The Purple Lights live at London Roundhouse (Photo: Chris Patmore)
The Roundhouse’s reputation as one of the capital’s most historic and individual venues is well known. But as well as playing host to today’s big names, the Camden landmark lends a helping hand to tomorrow’s stars, staging workshops and masterclasses and even adopting a crop of handpicked resident artists.
The Scratch night, held in the building’s intimate Sackler Space, is a chance for this year’s intake of young hopefuls to flex their skills in public. Judging by the quality and originality of performance in evidence, the free rehearsal space and professional guidance was not wasted.
The entertainment limbers up with performance poetry however, and rarely this evening is the chance to evolve and develop that the Roundhouse programme allows more in evidence than in the verse of Martha Palling. She reads from a freeform stream of consciousness thought piece about creating a VIP list of all her favourite people in the world and then having a bath with all 140 of them, simulating sex using a bread roll along the way, as if she didn’t already have our attention. Her style is surreal and subject to extreme flights of fancy but keep its feet on the ground at all times. Hers, we predict, is a name that you’ll definitely be hearing again in the future.
Next stop is hip-hop, with two up and coming MCs taking to the stage. The three tracks from Fred Fredas have an American feel with mentions of cars and Hennessey brandy, but delivered with heaps of stage presence and swaggering confidence. He’s clearly capable of connecting with an audience too, whipping up an enthusiastic reaction to his request for audience participation during Addictions.
Deewain’s approach is a little less conventional, but if he packs little less in-your-face attitude a touch of vulnerability only serves to make his offering more approachable and inviting. Lyrically, however, he pulls no punches and Bounce sets out his agenda for tackling haters and repelling negativity in deftly articulate fashion.
The arrival of solo performer Mobius Trip on stage is greeted with awed silence, partly because of his alien, Prince-in-space look, and partly because he’s evidently going to play armed with only a bass guitar. Well, that and an amazing voice and considerable songwriting talent. After cleverly leaving no gaps for the audience to react until he’s all done, he finally leaves to the sound of rapturous applause. “Why do you have to smoke my weed?”, he repeatedly asks in the hypnotic chorus of one of his songs, simultaneously bashing out a rigid but funky bassline and joined by an artist writing cryptic messages and drawing shapes for additional entertainment value. It’s unconventional, puzzling at times, but totally addictive. Just the kind of act that needs to be nurtured and helped to develop, but one that already has tons of ready made star appeal.
Tonight’s headliners are two piece The Purple Lights, and even though they are probably the most fully realised and ready-to-roll performers on the bill, their unique soundclash of roots reggae and rock is just as original as anything else on the bill. They’re a treat visually with drummer Akeeba a flurry of flying dreadlocks and flailing arms, and lead vocalist and guitarist Rob Fincham sparkling in a toreador’s jacket festooned with tiny reflective mirrors, a whirl of activity as he feeds riffs and bonus keyboards into his Loopstation.
It’s hard at times to remember there are only two people on stage as the accumulated loops and the pair’s richly layered vocal harmonies build to overwhelming crescendos. They open with the brooding Rain, urged along by slow and heavy skanking rhythms, but the crowning glory in their set is the extremely catchy Not Alone, alternating from lightly applied verses and a rousing chorus that show off their versatility. By the time they finish, there isn’t anyone in the room who isn’t dancing.
All in all, it’s great to see that the Roundhouse isn’t content to sit on its legacy and is investing its time and expertise on the next generation of venue-packing acts. How long until one of the Scratch contenders plays the main hall?
It’ll probably be sooner than you think.