Nizlopi at The Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth
After a seven and a half years, a second album, dissolution and reformation of the band not to mention a world tour! Finally, the delightful duo that is Nizlopi returns once again to Southsea’s best kept secret, the Wedgewood Rooms!
Nizlopi smashed into the music scene 10 years ago in 2004 by releasing their first album in early February, ‘Half These Songs Are About You’ with FDM Records. Their first big single in their album was the influential, iconic and timeless classic ‘JCB Song’. The song was released in early 2005, but not reaching full recognition until later on that year when it was re-released in a promotion campaign with their upcoming album. After a week of hype and media praise, the JCB song skyrocketed to reach number one in a week of being back in the charts.
The Nizlopi team consists of the extremely energetic front man Luke Concannon and his beat boxing double bass sidekick John Parker, who incidentally rocked the Wedge to its very foundations on Sunday the 23rd of November 2014, with a fantastic display of soulful acoustic vibes. The duo like always took away the usual gig demographics and threw them in the trash! By playing most of the set in the middle of the audience with no mic, no tech just raw acoustic talent! However simplistic and primitive this approach to an audience was it created a unique and soulful atmosphere where the rooms sole focus was on the two men in front of them not the Facebook notification buzzing in their pockets.
To the crowds jubilation the the guys decided to preform some their all time classics from their 2004 album such as, Freedom, Girls & JCB, to the delightful squeals from some of the audience members. Luke’s soulful hippy-esk nature as a front man drove him into the crowd on more then one occasion when he felt that he wasn’t getting enough crowd involvement and recognition; hugging, singing too and giving out high fives to the audience to inject a adrenalin shot of glee.
Being in the music scene for well over a decade nobody can take away the fact that Luke Concannon is a fantastic front man, he radiates energy and clearly looks very at home on stage behind a microphone with a guitar strapped to his shoulder. Between songs he often told stories behind the creation of many of Nizlopi’s prolific songs such as JCB, Glastonbury and (the meeting of) Helen. Almost making the gig a glorified jam session between the two men, often improvising and remixing songs into their set list such as R. Kelly, Whitney Houston & KRS’ all time classic ‘Sound Of The Police’ .
We were all very excited to have seen this fantastic band play on our Southsea shores. We hope to see the two men return back to Portsmouth and bless us with their music again soon!
Check out inSYNC’S phone interview with Nizlopi’s John Parker on YouTube and our website very soon!
