#vent 414

The festival actually started on the Thursday, another unique sales pitch at the time.  I reckon a dozen of us got the train up together, a sort of inflated group from that that had gone to see Compulsion a few weeks before.  A bus ride from Stratford station and we were on site. There was nothing booked on the main stage that day, and the only band we actually saw were Urban Species, a godawful…

Vent 414

Of recent weeks in my frequent trawling around the dusty corners of the Internet looking for music both new and old, there's been a few instances where something I remember from years back simply cannot be found for neither love nor money to buy and download in digital format.

Leaving aside the issue of 'free' downloading for now, 'Option 2' has finally been reached and I have submitted to the very 20th century practice of buying those shiny circular things called CDs - but in order to keep things in a modern, online kind of way, acquired via Amazon of course.

But I digress, top of my list of music to be found in one way or another was the only released album by Vent 414 - which was back in 1996. Last week my letterbox was made happy by the arrival of one of the aforementioned shiny round things, which quite unsurprisingly is a pretty cracking LP.

Vent 414 - Vent 414 by Grim Styles on Grooveshark

And now for the History Lesson: Vent 414 were formed when Miles Hunt split from The Wonder Stuff and teamed up with Morgan Nicholls, the utterly exceptional bass player from the Senseless Things and Pete Howard, powerhouse drummer from EAT and at times, The Clash. As a three-piece, the only album was recorded at Abbey Road with Steve Albini at the desk. Just to ratchet up the uber-alt/indie credentials, live gigs would see the band getting filled out with the guitarwork of Billy Duffy from The Cult... Yes, Ladles and Gentlespoons, back in '96 it honestly couldn't get much better than that.

My opinion after a week of having it stuck on repeat? Much of the album really puts me in mind of Foo Fighters, or Queens of the Stone Age but oddly, the Foo's how they sound now, not how they sounded back in 1996... The only thing that lets it down slightly is the mix levels, Nicholls is an absolutely genius bassplayer - why is he not up higher in the mix?

Vent 414 - Fixer