30/8/2007 Urban Voodoo Machine @ Hoxton Bar & Kitchen

Subject	Urban Voodoo Machine @ Hoxton Bar & Kitchen
PostedDate	8/30/2007
	Down to the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen to see the Urban Voodoo Machine - a venue I think suits them well. The bar didn't suit me so well unfortunately and didn't have anything I particularly wanted to drink, so I settled for a pint of some Japanese lager - which wasn't quite as terrible as I expected. The first act of the night's four band bill was rather odd. It consisted of a seated girl playing a banjo and singing - unremarkable apart from the fact that on one side of her stood a bloke in attire that would have suited Dick Turpin, apart from the gas mask covering his face! On the singer's other side sat a girl in a ball gown - also wearing a gas mask. While the plucky singer plucked and sang away, the other two did nothing apart from stand and sit there virtually motionless holding some sort of red tape - for no apparent reason....  Second act on was Rox - a jazz singer, although I'm not quite sure exactly what 'jazz' singing entails. I enjoyed this perfomance rather more though. She was accompanied by another girl on backing vocals and a girl sitting down playing a semi-solid guitar. Rox seemed to have some decent songs, and the overall effect was quite pleasing. Although I'd never heard of her before she seemed to have a sizable following. Urban Voodoo Machine were excellent as usual. There were eight people in the band on this occasion. I've already covered the band's shows several times in past blogs, so I'm not going to repeat myself yet again here - if you don't already know what their brand of 'bourbon soaked blues' sounds like then check out the link and have a listen for yourself. Suffice to say, it was an entertaining show and there was always plenty happening onstage. The venue had filled up nicely while the previous act was on, and for a Thursday night just following a Bank Holiday and the Reading Festival the crowd was very respectable indeed. Two out of the three acts so far have been good so far even though Urban Voodoo Machine are the only one I've ever heard of - I'm told headliner Paloma Faith has a good voice though, so I'm interested to see what she is like...