The Null Device

2006/6/12

Camera Obscura at Cargo Tonight, I went to Cargo to see Camera Obscura, the Scottish indie-pop combo. They were pretty good; slightly retroish pop music, not a world away from Belle & Sebastian, though with a black-haired girl in Stuart's place. (I.e., if you like B&S, you'll probably like them.) They played some older songs ("Teenager", "Suspended From Class" and so on), and a few from their new album, which I'll have to get a copy of.

The support band, Frànçois and the Atlas Mountains, really impressed me. They're an indieish outfit from Bristol, fronted by a French chap who moved to Bristol for the music scene, and played both well and energetically, with a lot of instrument swapping, handclaps and general jumping around; not to mention some rather leftfield choices of instruments; in addition to the usual indie kit (guitars, Casios, tambourines, melodicas), they had a huge wooden recorder and a harp; all of which worked quite well. Not to mention that one of the band members had the k3wlest T-shirt: it read "I Really Like Electric Rock Music".

I happened to have a digital video camera on hand, and hence I filmed parts of the gig. I've uploaded one of François & co.'s songs, "Tracey Emin" (perhaps the standout piece of the set) to YouTube (with the appropriate permission, of course):

camera obscura frànçois an the atlas mountains gigs personal video youtube 0