As my friend and I were entering the HMV Picture House in Edinburgh we realized we should have arrived earlier. The crowd was massive already, and the support act (Foxy Shazam) was about to finish their set. Still more than forty minutes until the glam-rock band was supposed to enter the stage. The crowd was a mixture of metalheads in their late 40’s to young adults in their early 20’s, nearly everyone dressed in black. I even caught a glimpse of a mother and a boy not older than 12. I was surprised by the mixture of the generations of rock’n’roll attending.
We were standing by the back, and bummed out a bit because we could not really see over the heads of what looked like an older man and his son. To be honest I had not really listened to The Darkness since their debut album Permission To Land was released in 2003, and I did not even know they still had it going. After waiting for a while, which seemed forever, since we were both quite excited to hear Justin Hawkins’ typical voice echoing in the venue, The Darkness finally entered the stage. Lights, strobe lights,and something that looked like confetti drizzled quietly from the roof. A massive cheer throughout the crowd spread like fire. They began playing Black Shuck, which honestly surprised me even further, I did not expect them to play old songs until the latter part of the set. They played hits like Growing On Me, One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back! and so on, and Justin Hawkins let his stage personality shine through. At one point they even had pyros on each side of the stage in the little venue, and I could see the crowd in front dancing like crazy. The Darkness did a cover of Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out) and Queen’s Tie Your Mother Down, and were showing Edinburgh they still are good entertainers and know how to play glam rock.
The venue became alive, the band nearly got drowned out as Justin Hawkins’ started singing I Believe In A Thing Called Love and it was a fantastic moment to have in mind before we went home back to Stirling, singing quietly on the train.

Italian Maxi-House producers Crookers have taken a massive departure from their previous semi-radio friendly album Tons Of Friends, aptly named due to the sheer number of guest vocalists and collaborators such as Pitbull, Will.I.Am, Kelis and Soulwax. Their latest album Dr. Gonzo cuts back on the guest stars and also the tracks, cutting Friends' mammoth twenty-one tracks into a much easier to digest thirteen. The best way to describe Dr. Gonzo would be as a subwoofer mandatory record, booming basslines punch out under high pitched and twisted vocal samples and screaming synths, beating Dutch house superstars such as Sidney Samson and Afrojack at their own game. The drums need a special mention, tribal percussion echoing over a mixture of beats, from house to hardstyle, constantly changing as Crookers demonstrate their versatility.

Opening track Dushi acts as an exemplar for the rest of the album to follow, setting an almost creepy atmosphere as by now standard Crookers techniques are demonstrated, shuffling rhythms, deep booming bass and squealing electronics. Second track Wake App is a pretty standard Dutch/Fidget house track, nothing really too remarkable about it but we can let that slide when its follow up Dr. Gonzo's Anthem is such a delight, featuring Swedish House style melodies in the breakdown and then launching into a shuddering assault upon the senses as it drops. This turns into a good streak as Crookers join up with Glasgow lad Hudson Mohawke for Hummus, combining Crookers knack for dancefloor decimation with Mohawke's superb grasp of melody as the track builds and builds, featuring Timbaland style snare rolls and that “Dr...Gonzo.” sample; the second drop is absolutely sublime and makes Hummus the standout track of the album.

Other standout tracks include the monstrous That Laughing Track, featuring the most disturbing sample I've heard outside of a Throbbing Gristle record over a thumping bassline, developing until the sample is no longer recognisable as it mutates into a delicious cacophony of sound. Follow up Get The F^*k Out Of My House will most likely take second place in that category, though it lacks the sheer fun of That Laughing Track. Penultimate track Texx deserves a mention for its departure to hardstyle midway through, showing a grasp of melody that most hardstyle producers would do well to learn.

In amongst this glittering cavalcade of inventiveness and fun there are a few tracks that seem to fall flat, Carcola is a pretty plain track, which would work well as filler in a DJ set but falls flat compared to the experimentation and innovation shown in the rest of the album. Gonzo C.A.M.P is also ruined by a vocal that doesn't seem to contribute much, but these two are the only mediocre tracks on an album, an album that if Rustie's Glass Swords hadn't came out a month previous would be the dance music album of the year. If Glass Swords is futuristic and new, then Dr. Gonzo is primal, its jungle and tribal influences showing through on every track. Dr. Gonzo is not an album for easy listening; it is an album to be played loud and danced to as it thumps away and surprises throughout, its basslines shuddering and its instrumentation inventive. Crookers have taken a risk on an album that may not be the most accessible to the casual laptop listener, but hear it loud and enjoy it for what is it, a sonic instruction to move and to not stop moving until Dr. Gonzo has done his full check up.

Last Monday Katy Perry filled the Odyssey in Belfast. 10,000 people flocked to see her, surprisingly not all teenage girls. Her California Dreams tour is the second time she’s toured for her album Teenage Dream, but as it was her first time ever playing in Belfast, the place was buzzing. The show started with a creepy sequence about a butcher’s shop and ended with her falling asleep and waking up in her dream world – Candyfornia – almost too sickly sweet to handle.

She opened with her album’s namesake, Teenage Dream and quickly moved onto the upbeat Hummingbird Heartbeat. After that, her rendition of Waking Up In Vegas got anyone in the crowd who wasn’t already singing along started. She had a bit of a technical issue when she moved on to Ur So Gay and her mic wasn’t working – a stagehand quickly replaced it for her, but I guess it was a good thing, because it proved she was singing live. When she performed her slightly suggestive song Peacock, she wore a Vegas showgirl’s costume and the back up dancers did a feather dance around her with enormous peacock feather fans.

She got a huge round of cheers when she got one very lucky fan up on stage – provided he took his shirt off. After seeing him shirtless, well she picked the correct audience member. She also tried her hand at a Northern Irish accent – and didn’t actually do too badly. She then did a slow and sexy version of her first major hit I Kissed A Girl, unsurprisingly leaving the lad with a massive grin on his face.

The light show during E.T was incredible, with hundreds of green lasers really adding to the song. As she sang What Am I Living For she performed a strange bondage dance with four male back-up dancers. She entertained the crowd with her banter telling how she’s half-Irish (always goes down well) and although she may have black hair, she has ginger roots.  She later did a slow set and did a truly heart-wrenching version of The One That Got Away mixed with Adele’s Someone Like You, and then came out over the audience on a pink cloud to sing Thinking of You. She sang it whilst playing the guitar but with no back up from her band and it showed off how powerful her voice really is.

To speed the show back up she donned her famous blue wig and did a quick-change act whilst singing Hot N Cold, which had 7 costume changes in quick succession. Just before she started to close the show with Last Friday Night all of her crew came on stage to surprise her with a massive pink cake for her 27^th birthday. She blew out the candles and promptly ran down the stage and threw the cake into the crowd.

She finished with an encore of California Gurls using 3 massive candy-cane guns to cover the crowd with foam, laughing and saying, ‘And you thought cake was messy?’ Confetti guns followed to complete a brilliant stage show and a thoroughly enjoyable concert.

Roddy Frame entertained punters young and old (almost all a good bit older than myself, actually) at the ABC in Glasgow last week. As the singer and main songwriter, and the only ever-present member throughout the band’s 15-year career, he is to a great extent synonymous with the name Aztec Camera. Other than a few appearances playing guitar for Edwyn Collins as the Orange Juice singer made his comeback following a brain haemorrhage, this was part of Roddy’s first tour for several years. It was the first time I had seen him play live, and I hope it won’t prove to be the last.

He arrived on stage, along with his band, almost precisely on schedule, a few minutes after 8.45. They went straight into it, playing The Crying Scene from Aztec Camera’s 1990 album, Stray. Roddy then spoke to the crowd at some length, making mention of his long absence from the stage, and joking about the average age of his audience. He then played Reason For Living, probably the most popular track from his first solo album, The North Star. He changed guitars frequently throughout the concert, sometimes playing lead, sometimes rhythm, and often acoustic. He had another guitarist in the band, meaning that he could cherry-pick the parts he played. The set-list was quite varied, with some of his more recent solo songs alongside some of the older Aztec Camera tracks from the 1980s and 1990s, and he wasn’t afraid to switch genres quickly and often.

Probably the thing which impressed me most about Roddy was his energy. For a man in his mid-40s, he could fairly move around the stage, often improvising fast guitar riffs, while the drummer did his best to keep up. His stage persona surprised me a little, as I hadn’t expected him to be such a showman; more a low-key performer. A couple of times, during his best-known songs such as Killermont Street, Back To The One and Oblivious, he stopped singing and held the microphone out to the crowd. As we sang his lyrics back to him, his face was a mixture of pride and humility.

Around halfway through the show, he introduced a brand new song, White Pony. It began life as a tribute to film director John Hughes, but evolved into a song about growing up. It received warm applause, and he joked, “I think I’ll write another one next year!” Whenever he spoke between songs, the room fell silent, listening intently to his every word, and laughing as he made one of his frequent jokes.

He and the band left the stage, before the obligatory “encore.” This consisted mainly of Roddy and his acoustic guitar, performing a couple of his softer numbers from his solo albums Surf and Western Skies. He also sang a verse and the chorus of I Can Hear Music, most famously sung by The Beach Boys. The whole band then returned to close the show with Somewhere In My Heart, easily Aztec Camera’s most famous song. The only real disappointment for me was that Safe In Sorrow, one of my favourite Aztec Camera songs, did not feature, but its inclusion would only have made an already fantastic evening perfect.