Valeras Presents #1
- Grace Patey
- May 29, 2017
- 3 min read
Valeras are all guns blazing at the moment with release of their debut EP Knives & Flowers and the start of their very own exciting nights, Valeras Presents. We hit the town for the first of many of these nights which also happened to be lead Rose's birthday bash. I had a quick chat with Rose, (bass and vocals) before it all kicked off:
As this is the first gig being Valeras, how would you describe the new sound?
That's really tough. I think our sound has really changed a lot from our Area 52, it's like, I don't know, I couldn't really say what genre it is, but I would say mostly a bit more rocky really. It's got lot of R&B little things in there somewhere.
So this is Valeras Presents #1, what's going to happen in the next one?
So we've got a really really good line up, we're so excited to share that with everyone. For our next one, Valeras Presents #2, I'm not gunna announce who it is yet, secret, but I can say it's called the dream team because the bands are so cool, we're big fans of the band
Should we expect some casual head bopping tonight or some pits?
We should definitely, yeah, yeah there's gunna be a lot of head bopping somewhere, definitely from us.
Which is your personal favourite from the EP?
I think it's definitely Colour Me actually, or maybe Knives & Flowers but Colour Me is like our newest one
And finally what's the plan now? Is there any festivals, gigs, what's occurring?
Yeah we just announced we're going to support Emma Blackery on tour which is our first tour ever which is really exciting and yeah we're really looking forward to that next, we've got all the dates up [online].
The lovely gentlemen of The Makarov Scheme (3 friends doing kinda punk things) kicked off the party and with a bit of encouragement from the band the moshing quickly commenced. There was effort and there was passion, you could tell they really wanted to be there and the crowd really got into it. My 14 year old pop-punk loving self may have appreciated them more but nonetheless these guys were pretty cool and I'd happily see them again and again.
You can listen to their balls deep punk rock on their bandcamp.
Bloxx were next to grace the stage and signed to Chess Club Records this lot are set to follow in the footsteps of Wolf Alice and Sundara Karma. These guys are deep and dirty and its clear they've spent a lot of time on these songs and it's time well spent. Perhaps the wrong order for the line up though, Bloxx are dramatically calmer than The Marakov Scheme and I think it would have made more sense to build up the intensity with each band, but otherwise perfect. Borderline indie-pop at times, smooth and sexy at others these guys are varied and I love it. Their newest release You was a crowd favourite, but the whole set was very well received.
And finally Valeras. Had there been some pink balloons and a bigger disco ball this would have been my favourite gig to date. With a couple of crowd surfers and a lot of love and support Valeras really got the night going. This was a beautiful example of a tight-knit Reading gig and if you weren't there I pity you. Rose's vocals were as powerful as recordings, the energy was through the roof, harmonies were on point, Ashes brought memories flooding back to their set at Reading Festival last summer. I was welling up at how magical this was.
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Photos courtesy of Ryan Manning.
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