London 9 October 2017 It’s been a few months since I last went to see a band at The Borderline, so I was somewhat shocked as I entered the venue as it seems like a totally different place. The one little bar has now been replaced by a massive long bar and an elevated standing area has been removed.
The Borderline
12 posts
London 3 September 2015 I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. Aleister Crowley It had been raining for days. Every morning for the last week I awoke to the sound of water beating against the window. All it needed was the tolling of an iron bell and the first massive chord of […]
London 22 May 2015 Fortis Green, north London. A place of fertile musical soil. Back at the turn of the Sixties, Fortis Green was the manor of brothers Ray and Dave Davies, whose combination of gifted lyricism, overdriven Vox amplifiers and almost unrivalled songwriting ability saw them take the output of their ground-breaking – although never less than highly combustible – band, The Kinks, to the pinnacle of […]
London 28 October 2014 Wow; it’s packed in here tonight, a testament to all the hard work Purson have done over the last couple years. I’ve been singing the bands praises here on Freq since the first time I reviewed them as support to Comus at this very venue. First up were Ulysses, a foot-stomping four piece with their roots firmly set in the 1970s. Their sound reminded […]
London 6 May 2014 I was hypnotized and I made a wish to be the slave of Satan. My desire was so strong that I could get easily persuaded… Let the conjurations begin! Or at the very least an evening of fine music. The steps down into the darkened caverns of The Borderline seem quite apt for an evening of occult rock and I soon took my place […]
London 15 November 2013 After some mix up on the door where I had to admit to being me twice (not sure why anyone would want or even pretend to be me), I make my way down a crowded staircase into a packed Borderline. I’d not been here since the ill fated Deviants gig a few months earlier so it was good to see the place heaving with […]
London 27 April 2013 It’s raining. It’s cold. And it’s the West bloody End. But it’s also The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing‘s biggest headline gig yet, so let’s check it the fuck out anyway. As we walk in, Reprisal are onstage, and making quite a splendid racket. Three longhairs, heads down, studiously cranking out some loud as fuck death metal riffs, while a massive […]
The Borderline, London 29 April 2012 It had been raining solid for 24 hours. The streets of London were filled with a babbling brook of water that the sodden masses had to navigate to stop them from getting drenched further and all the while more fell from the sky to dampen peoples Saturday night. As I entered The Borderline the place was already beginning to fill out early. […]
The Borderline, London 23 March 2012 The Deviants blasted out of the underground psychedelic scene in 1967. While Syd Barrett was taking the Pink Floyd into outer space and Jimi Hendrix was making his guitar wail to all the ‘foxy ladies,’ Mick Farren’s gang of urchins were singing the hymns of squat-land. With albums such as Ptoof!, Disposable and 3, the troubadours of Notting Hill sang proto-punk anthems […]
The Borderline, London 13 January 2012 “Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.” Like the spaceship in Ray Bradbury’s book about to blast its cargo to Mars, Space Ritual have a constant feel of the summer, their music warming even the coldest of winters evenings. The sense of free festivals and long warm days hangs in the air and a mystical pan […]
The Borderline London 25 February 2011 “We are the survivors, the eternal survivors……” This phrase may have crossed Nik Turner and the rest of his Space Ritual cohorts minds at some points over the years. But here they are still playing some of the best darn space rock this side of the Andromeda galaxy. Before I start reviewing the tracks played I must make a special mention about […]
The Borderline, London 9th November 1999 A night at The Borderline, a night for Americanism. We arrived too late to hear the first set, a band called Kenny Process Team, so no insights there apart from the appropriate(d) soundtrack feeling their last couple of songs gave me as I took in the setting. This venue is a strange place for my impressions of London. Done up in 1970’s […]