20th Feb 2008 was the night of the NME awards tour, the usual Indie music tour, not really my kind of thing but the lighting wasn’t too bad, makes it a lot more fun! The Cribs were headlining, but first up were Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong. Then Does It Offend You, Yeah?

What’s up with bands with such long names? Above singer from Does it offend

The headliners The Cribs the took to the stage.

Drummer shots rarely get into publications but I always like to get a couple, sometimes they work out. Perou originally gave me the inspiration to look beyond the lead singer and guitarists! It’s always a challenge to get focous on the drummer amongst the kit, but it worked out here.

Can’t remember too much of the gig, and forgot to write anything down at the time, hence the sparse wording! A couple of these appeared in Quench issue 64.

The Cribs are are actually quite listenable

The great thing about shooting gig photography is that exposes you to a lot of music that you would otherwise not listen to. I don’t tend to listen to the radio a whole bunch due to not wanting to listen to the rambling of most DJ’s and the lack of fresh, good music. Sometimes you can miss a band which you really like.

Monday 18th February 2008 saw Gallows return to Cardiff, they are one of the biggest up and coming bands in hardcore punk scene at the moment, the sea of black jeans were worked up and ready to fire. I got there just after the first warm-up act SSS.

Luckily there were another two to go, and the hordes of fans were getting into it. The second support band, Fucked Up (a band from Canada!) was fronted by lunatic of a guy who wasn’t afraid to get involved with the crowd, and the crowd were in no position to argue.

Nothing really stuck out about the Set Your Goals for me, here’s one of the lead singers.

The headliners, Gallows hit the the stage up and put on a good show, not taking ginger comments from the crowd lightly! This shot was used in Quench issue 64.

They seemed genuinely amazed to be there, only this time last year they had been supported for My Chemical Romance at the very same venue.

Frank Carter getting into it

Even bigger things are in-store for Gallows, it’s nice to see a band who can still really connect with their fans.

I have lots in the pipeline at the moment, couple of portfolio shoots coming up and going to be photographing at the new bi-annual Cardiff fashion week, on Sunday night this week. It is going to be held in the Hilton and will hopefully be the start of a long string of them in Cardiff.

Despite their aggressive sounding name, Fuck Buttons (or F*ck Buttons as some like to refer to them…) are a melodic 2 piece from Bristol. The Welsh Club was filled with a Bizarre sounding form of electro instrumental using a variety of gadgets, everything from Fisher Price tape recorders to the keyboard synths and MacBooks they created a real wall of intense sound. Certainly not to everyones taste, but right up my street! Fuck Buttons MySpace.

Not the usual setup

Support was provided by Alexander Tucker, a one man band of a modern variety! Whole songs with multiple tracks are layered and created in-front of you, quite something!

Took a while to get this update done, just been super busy. Lots more photos to come in next few weeks, have quite a backlog of stuff to put up hopefully will find time!

I showcased the flyer for the new Cardiff Dubstep night in a previous post, I was also asked to go along and take a few photos of the night itself.

In the background you can see the sound system brought in specially for the night, quite a beast of a setup!

The wheels of steel

The turnout was great, especially considering the niche market for the Dubstep genre. Props to the Baron and his crew for making it happen.

Gaz is only 17 but shreds with the best! Table at height.

Just the on-board flash used for this one, nice to keep it simple sometimes.