04.12.2006: Coke & iTunes Launch - The Blizzards; The Rapture; The Village:	Grace Larkin
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Coke & iTunes Launch - The Blizzards & The Rapture The Village, Thursday November 30th. I managed to swipe a pass to this gig from a friend in the hopes that it d be good. I knew some of The Blizzards tracks, but had never heard The Rapture. It was lashing, so I was absolutely soaked, and not in the best of moods. Everyone got free drink tokens, free wine or beer & a free spirit when you buy a coke or a soft drink. There weren t any tokens for the non-alcoholic beverages. The Village was packed, the bar was working at light speed and the walls were covered in televisions silently shooting images of the two brands at us. I wasn t even sure what they were really launching. But it was all made clear. Coke & iTunes are coming together to support and promote unsigned artists, much like what we do minus the huge brand names and multi-million dollar facilities. If you want to know more then check out there site at www.coca-cola.com The Blizzards (an Irish band) came on and blew my breath away. Unlike a lot of bands around they seemed to really enjoy what they were doing and had fun doing it. There upbeat unusual melodies, thrashing drums, versatile keyboard and fabulous harmonies make them a great live band. The lead singer, Niall Breslin played his role of frontman to the T. His deep and rough voice gives the music a slight edge, amplifying the heavy drum beats and guitars and giving the words another layer of meaning. They seem to be a Clash/ Gorrilas/ Green Day/ hybrid, but with a regimental style throughout. The harmonies are perfectly in sync, I could picture them marching to war. The converting track for me was Freaky , the regimental harmonies and chorus, the sound that emerges from the keyboard together with the Oh, Yeah make me want to dance and smile, I have this illness going inside my head, that tells me my time is running out . There new track, Silence this Violence has a slightly eerie feeling to it thanks to the xylophone and Niall s voice dropping disturbingly low and is much slower than some of there other tracks, combined with the edgy lyrics, I can see it going straight into the charts. The frenzy of guitars and mangling of instruments with voices to a sometimes ska beat, even to Tainted Love makes them a band well worth listening to. I highly recommend them. During the interval, the lights came back on, the coke+iTunes iconography took over the room once more and hotdogs and chips (in newspaper wrapping) were served. This was an unexpected but entirely pleasant surprise. They fed us to revive us, The Rapture an American group demanded a lot of energy. Not as fun as The Blizzards, they non the less have there talents. More electro-pop than the Blizzards, the high pitched voice of the lead singer can become screechy and almost irritating at times, Get myself into it with its repetitive lyrics and continuous beat became slightly boring after a point. The versatility and range of the band members however cannot be questioned. The music was simply not to my taste, but I was the only one. People were screaming, jumping up and down, bouncing around like they were medicated. The bassists took one or two tracks to himself, with the lead doing the chorus. This I thought was much better, it still had the same feel as the others, but the higher pitched voice worked better as support to the lower, droning one. The saxophone helped to give the music a depth it wouldn t have had without it and an almost jazzy feel under the layers of electro-pop. All in all they were a very entertaining group, although the music was not to my taste I still found myself stomping on peoples toes and jumping into crowds. The one thing however that disappointed me about the event was the lack of an encore the screams for more lasted a good ten minutes, but The Rapture never returned to the stage (or at least not when I was there). Most importantly it was an opportunity for Coke+iTunes to get there message out unsigned bands/singer/musicians , get yourself onto their site and check them out.

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