Yannis Philippakis’ ‘DJ set’ at Modern Art was the worst thing I’ve ever seen

When I heard that the front-man of one of my favourite bands was set perform a DJ set in the basement of an art gallery for a fiver, I thought Christmas had come early.

An opportunity to channel my inner Ruskin student combined with some self indulgent music snobbery in a painfully edgy venue surrounded by equally self conscious reebok classic wearing officionados?

I was genuinely really excited.

On top of that, a venue opposite Camera with not too outrageously priced beers seemed like the perfect preparation for Bridge, but alas it was not meant to be.

What a tit

We arrived to the sound of drums resonating from the basement backed up by what was either some kind of post industrial tech-house or a bloke smashing a metal pole against a wall at regular intervals.

From upstairs, it was difficult tell if this was a musical event or the defence of Helm’s Deep, but at this point I didn’t care – £3.50 bottle of beer in hand, the armies of Mordor couldn’t have stopped me heading downstairs.

We found no Orcs, but instead a collection of drummers smashing the shit out of a lot of drums. Rotating between different areas, the artists (who I later found out were group ODC Drumline) played just about in time to the backing of a DJ who wasn’t even wearing headphones.

Now I don’t know if headphones are completely necessary, but at least look the part. The rotation of drummers created an interesting visual, but in all honesty it all sounded the same and it all sounded fucking awful.

Whoever had the idea of setting up a drum group, where the focus of the music is the drumming and not the ‘tune’ has something seriously wrong with them – All it did was drown out what would have been a perfectly bearable DJ set.

loads of people having loads of fun

We endured this for a good half an hour, surrounded by a strange mix of people – from try hard students telling themselves it was cooler to stay than leave to slightly sad looking mid 30s women dancing like jerky mannequins. The only thing shared by the crowd was an obsession with pretending they were having fun.

No one was fucked enough appear natural, and the music wasn’t quite loud enough to completely drown out the questioning comments circulating faster than the drummers – as vibes go, it wasn’t a particularly good one.

On top of that, the venue was half empty despite “selling out” – there can’t have been more than 100 people in a room which actually had a lot of potential as a venue. I get that there were probably licensing and safety issues, but it just looked a bit budget.

NME Award Winner & YouTube DJ

The end of the dodgy drummers was a godsend, and after a quick cig break we were ready for the main event. My hopes were not yet completely dashed; our collective faith in Foals was pulling us through.

Some of the tech guys started to clear the drums, but after 10 minutes of empty stage we began to question where/whether Yannis would be playing.

At this point someone mentioned that the guy doing the sound at the back looked spookily like our favourite Foals frontman, and at this point the penny dropped – he was playing a DJ set from the sound booth, off his laptop, quite quietly.

As the first song ended, he did the ultimate Youtube DJ trick – turning one track down as he slowly turned the next up. £5 to see a bloke play a pre drinks set, and it wasn’t even that good.

Modern art, more like modern fart

Yannis cycled through a brilliantly predictable routine of house classics, not unlike the DJ on the top floor of Bridge – but at least he can mix.

By the half way point of his set, the room was practically empty, save for the few fuckheads who had dropped for an early evening DJ Set in a fucking art gallery.

By the time he finished we were safely in Bridge, comfortable in the knowledge that Anuba was a known quantity where we would struggle to spend more than the amount we had just wasted on two hours of drums and dickheads.

Yannis, if you read this, please Google ‘Virtual DJ’, or just stick to guitar music.