I went to see Scanner at The Museum of Garden History on Friday. A fantastic gig. The Museum is a former church, full of assorted garden detritus from across the ages. It makes for a comfortable, intimate atmosphere and a warm, lovely acoustic. Scanner (also known as Robin Rimbaud)'s music suited it to a tee. Ambienty and enveloping but with enough ideas and sufficient tension and drive that it doesn't lapse into New Aginess. But the thing it all reminded me of was how much a city's like the internet. Scanner is not a majority taste, he's not going to pack out the average venue, but the city aggregates enough people that something like this becomes viable. So 50 or so people lounge on the floor of an old church, listen to fantastic sounds and look at old Super 8 film from Derek Jarman. In the queue for coffee/beer you hear accents from all over the world, there's even the odd person who looks slightly familiar from similar things. Very nice. Then you all wonder off, back to your other social networks. And then I got home, stuck some pictures on flickr and, within a day got a friendly email from Mr Rimbaud. Excellent. Some things just go well.
Their cafe is also well worth a visit, good food cooked well and not so expensive. In summer the garden at the back is gorgeous.
Posted by: claire | October 29, 2007 at 05:25 PM