Saturday 25/11/06 The Insomniac's Ball @ SeOne Club, London

Se1 London, November 25. London’s great and the good of the indie scene came together to get drunk, stay up till the wee hours, oh yeah and watch a few bands. Being of discerning music journalistic breed, we took it as our duty to cram as many bands as possible into the ball, and obviously sample of the alcohol and that mysterious gaseous substance on sale in balloons. Mmmm. 

First band we catch a glimpse of are those Devonshire boys The Rumbles Strips over in the main room, where with catchy-as-hell tunes like ‘Oh Creole’, they prove Gigwise’s astute formula right: brass instruments + performing live = good.

Now to The Blood Arm in the Crossover Arena – the room was packed (a rarity for the night), and the booming drum lead raucous tracks completely filled it. Yep, clichés aside, the crowd was indeed loving it, with ‘Suspicious Character’ the obvious favourite. Frontman Nathaniel Fregosos does his obligatory dives into the crowd and even calls for us to sit on the floor for one number, leaving those wearing lighter coloured garments nicely spattered in gunk for the rest of the night. A captivating performer, Nathaniel single-handedly transforms what is boring on record into a live treat.

Neils Children peddled their indie by numbers next, and although the performance was adequate, the tracks leave little to be desired as we’ve heard it all a million times before. Yawn. Instead we move to the Modular Records Arena, and dance like lunatics to the electro/indie offerings that London’s been peddling long before a certain music rag labelled it ‘new rave’. We manage to partly instigate a multiple person dance floor pile up, and at this point wisely vacate the ‘Arena’.

Over in the Crossover Arena we catch Roland Shanks. As everyone at the Insomniac’s Ball at this point seemed high on ‘good times’ it no doubt spurred on those south London boys, which resulted in them play possibly the best performance we’ve seen from them yet. No small feat. White Rose Movement the graced us with their presence – typically moody, despite their obvious knack for writing great retrogressive synth tunes, they somehow leave us as cold as their icy expressions.