A venue who’s day job is a cage MMA fighting arena was taken over by Nokia UK and La Blogothèque last night to host “Lumia Live”.  The second leg of a tour which marries interesting music with utterly original venues. 

Hard cases and fight baiters were replaced with tour bus and flight cases.  A blissfully sun drenched courtyard was the ‘mustn’t be late for the hanging about’ pre gig venue of choice. A bit of classic loitering in the sun, chatting, and beer (winning combo) then myself and around 130 others – a mixture of ticket winners, Nokia staff and technical crew made our way through to the gym. What a party pad they’d created.. I’m guessing someone had the brief of making the place as photogenic as possible – and hats off, good job well done.

Department M were first up. A melancholic local 3 piece, proffering philosophies such as “I’ll fax you an Apology“. Sweeping synth scales – stacks of kit, bandophile instrumentationologists would have a field day (if they even existed, and I hadn’t just made some more words up). The bakelight headphone clad lead singer’s delicate, clean voice contrasted nicely, with the often dark audio backdrop. 

We were then treat to a luxury length intermission. Enough time for a drink or two and some good chats. A top mix of people. I talked blogging with bloggers, cameras with the ex chief photographer of The Yorkshire Post and James Bond with Nokia people.

Fenech-Soler did’t disappoint. They’ve got a bang up to date, yet tinged with 80s nostalgia kind of sound going on. Again a dazzling array of noise making tranklements (that’s a real word). Stunning sound quality – a front of house desk and an on stage monitor mix desk ensure perfect sound all round. As they belted out their more well known numbers, the crowd sang along and snapped photos – every click a winner I’d guess, thanks to the charisma of the venue and the lighting.

A cracking gig. A spectacle. A treat.

After the gig I chatted to the gym owner – an interesting character who’s passion is martial arts, then was so busy chatting to one of the hosts that I nearly missed my train. I caught it with seconds to spare.

After settling into my seat, I remembered I had a new toy to play with – a Nokia Lumia 920 (on try out loan for a week). Tunes! – Nokia Music became my new amigo. Without anything like what you’d describe as hard work (thankfully – after 15 minutes of dad jogging on top of several beers), I found some great new music to listen to whilst sifting through photos. I’ll blog more on that later, so far so good though.  The ‘mix radio’ is the heart of it though – human curated genres with something like 18 million tunes up it’s sleeve. I’ve had ‘Deep House’ on whilst blogging tonight – nice. Well done all round Lumia.

I heard the next Lumia Live will be in Liverpool – If you’re a blogger reading this from said city, get in touch!

As far as this blog goes, I’m going to draw it to a close. before I go though – a bunch of links:

My Flickr photo set of the night
Department M
Fenech-Soler
Nokia’s Lumia Live website
Twitter: #LumiaLive | @Nokia_UK