It's my third time seeing Goldfish and the first time with Alison and pretty much all the usual suspects. In other words: it was amazing! Goldfish pulled out a blinder of a set, with several of their newer collaborations (several of which I'm now temporarily addicted to and listening constantly) put alongside a number of tracks from their early albums which are personal favourites but I've never heard live before (Hold Tight!). Incredible, and the follow up DJ set b2b2b2b with Goldfish and four other groups was huge amounts of fun (even if we bailed with about 40minutes left - it was almost 2am and we were knackered!).
Printworks as a venue was a bit of an eye-opener too. I've heard a lot about it but never been before and it was a lot more organised than I had expected. Sure, this was a sold out gig, which means 3,500 people under "one" roof (apparently it tops out at 5,000 but some sections weren't open), but still having guides in position right from the nearest tube stations and a full cattle-corral style entrance system felt a bit weird. That said, it was a pretty smooth process, and extremely well managed. The actual music hall is gigantic, as you would expect, but has been designed really well. Whilst you are pretty far from the main stage even at halfway (as we were), you feel a lot closer thanks to weirdly giant set structures and clever use of perspective.
Weirder still was how incredibly easily you could hold a conversation, even stood basically underneath the 10m+ tall speaker stacks. Apparently this is due to the speakers being so large they're at <30% volume, resulting in no real noise distortion and allowing the sound to fill the room without literally filling the volume of space. If true, that's a really neat trick of physics. Goldfish didn't make full use of the light rigs either, despite a pretty great lights show, so I can only imagine what its like if someone does. Such a fun evening, I'm so happy that they're blowing up to this level as a band, and I'm very seriously considering going to SW4 in August to see them for a fourth time!
