Bendy Toy - Live - The Barfly, Camden, Oct 9th




We went down to the Barfly in Camden on Tuesday to see Bendy Toy do a live set... The Barfly being the Monarch on Chalk farm road, a well known London venue most London muso's have played at some time, and which has seen the likes of Coldplay Travis, Stereophonics, Badly Drawn Boy, Feeder, Ash, Wheatus etc grace it's stage over the years... (http://www.barflyclub.com/Camden/index.htm)

I was quite surprised to see the gear when he setup, it never occured to me to think what gear Bendy Toy used, and i hadn't checked beforehand... You get so used to reading on tech websites & in mag's about latest model gear that even tho this site itself advocates older budget gear use-age you tend to forget that people DO actualy use this kind of kit to superb effect... I was impressed therefore to see a really diverse hardcore streetlevel setup & more budget in choice of gear than the Bendy Toy sound belies... it was frontline stuff...

Casio FZ1, Jen SX1000 monosynth, a jx3p and a rack containing Vintage-Keys, basstation_1 rack & midiverb... All that wired thru an allen & heath racked mixer from which he was drawing a stereo monitor feed on cans for setup, prior to chucking the stereo master feed out to a stagebox to the engineer & FOH.

Thus the engineer prolly had a stereo image only to mix and given that the sound was very good, (it's a good sound at that venue tho anyways for it's size)... The set was therefore crispy & clear with good thundering bass that came in and out adding lot's of dynamic's to the material...



The gear












A good set, albeit to a small venue, but as we watched we all agreed.. Put him in a heaving party or a festival with a decent light show and it'd go clear... The set was a seamless transition between numbers, and this was using the Casio FZ sequencer scratchpad for the main sequencer too!!.... amazingly smooth set therefore, and a real example to beginers that you can do a blinding set with a low budget sampler. The casio's characteristic clear digital filters & 16 bit sound was punchy yet with some character & edge... nice sound!!.....

All in all, BT is an excellent example to newbies... limited cost gear + talent.. he's worked out & honed an impactful set which he can move around in transport and represent live, he's got flyers printed which are all round the street and inside the venue featuring his striking logo and web address.. He's done a quality CD product, looks pro, everything sorted with copyright & publishing etc... and all sorts of things are happening to him. He told me in the dressing room afterwards that since the 'T in the Park' gigs he'd had alot of interest & offers.... We want a track of his for the firt Dancetech CD release as well...

yup... a good lesson for newbies on pretty much the aspirations of most of them, to get a cd out, play some gigs, make some tunes people move to, and go from there... check him out.. here's some gig snaps.....

Bendy Toy is Stephen Evans who hails from Scotland where he recently played the annual 'T In The Park' festival. He's listed under dancetech Artists in music section where you can stream some of his tracks in lo-fi.

Click to Load Bendy Toy Dancetech page

You can get his 'Fantastic Chicken' EP and find out more at his own site: www.bendytoy.com - see link below