Laneway Festival Pre-Party @The Ed Castle, Adelaide(10/02/11)

Sat 12th Feb, 2011 in Gig Reviews

CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS HERE.

With Adelaide comfortably settling into the beginning of what’s set to be another whirlwind festival season, it only makes sense that there be an equal number of after-parties and shindigs going on as well as actual events. Tonight’s case is a bit different though – the Ed Castle plays host to the warm-up party for the Adelaide leg of the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival.

When I arrive at the Ed Castle at around 9pm, it just seems like a normal Thursday night – there’s a DJ spinning indie tunes, a few people around the bar and in the beer garden. The main room is being cleared out and the dudes from Red Apparition are beginning to shuffle in with their equipment in tow. With other event openings and parties going on around town tonight, my expectations of tonight’s do drawing a large crowd are limited.

Red Apparition are a band who I’ve always heard of but had never seen live until tonight. From the offset I caught influences of early grunge and indie-pop sounds reminiscent of Australian artists including locals The Killgirls and also early Gyroscope. For the small crowd who had gathered to watch them, Red Apparition entertained with their diverse set. While I was impressed with the band’s musicality and material, I did feel like I’d seen artists like them so many times before. I ducked in and out between the main room and the bar area where local DJs were spinning a few times just to see if there was anything different or if there were more people in either area, but in all it seemed like a pretty chilled out crowd.

With the first band down and local DJs doing their thing in the bar area, I noticed more people starting to filter in to the Ed on the late side of 11pm. The main selling point of tonight, clearly, was the DJ set to be provided by Kev Baird, bassist from Irish indie trio Two Door Cinema Club. Logically I didn’t think they’d be putting him on too early, so it was fair in this case to see more people rock up later in the night. In the meantime though, the second band on in The Honey Pies took to the stage. With their brand of guitar pop and good looks, the band put on a decent live show and live up to their reputation of being one of Adelaide’s best up-and-coming acts. These guys are unique in that they manage to fuse old-school rock sounds from the 60s in with spiky riffs and effects that you’d be able to find on early Strokes and Arctic Monkeys records and produce something completely modern and independent. They seem to be still flying under the radar on the local scene despite their rising popularity; hopefully 2011 will see them break out.

By midnight, the vibe at the Ed was pretty cool – it had gone from a chilled out summer night to more of a party atmosphere. Kev Baird’s turn on the decks brought the majority of the venue’s patrons in from the beer garden and the other room, though there was no big show or fanfare to signal the beginning of his set. Like the other DJs before him, Baird’s set included current indie-pop hits (some by fellow Laneway artists) and also some older tunes which kept the good atmosphere going. About halfway through his set, I made my way into the other room, where Adelaide favourites The Shiny Brights were playing, the final band on tonight’s line-up. While they may have been the ‘headliners’ of sorts on tonight’s menu, they really got stuck with the worst of set times. Hardly anybody stuck around long enough for them to really say they had a strong crowd because of the DJ in the other room. Troopers that they are though, Wolfgang and his crew played on as if to one of the packed out venues they would usually do.

Kev’s DJ set ended as subtly as it started – after almost an hour he packed up his headphones and rejoined his mates in the beer garden where people had once again spread out to. With the local DJs once again resuming their positions, the vibe around the place had settled back to the way it was at the beginning of the night, somewhat.

A great idea, thogh perhaps not helped by the lack of promotion and competition in the other events around town, tonight’s ‘pre-party’ for the Laneway Festival, taking place on Friday did, if anything, give us an insight into the sort of music to be prepared for. A good way to spend a Thursday night, with drinks, friends and good music – it did get me pumped for the acts I’d be seeing at Laneway tomorrow. Everyone I saw seemed to be enjoying themselves without partying too extremely. Then again, at a stereotypically ‘indie’ event, you’re probably not going to be seeing much hardcore raving, are you?