Gigs at this venue can be a bit hit or miss, depending on which part of the building is available, how the room is set up, the crowd numbers, and several other factors.
This had the usual fairly early start time, although the place was pretty quiet when Blackbox started, filling up until pretty full by the time BCS appeared. The upstairs bit, BM thinks this is referred to as the Warehouse and has quite a brutalist concrete feel to it.
Blackbox was essentially a laptop act (from what BM could see although he was at the back of the stage behind the main act’s gear) but produced some rather pleasing and original ambient techno with some unusual vocal sounds possibly sampled off tracks from various corners of the world. It certainly loosened the crowd up for the main act, Edinburgh’s own Barry, who led the way through a succession of what can only be described as massive house/Italo old school bangers.
With an energetic and explosive live drummer, BCS pounded the keys and controlled the backing music while various vocal samples brought infectious dance numbers blasting across the room.
Starting the set with the title track, most of the tracks were from most recent album ‘When Will We Land?’ although there was a sprinkling of other tracks and an old school covers medley which really drove the crowd wild. A very talented and skillful operator, BCS has the potential to go somewhat further along the proto Calvin Harris route, having already burst his way out of the UK with at least one tour of the US (BM actually came across his music completely by chance as there doesn’t seem to be much radio play on Radio Scotland shows anyway, more’s the shame!) – the show is unapologetically upbeat and for the good times with just a smidgen of cheese, but it a good way.
After around 15 tracks they stopped briefly before a crowd-pleasing encore. BM spotted at least one music industry mover and shaker looking on with interest and it is likely Scotland will be seeing quite a bit more of this act in larger venues both indoors and out – which is very well-deserved indeed, given half a chance BCS could probably get a dead cat moving…