GIG REVIEW: Beat Assailant @ Jazz Cafe, London 28 November 2008

Originally posted 4 December 2008:

After interviewing Beat Assailant before his show at Jazz Cafe, The Bitch caught the gig too. What a dedicated little trooper she is. Here's what she thought of it;

Mr Assailant made The Bitch go weak at the knees, so she decided to stay, see the show and top-up her now extremely low alcohol levels.

By the time Mr. Assailant hit the stage, The Bitch was well and truly smitten, for such a small guy Mr. Assailant has a massive amount of energy and presence. For those of you who are just reading this to look busy and important and have never heard of Beat Assailant, he is a hip-hop artist (you clearly weren't reading the interview if you didn't know that - go back and read it again!) who plays with a live nine piece band, including a DJ and saxophonists, trumpets, flutes, actually fairly reminiscent of a jazz band, but still maintaining the traditional hip-hop aesthetic, with a funky jazzy edge.

To pigeon hole him, The Bitch may disagree with the hip-hop genre and move him to something more along the lines of alternative indie, his sound reminds The Bitch of Amp Fiddler, TV on The Radio, or other similar bands along those lines, just more upbeat, fresher, funkier and edgier...

Beat Assailant played a great set, mostly tracks from Imperial Pressure, and a wicked medley of classic hip-hop tracks with a Beat Assailant twist, with amazing enthusiasm and an apparent disregard for the lack of crowd. The Bitch wishes to congratulate him on his fine ignoring of the embarrassing middle aged white man standing right at the front doing some sort of strange "hip-hop" finger point dance, and his equally strange and embarrassing "semi-goth" girlfriend who was doing some strange spinning impressionistic dance. The band performed well together, all the members putting in just as much as Beat Assailant himself, and all seeming to really enjoy themselves.

The venue was disappointingly quiet, there did not seem to be many who were here just to see Beat Assailant perform, the only real fans that The Bitch could pinpoint were a group of six girls who seemed to be celebrating a birthday party sitting on the mezzanine (their fashionable sky-scraper heels did not allow standing or dancing for long periods of time, so they were confined to the mezzanine with the seating area).

The Bitch even nearly got into a fight outside with a guy who was so drunk that he could barely string a sentence together, who was slagging the band off to his lady friend, who seemingly had not realised that prints made her look a hell of a lot wider than she actually was, saying that he and his mates were tighter and had energy when they just got together and jammed...Clearly he was wearing the beer-headphones when their so-called band got together, he probably bought them on a 2-4-1 deal when he bought the beer goggles he was wearing when he met his lady friend.

To sum up, Beat Assailant is a talented guy, he is constantly touring, and constantly promoting himself, with the aid of a really good management team, he could become highly successful, he has, in The Bitch's eyes mass appeal, those who are not into hip-hop could listen to his music and really enjoy it, I think Beat Assailants music could shock people, for rap, it is much more chilled out, than people may expect, this is truly Pop-Hop at its finest.

If you want to read the interview with Beat Assailant just click here.

The Bitch