The Boiler Room, Guildford: 12 August 2023
Well, I wasn't sure what to expect at all from this one. When my friend Dave asked if I fancied seeing The Allergies, I have to confess, that despite the fact they have been around for more than a decade - I hadn't actually heard of them....
I started to listen to a few song clips on Bandcamp, and that confused me further - there seemed to be an awful lot going on. So, I wasn't sure, but Dave said he reckoned that they would be fun, and I'm trying to be more open to different types of music, and heck, it was a chance to see live music in a great venue!
If you live in the south east of England and you've never been to the Boiler Room, get yourself down there. It's a fantastic little venue - a great, low-ceiling room with a 275 capacity, which is great for the sound and the sweat. Oh, and they serve decent beer and I believe the food out the back is pretty tasty too.
The Allergies play with no support. Instead, the two founding DJs of this Bristol band, Moneyshot and Rackabeat come on and spin a few tunes, to get the crowd going. Once the crowd is rocking, on comes Andy Cooper, a veteran of the LA hip hop scene from the group Ugly Duckling. Then comes the sweet and soulful voice of Marietta Smith, before finally Mr Woodnote adds some brass to proceedings with his sax.
The sound is a glorious mash up of classic hip hop, funk, soul and R&B. I was getting bits of Cypress Hill, Stevie Wonder and James Brown, amongst others, in the barrage of samples that drove their sound through the evening. Cooper, a looming presence at the front of stage, raps with great speed and agility, the words tripping out of his mouth at a rate of knots. Smith's voice added those classic R&B notes, full of power and soul, while Woodnote jumped around them injecting little swirls of funky brass.
For a man more used to traditional rock concerts, full of songs with beginnings, middles and ends - and therefore pauses between songs - tonight comes as a massive shock. This was an onslaught of sound, with little respite (I think they maybe stopped three or four times in ninety minutes), leaving us breathless, but happy.
The five piece galloped through the evening with apparent ease, and lots of good humour thrown in, getting the crowd rocking without seeming to break sweat. There are lots of call and response bits between Cooper and us, to songs I didn't know I knew! In fact, I couldn't tell you much in the way of song titles for the setlist tonight, other than it includes the title track for their current album, Tear The Place Up, and a crowd pleasing cover of Dee-Lite's Groove Is In The Heart.
This all reminded me of a lot of the classic hip hop and soul sounds we were hearing back in the late eighties and nineties through the likes of De La Soul and Soul II Soul, which I probably didn't give nearly enough attention to at the time. The Allergies seem to have taken all of that, thrown it in a blender and added their own fresh twist.
Of course, I could have come better prepared had I just read what legendary BBC 6Music DJ and actor, Craig Charles, said about them: "The Allergies are neck deep in the world of scratchy samples. This is truly funk and soul for the twenty first century!"
So, if you see that The Allergies are coming to a smallish venue near you, I would say it is worth taking a chance and heading down to see them, there are many worse ways to spend a Saturday night.
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