Gig Review: Bilal at Deviation
It took a Bilal gig to get me into Fabric: it’s a dance music mecca, I said. I hate dance music; not meant to be, us; never gonna happen. But it’s Bilal, and here I am, at Fabric, having a main course of humble pie.
The doors opened at 9pm. Bilal hit the stage at midnight. That he didn’t arrive to a nest of grumbling sour faced Londoners was largely due to the wonderful support from Fatima and Benji B on decks; the former being a rare and exciting combination of great looks, buckets of charm, brilliant voice and exceptional song-writing skills, the latter doing what a good club DJ should do; play good party music people know. I honestly do not remember dancing that hard before a gig.
Fatima on stage (c) Ashes57
I had spotted Bilal earlier on while I was queuing; he was shorter than I thought he’d be. But on stage he seemed a giant, emerging to thunderous applause. The new song first gamble, however, gained a lukewarm response: it was midnight, and though it’ll probably be on my play-list come December, at that moment it was forgettable.
A few tunes in, Bilal regained the crowd love and visible enthusiasm with first album classic Reminisce, complete with the now-obligatory ‘This one is for Dilla!’ refrain. Not many artists can get a crowd hollering for a track off an unreleased album, but Something To Hold On To, off the never-released-album Love For Sale, was greeted by the audience like an old friend.
Bilal (c) Ashes57
I must make mention of this: Bilal is a god. That gets tossed about so often it’s losing its relevance, so let me define: the man’s stage charisma is so off the hook it’s splashing out the water and slapping fishermen in the face. He sang in this gutsy, verging on screaming way that should have wrecked his voice after an hour, but didn’t. He was so loud at one point I had to stick fingers in ears to enjoy the set properly, or maybe that was just the sound man acting silly.
White to Grey was deliciously down-tempo. An audience member heckled for Sometimes; he delivered an almost pitch perfect rendition. Towards the end he performed another new song, Levels which had the same effect on the audience as his opener, but for me -having found a live version of it off the net and played it to death- thought all my Christmases had been simultaneously blasted straight into my ears. And what did he save for an encore? Not only modern classic Soul Sister, but possibly the best cover of Led Zeppelin’s Since I’ve been Loving You, I’d ever heard, full stop.
And he was done: Nearly two hours of the finest live soul ever to grace London. TWO HOURS! Who said live music couldn’t be value for money?
