After a wave of Ether Festival related gigs came another show that was unforgettable, good old Squarepusher has always been on my list of gigs to see and it was definitely worth being on that list.
The venue was at Royal Festival Hall, but the idea of him playing at the main venue seemed a bit silly since it wasn’t really appropriate. The gig itself was hosted at the Chloe Ballroom where they hosted many aftershow events and film screenings during the festival. They had turned the ballroom to a nice and intimate stage fitted with epic spacey staging lights.
Fans were starting to pile up in the front, I opted to shoot from the right tonight (loads of racks and whatnot in the way on the left 
). I originally was expecting him to produce most of his music through his laptops (and felt a bit cheated if he did because he could easily press play on itunes) but the presence of a bass guitar and drums gave me faith that it wasn’t going to be “those” kinda shows.
Tom arrived on stage to much applaud and got down and dirty with the bass. It was a real build up as the bass riffs became more and more fiddly and fast! The guy had over 5 expression pedals! He definitely made sure all of his limbs were put to use. At times it sounded like he had several pairs of hands available as he dished out a super fast bass solo, filled with wah wah and other modulation effects that he carefully managed with his feet. I was in bass wank awe.
It was a fun gig, twas funny to see some chick in the gig smoking hash and then getting all moshy, everyone referred to her as “that girl”. There was also another fairly stoned/drunk guy who managed to push his way to the front just to speak to Tom, it was funny because it seemed like he thought he was brothers with Squarepusher, only to have Tom ignore him throughout the gig and refer to him as “that guy”. Granted he was rather annoying, his constant waving developed into a major distraction and even if they were brothers, it honestly wasn’t the time to say hi and banter whilst an intense gig was going on, he was absurd enough to write his feelings on a note and wave that said note around for 10 minutes. It was rather embarrassing, Tom took no notice of his note (why would you? you’re pumped up in a middle of a gig) and refused to read it. Despite me making it like a rant, it was definitely fun to watch and added to the drama of the gig. Most of the time was spent moshing and enjoying the show anyway. The highligt was when he played Come on my Selector, here’s a video of it in action, sorry for the camera shakes, but try filming that bad boy with now image stabilisers 
:
After the stunning performance more DJ stuff came on and people were dancing in the ballroom, it was funny watching people consciously avoiding the plastic cups in the floor, I tried giving the floor a spin but found it too sticky and not dance material… especially after trying to dance ON the cups and almost falling over :$ aah good times.
