Last night I went to distant North East London, which is a faraway place from my own home in... um... East London. It was round Tottenham-ish way, which is peculiarly awkward to get to from Stratford at the best of times, and even less convenient when you set off confidently for Mansion House and realise that you were meant to be going to MANOR House instead.
So it was that I was slightly late to meet Mr S Hewitt for a delightful PINT in The Finsbury before heading down the road to New River Studios, there to see Prolapse, who have re-emerged from their slumbers to do a string of gigs leading up to Paris Popfest. The venue was SURPRISINGLY NICE - it was in The Trendy Warehouse District of converted warehouses (the clue is in the name) so I was expecting Arsiness and Board Games, but everyone was dead friendly, the beer was nice, and all was well.
Within 5 seconds of being there we had bumped into Mr T Pattison and then Mr D Dixey, but WEIRDLY that was almost THE LOT for People From Leicester, with the slight exception of Dave and Sean from Airport Gurl who, technically, are more Loughborough. At previous Prolapse gigs there have been about 9,000,000 familiar faces from Back In The Day so it was strange not to see so many people this time, although maybe that is a GOOD thing as the gig was SOLD OUT so I guess it was allowing tickets to go to people who WEREN'T going to spend most of the night saying "Ooh do you remember The Charlotte?" and so on.
Prolapse themselves were GRATE as per, with Scottish on ESPECIALLY good form between the songs. He always was dead good at this bit, back in the day - ooh, do you remember them playing the Charlotte etc etc - but MATURITY has refined his abilities even further. It reminded me of seeing Allo Darlin' last year and MARVELLING at Elizabeth's CHAT PROWESS.
The thing that struck me MOST though was that the SOUND was different from previous occasions, with them being mixed like a BAND with seperate INSTRUMENTS, rather than A BLOODY RACKET. Back in the 1990s, when they formed, PA systems at all venues were uniformly AWFUL and soundmen tended to just turn up the bass and drums A LOT. This really really suited Prolapse as the bass and ESPECIALLY the drums are a huge part of their sound, with everything else having a BIG FITE in the background, but last night you could hear all the words and the individual instruments. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest, but INTERESTINGLY it seemed to work best for the two new songs played (which were ACE and also not a sudden new direction!). I believe that Prolapse songs are composed through "jamming", so I guess these new ones will have been "jammed" ON one of these new PA systems, and so maybe work better that way.
Anyway, it was DEAD GOOD as per and made me Quite Excited to hear NEW STUFF, which I believe should be emerging next year. Don't tell Tim I said so (as it will make him insist WE do the same) but I quite like the idea of hearing them do some songs I haven't heard before, and hopefully there will be AMPLE chances so to do!
