REVIEW: Pitched Up – Birthdays, Dalston 04.06.15

Pitched Up, the monthly club night run by BBC Radio 1/1Xtra DJ Target and grime legend Danny Weed returned to East London venue Birthdays for their June event and as always brought with them some of the best urban entertainment you’ll see anywhere on a Thursday night.Pitched-Up-4-June

Setting the night off to a brilliant start, vocalist Amber Simone performed a handful of tracks to show off her considerable talent. Joined by her guitarist, she certainly made the most of having the opportunity to grace the Pitched Up stage and will have won herself a number of new fans after putting on an honest and passionate performance.

As the night’s entertainment isn’t just about vocalists/rappers performing on stage, next up was Dutch DJ Sir OJ, who’s signed to Pitched Up’s label and he provided a soundtrack of upbeat tunes, including some SLOP tracks (a genre that he’s invented which fits somewhere between Hip Hop and House) that saw a dancefloor form around the DJ booth as the crowd revelled in this new sound.

Essex rapper Potter Payper then took to the stage and tore the roof off with his fiercly slick and hard-hitting bars captivating the crowd and inciting the wall of bodies gathered at the front of the stage to jump around as he demonstrated just why he is so highly thought of within the UK scene, performing a number of tracks including a superb live performance of recent track ‘MIA’.

BBC 1Xtra’s DJ Cable who went back to back with Target on the decks then got into some hard Hip Hop selecting the likes of Dipset, Fetty Wap and Kid Ink, all after Target had whipped up a frenzy by playing some classic grime tracks including ‘Been Doing This’ by Big H, Meridian Dan, Flirta D & Footsie which had the crowd going mental and was arguably the biggest reload of the night.

Topping off the night, headline act South London rap collective Section Boyz swarmed the stage and put on a hugely captivating show, with the highlight being their huge track from earlier this year ‘Trapping Ain’t Dead’, which saw the majority of the crowd reciting the words bar for bar. The togetherness of the group was on show from the off as they huddled around each other on stage and joined the crowd in reciting each others verses.

Having acquired huge amounts of fans over the past few years and millions of YouTube views in the process, Section Boyz are easily one of the biggest rap groups in the UK at the moment and with acts like Krept and Konan gaining more and more mainstream media attention, there’s no reason why these guys can’t be the next rap act to break through.

With the next Pitched Up event scheduled for Thursday 2nd July, make sure you mark it in your calendars now as this night is an essential club night every month. Bringing the best new music, DJ’s and live performances, this is East London’s premiere monthly midweek place to be, so make sure you get down there.

Matt Tarr
@MattTarrJourno

Matt Tarr

Matt Tarr

Urban Music Editor
With grime and hip hop being major influences on him growing up in South East London, Matt's passion is urban music but over the years he has gathered a hugely diverse taste, ranging from Wiley to The Smiths by way of Machine Head, that has made him a very open minded individual.
Matt Tarr