Wednesday 12/03/03 Dirty Vegas @ Academy 3, Manchester

At age 8 when I was required to perform a piano solo in front of about 100 people, my emotions ranged from tears and tantrums to frozen-stiff fear. Spare a thought then for Dirty Vegas whose first ever gig was supporting Moby in front of 20,000 people…

No such childish behaviour tonight as they strolled onto the Academy 3 stage with an air of Grammy™ winning confidence to play their sell-out gig. A plethora of influences became immediately apparent as the music cranked up. Paul Harris having DJ'd around London into his late teens, while Ben Harris served time with indie band Fluid before being lured into the wonderful world of dance music.

'I Should Know' pleased a hyperactive crowd no end, providing many more thumping techno beats to bounce about to, iced with a powerful euphoric melody.
From the bar, the first few hypnotic "Yous" of 'Days Go By' made my ears prick up and before I knew it my feet were taking me to the front of the stage to absorb the electro-heavy beat having a punch up with a base driven by the devil. This was strikingly contrasted with the folky, sweet and nostalgic tones of Steve Smith's vocals.

However, my only complaint of this positive, energy-fuelled performance was perhaps the lack of variation in the vocal range. This often made it quite difficult to distinguish one track from the other in a set than was otherwise musically diverse, with all sorts of funny little sounds thrown in.

With the hugely successful single 'Days Go By' being given the chart buoyancy of appearing on the Mitsubishi advert and the championing of Pete Tong, the test comes with the release 'Simple Things' out on March 10th to see if Dirty Vegas will sink or swim.