epic 45 / portal gig review

Gig Review:

Epic 45 and Portal, Night n Day 22/06/2005

Location: Night n Day, Manchester

There a lot of great gig venues in Manchester.

I have seen many a good gig at any of the Academy's in Manchester, and even at The Roadhouse, Star n Garter, Phoenix etc.

Night N Day on Oldham Road, Manchester is a well respected little venue which certainly has placed a number of excellent bands on there over the years but for me always seems to fall just that little short of being a top notch venue.

Partly, this is down to the fact of the lack of the quality of the beer in question at the bar, which mostly just sells Bottles, and expensive bottles at that, but also down to the fact that at a lot of other gigs I have been to, the audience treats the band and artists with respectful silence during the gig and talking only between the songs.

I have been to a number of gigs here over the years and can only recall perhaps only once or twice, the band or artist actually recieving this off the audience there.

I had come here tonight to watch Epic 45 and Portal, both involved with the make music mine record label, as based in Birmingham (UK) both of who were supporting Hood (who I didn't hang around to watch owning to the heat in the venue that night which is a different story altogether).

Portal generally are a boy - girl duo, who I first became aware of a year or two back through Anthony from July Skies who had remixed one of their tracks for a remix album, which featured

who remind me of latter day Amp / post rock sort of bridage expect the girl vocalist which reminded my mate who was with me off Elizabeth Frazer on most off the tracks she sang on aside from the finale, which reminded the pair of us off Curve, all of which I have no problem with what-so-ever and was pretty damn good all round.

However, as I always found with Epic 45, who followed shortly after, I found the noise from in some cases downright rude audience came close to matching the noise of the band, which left me struggling to actually hear the band, which was a major shame as they sounded pretty damn good.

Epic 45 in contrast are a more guitar based band, with whom have drew often lazy comparisons with Mogwai because like Mogwai they choose to play a more instrumental rock sound, which can sometimes rise to almost complete silence from full out almost trash in literally seconds.

However on this set, the band chose to play tracks from what I could make out were off their new mini album / EP "England Fallen Over", their set mostly loaded with excellent guitar work now seemed on almost every track now to also carry vocals, which although my mate didn't think that much off, I actually really enjoyed in particular on the finale track, which really threatend to start testing everybody's eardrums, which I can't fault them for considering the excellent guitar work on show, and was probably the only time that elements of the audience really paid the respect to both of these excellent bands or as my mate "They're only quiet because they can't hear what their mate is saying", which sadly probably wasn't that far away from the truth and shows why Night n Day isn't a more respected venue than it was.