Hive

Last year, the Minx sent me a link to a newspaper article she thought I might be interested in. And her instinct was right! I bought the album and was just a bit sad that I wouldn't be able to get to the live performances. And then it turned out that Be were performing at Bluedot, so we went to see them play there OF COURSE.  

But we always said we wanted to see the actual installation and today we had the chance. We'd caught the early train to London from Manchester - thereby getting very cheap first class tickets - because we were going to see Shriekback, this evening, so we had the day free. 

We had late breakfast with Katie at the Exmouth Arms, then went down to the Hand and Flower, where we were staying, and had a quick drink with Izzy, who was en route to a five day break in Majorca. And then it was time for Kew Gardens, taking the tube from Barons Court.

I took quite a lot of photos of the Hive installation when we got there and I'm not sure any of them did it justice but it was fantastic to finally be there and also to hear the music in situ. I think I must have stood there for about ten minutes but, had there been a few less people, I think I could have stayed much longer.

And in the evening, of course, it was Shriekback at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. While I was naturally happy to have the Minx's company I was delighted that Ash decided to come along, too, since we were at university together and discovered Shriekback around the same time.

I won't bore you with a full review of the gig but I was blown away from the very start: the uncompromising intro music ("In: Amongst"), followed by perhaps their most leftfield song ("Lines From The Library") and then a reworking of "Over The Wire" that extracted the inner demon from one of their ostensibly more poppy numbers.

The evening was only marred by the events on London Bridge, which we found out about as we left, which made for a slightly sobered walk back to the hotel.

****
-7.2kgs
Still no words