their recently release single Sunset Song/Cheerleader is getting so much good feedback. |  |
 | Air Castles showed the perils of trying to put on six bands in a session – lack of a sound check left them and the sound engineer struggling to get their laptop producing the desired sound containing both treble and bass… Once the technical issues where resolved the dependence on the laptop became apparent… Given the incredible layers of sound I’ve seen one person with a guitar and a pedal board produce “live”, with the very creation of the backing sounds an intro to the song, complete dependence on pre-recorded backing from a laptop appears to deviate from the live nature of the music…. Having said that, the grittier sound than the two previous acts bought balance to the session. |
| The highlight of the evening for me was Dimbleby & Capper, both musically and as a act to photograph – despite the challenging lack of lighting provided by the venue! The visual performance and more electronic sound where a contrast to the other acts from the evening. I first saw Dimbleby & Capper very capably supporting Saint Saviour at XOYO and yet again they produced a polished set – this time without the distraction of a constantly possible “costume malfunction”… Whether as Dimbleby & Capper or Dee & Cee surely their Slick Maturity EP  will be followed by more releases. With a great live show they have the makings successful future. |  |
 | With the final act of the evening we returned to guitar based pop/punk/rock - and pure focus on the music with Bearsuit. The set consisted mainly of songs from their current album The Phantom Forest  - anyone following the show of Dee & Cee would have struggled visually. Clearly the most polished of the acts of the evening – but they lacked the energy of some of the preceding performers. |
Putting on six acts in a session is a brave decision for any venue/promoter especially for one as small as The Old Blue Last and for free – on this occasion they and Werewolf promotions just about managed to pull it off – unfortunately the warm Sunday afternoon/evening weather was probably a distractions to spending an evening listening to live music so the audience wasn’t as large as the venue and acts deserved.
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