My Italian friend, Luca had a spare ticket to see a band from his home country called Subsonica at Kentish Town’s The Forum on Wednesday night. It’s probably the first time that a thousand or so Italians descended upon the area and, at least, the first time I’ve been to a concert with so many of them. I couldn’t help but notice several differences in the crowd such as when, in the early part of the evening, heaps of people sat themselves down on the ground near the stage (apparently it’s a habit when waiting for a concert to start on all those lovely summer evenings). I always find that strange since most venues in the UK have seen more spilt beer, empty plastic cups and (formerly) cigarette butts than they had the underside of people attending.

People also didn’t seem to have any difficult pushing their way in, or out, of the crowd without so much an an ‘excuse me’. It didn’t really bother me, with the only noticeable impact being that I was slowly moved away from the front of stage by the audience as the more energetic people shoved their way to the front. I think I ended up at least a metre or two behind where I was standing by the end of the night. This may sound stereotypical, but even being moved back, I was still amazed that I had a pretty good view of the stage since most people were not significantly taller than me for once!

It was obvious that Subsonica meant business and that they only wanted to play for the audience – they didn’t have a support act and played a decent set of around an hour and a half. I listened briefly to their stuff on LastFm, although I can’t say I recognised any of the tracks they played. Either way, most of the people seemed to know a lot of their lyrics and jumped and danced alongside their upbeat riffs. Interestingly I found they drifted back and forth between different genres, and yet it all seemed to work out. They pulled out some trip hop stuff, sounds I’d classify more jungle, some pop rock and dance tracks and even a ballad or two throughout the night.

After a bit of confusion about whether or not they should perform an encore (it’s one of those things that don’t really happen in Italy apparently), they came back on stage obviously unprepared asking the audience and talking amongst themselves about which songs to play. They played probably two or three more songs before the lights came on one more time, though this time signalling the end of the evening.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10