By Alex Pearson
It’s only my second time in Birmingham and it was a very bleak day getting an Uber through the city to the Hare & Hounds, a lovely pub with a long and thin room upstairs to see Bad Sounds with support from London artist KYKO and local duo Social State.
The red and blue lights are on, the police sirens are blaring, that can only mean one thing. Social State come out from the upstairs room to the siren of a mega phone as they make their way through the sold out crowd onto the stage. Armed with a keyboard, an Apple MacBook and a drum set the teenagers are very similar to Bad Sounds in their style of music. Hitting you with RnB, Hip-Hop and Soul with their own harsh rockier sound. A band that is definitely worth checking out.
KYKO
KYKO has been incredible over the last two years producing tune after tune. We’ve seen them perform live many times before but today was a bit different to their usual set up. First of all there is normally five of them on stage but this time there’s just three. Nonetheless, their dancy indie pop music was a bit hit with the crowd and if you had never heard a song before then you would still be dancing away to their tunes. One thing that I did notice having seen them perform before is that a couple of their songs just didn’t sound the same. That being the two missing members create that extra bit that was missing from their set or it was just a bad day in the office. But don’t let that put you off as they have one heck of a sound.
Bad Sounds come out onto the stage with a huge cheers and people’s faces filled with excitement as the five-piece play ‘Hot Head Chippenham’. The venue itself is has a very intimate feeling with the fans getting up close and personal to the Merrett brothers as their upbeat, groovy tunes got the crowd swaying and bopping to the music. Bad Sounds spiced up the heat a little with their hottest record in the world (chosen by BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac) ‘Are You High?’ During their set they seemed to have some technical issues with their sound as part of the way through their set it sounded like one of the speakers had blown and all of a sudden the atmosphere dropped but the band still carried on in style as the technicians quickly sorted the issue out.
This is the first time I’ve seen Bad Sounds perform live and we’ve been a big fan of their music as it’s something different to your generic indie music, bringing in the brothers influences of hip-hop and soul has transformed them into something unique.
