Invada Invasion, a days worth of music, film and art curated by Invada Record's label boss and Portishead member Geoff Barrow set at Bristol's legendary Colston Hall venue, really intrigued me and with a lineup featuring rare performances from bands such as Italian noise trio Zu, Crippled Black Phoenix and Team Brick, not to mention two of the best live bands you will ever see, Mogwai and Fuck Buttons and artwork from some brilliant artists and designers such as Andy Council I felt it would be too good to miss.
Colston Halls which has recently been extended, adding a brand new 30 million pound building onto the existing structure was a great place to check out such a diverse lineup, as soon as we walked in we were greeted with music as one of the stages was set up in the foyer, after sampling the delights of what Bristol had to offer on the Friday we turned up just in time to see local three piece Thought Forms take the stage and blow the minds of everyone watching. Their heavy instrumental post rock proved to be one of the best opening acts for a festival I have ever seen, their loud and very epic sound managed to entice crowds of people three floors up. I hope to see a lot more of these guys as they really put on a brilliant show.
Next onto the main stage which saw a collaborative effort between a number of local bands and the Emerald Ensamble Orchestra who stayed on stage throughout the sets of Team Brick, Joe Volk and Crippled Black Phoenix. We caught up whilst Joe Volk was running through a number of his solo acoustic numbers, aided quite stunningly by the Orchestra but things really took off when Volk was joined onstage by Crippled Black Phoenix and Dominic Aitchinson of Mogwai who played bass on CBP'S last album. Playing through material from their recent success '200 Tonnes of Bad Luck' they wowed the crowd with their Pink Floyd esq sound and with the orchestra subtly adding even more depth to their sound this proved quite special.
Headliners Mogwai, of course proved to be band of the night, you could feel the anticipation from the crowd before they came on, this was obviously the band most people had come especially to see. They eased their way on stage playing the slow classic 'May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door' which was an odd song to start with but nevertheless went down a treat. The set comprised of songs from the latter part of their career with highlights including 'Scotlands Shame' and 'I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead' from their latest album The Hawk Is Howling sounding loud as ever, the older songs included the beautiful 'Cody' and 'Helicon 2' which is quite honestly one of the best songs you will ever hear live. Mogwai are without a doubt one of my favourite bands so maybe I'm a little biased but as always this was a fantastic show, ending with Batcat which was so loud it hurt.
The final band of the evening were Fuck Buttons back in the foyer, coming out with new material from their eagerly anticipated second album Tarot Sport which went down an absolute treat, with most of the material sounding a little more accessible than the last, more emphasis on electro and beats than the truly amazing debut 'Street Horrsing.' They were probably the only band on the night to get the crowd dancing playing an intense set which seemed to fly by. Playing after Mogwai is probably one of the toughest jobs in the industry but if there was one band who could follow them, it would be Fuck Buttons.
Invada Invasion is one of those events that will always attract the proper music fans (I mean I ended up in a conversation with a guy wearing a Slint hoody, where else on earth would that happen?) its events like this that are purely about the music and arts, it was well worth the trip down the M4.
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