Michael at Helgi’s, Hackney, East London – 20th July 2024 – Sometimes very few words are needed, you were either there and you know, or you weren’t and well, you missed out on whatever it was, something about the shared feeling, the ritual, the electric, almost metronomic, not quite sludgy intensity of it all. Michael are a band, Michael play with you, they want to take you the distance, they toy with you, spar with you, they jab, they call you on, they’re not there to administer the knockout blow and end things early, they want to take you all the way, go all twelve rounds, they know they’ve got it on points, they know they’re totally on top of the situation, they know they can hot you with knockout blow at any time. We’re in Helgi’s again, Hackney, East London, the place is packed, the place is hot, the back room is drenched in red (as it always is), do love that back room (looking even better after the recent repaint).
Saturday night in July and Michael are seriously on it, there’s no leaf blowers to annoy anyone, no bad guys and everything in sounding just so right there. everything in sounding just so right on your toes, frontline hard rock. They got the room from the start, such a cold roar, the hard hard core, they kind of gallop but then no, they don’t ever gallop, they kind of do many things but then they really don’t do any of that and what they actually so is do other things, Michael are never obvious, Michael are different, they’re other, they are very (very) watchable, it isn’t just about attitude (although they have spaces of attitude) and it is difficult to pin it down and the fact they can’t be pinned down surely is to everyone’s advantage, certainly no one in here in the heat of Helgi’s backroom is complaining.
Okay, so there are some Bad Guys in here, Michael evolved out of the rather excellent Bad Guys sometime ago now, they’ve still got that feel and indeed that zeal, that threat of an eight engined Ekranoplan cruising at 500MPH, they’ve got all kinds of things going on in the their back garden and last night they had the Helgi’s crowd, besides the stag party who had accidentally wondered in, eating out out of their hands. You were either there or you weren’t, these words won’t tell you, neither will the lowlight filming in the red light of the delightfully humid sweat-drenched back room of Helgi’s. Success. (sw)
THE ORGAN 
3 responses to “ORGAN THING: Michael at Helgi’s, Hackney, East London – Michael play with you, they want to take you the distance, they spar with you, they jab, they call you on, they’re not there to administer the knockout blow and end things early, they want to take you all the way, go all twelve rounds…”
[…] 3: Michael, nothing to see here but hey, watch it anyway, it might just do you some good. Mike has a new album out, this is off it, we haven’t encountered tem since that time in the pub lover the road – Michael at Helgi’s, Hackney, East London – Michael play with you, they want to take you the dist… […]
[…] Michael – Nite Sale (Crackedankles) – Michael brood, they have a menace, an uneasy tension, Heavy Life is where it comes to the fore (is it reminding me of some TV advert from sometime somewhere, a Tonka Toy or something like that, a big metal truck that I would have needed?), it is a mean mean (mean) song, the kind of song you wouldn’t want following you home on a dark evening. So tell me about the size of crime? Nothing to see here? There is time, there will be a time, you know what to do (or maybe you don’t and anyway who cares what we say). Someone said it was darkly psychedelic, doesn’t feel like that to me, not in a musical sense anyway. Trickle back, trickle back, down to a trickle. Science. Talk talk talk, there needs to be some kind logic to this so called review. So tell me. They do like to wind it tight, tense, can’t stop, won’t drop. He is concerned, see his concern, you can watch and you can learn, he;s a figures man, that figures man, there is time, there will be a time, you’ll know what to do… Drop anchor -“Nite Salad, the second offering… One studio fire, several collapsed spinal discs, two swapped out axemen and a couple o’ kids, all dragged through a taste-battering pandemic. A seriously good bedrock recipe primed for the unwanted A-road that is Nite Salad, Michael’s second full lengther….” Ohhhh, ah, bad guys and such, Michael, one of London’s finest, they sound like Fight Club, or one of those fight clubs where men in suits go the box the crap out of each other, I imagine they have great fights in the studio, or maybe they don’t maybe they get it all out in the music, they make Me think of men in white shirts, tight ties, punching each other, they do take you the full twelve rounds, I have said that before – Michael at Helgi’s, Hackney, East London – Michael play with you, they want to take you the dist… […]
[…] most people by, we’re hear for the return of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum or Slift or Yang or Michael or those Naked Grace Missionaries in a Hackney backroom or Cardiacs (do Cardiacs need us these […]