Astoria II: This is London!!

165 Charing Cross Road, london WC2H 0EL

One of the very few things I may have missing since I arrived to London has been a place I could say: uau! I´ve been in great pubs, great clubs, and great venues, but... not that one you can be absolutely sure it will be a cracker that night you need to pary hard.

Last Saturday I did :D. It´s name is Astoria (II).

Astoria, in Soho, is one of the most famous clubs/venues in London. Great for it´s concerts and for it´s G-A-Y Nights, my brother told me once the place was quite too gay for my taste. And I do trust my bro in these kind of pieces of advice, you know... so it have been loads and loads of times I´ve gone through the door, thinking it was such a pity that such a great place had to bee so overwhelmingly gay too. Astoria II came as the perfect solution.

The venue, next to the original Astoria, has a main room where concerts take place. It is a fairly big one, with a sound quality quite good, at least for my not-expert-at-all taste. The first floor, surrounding the main one, has open spaces where you can watch the concert from. And around that, a pretty big bar with bloody good music, at least the last weekend (Prodigy, Daft Punk and that kind of stuff).

The place was formerly known as Mean Fiddler, and both Astoria and Astoria II can be joined for special events. Both were supposed to be converted in flats, offices, shops, etc. in order to cash in on the Olympic Games in 2012. As there is a housing bubble burst here as in Spain, it is not quite clear what the future for both venues is... as a new train station is also planned in the area. But stop talking about the future, let´s talk present tense...

It is very true that the reason I was so positively surprised with the venue had very likely quite a lot to do with the gig I had the chance to enjoy. From a boring night, and a 'I´ve got a friend who´s going to a gig in Astoria II, anybody wanna join?' (by Victor), to one of the best bands I've ever seen performing live: Holy Fuck (that's not how I felt, it's the name of the band indeed :)). Just a live performance:



Those guys are really good. They are something between Radiohead and Massive Attack (more of the latter than of the former), and for just 10 pounds gave a great show. I´ll go to watch them again as soon as I´ll have the opportunity. By the mean time, buy or download their two cds if you have the chance. You will not regret it.

Astoria II is not just the live bands, though. There is a great mood, scotch is just 2 quid per single (yeah, it is quite an unknown brand the one they hit you with, but, mate... 2 quid in London!), you can go out and inside again without queuing (quite useful if you friends go for a fag), and, as I said, DJ music is great too.

Problems? Well, a can of beer is 3.60, quite expensive. And single scotch in a preposterously small glass makes easy to spend loads and loads of cash in here. No credit/debit card accepted, and the cash machine inside broken (that was a pain in the ass, indeed). Not perfect, then. But close... quite close... and Millencolin are playing there in a couple of weeks. Difficult to say no!