A Livest from an Acid Master
Last night, on Friday 17th April 2026, I went to The Old Blue Last in Shoreditch, London to witness a liveset of Andy Jenkinson aka Ceephax Acid Crew. And holy fucking shit was it good.
To give a bit of context, i have developed a bit of a habit of leaving gigs before the headline act comes on, or 10 minutes into their set, because I’m just so fucking tired by then. It’s all just a bit too late for me numsayn?
So after going to see Akira in 4k at the Odeon in Leicester Square (also AMAZING – another article for that methinks) I made my way to Old Street on the Northern Line and walked down to The Old Blue Last, arriving at 11pm just as the gig was about to start.
Went in to the busy pub full of young people, wondering if they’d search me and find an open bag of jelly tots from the cinema and think it was drugs and take them… they did search me but they didn’t find the jelly tots lol. Headed to the door to the upstairs venue part where the gig was. Security guard was there and said gig wasn’t on yet. I thought oh great, i have to stand around this hot sweaty bright weird pub for a while. 2 other people were also waiting for the gig-door to open.
After around 10 mins a guy who was standing beside the downstairs DJ setup said to me, you can go up you know. And I said but that guy says no. So the beside-the-DJ guy and the security guy exchanged some words and bingo, up we went. Into the much cooler (as in cooler temperature), darker, and less crowded upstairs room where DJ Adam Curtain was playing bangin and quirky acid tracks.
There was a row of pew-like seats along the side so I sat and listened to the tunes for a while. Slowly the place started filling up.
The DJ was obviously very good despite some technical issues which meant the needle was skipping around a bit, but after it happened a couple of times they sorted it out and it didn’t happen any more.
He was playing track after track of techno of the warm, acidic, quirky, wonky, and sometimes jazzy variety. All of it was up my street. He was doing that thing the best DJs do; turning his selection of records into a set that represented HIM. It was a definite sound he had, everything mixed seemlessly together. A perfect warm up set for Ceephax.
Tiredness… but Hanging On To Hear Ceephax
However, despite the tunes being great and the soundsystem being great, despite having a dance and enjoying the atmosphere… as the placed filled up I found myself questioning whether I would stay to see Ceephax. I didn’t know what time he’d start at. I hoped it was 12.30. 12.30 came and went. I hoped it would be 1am. Nope. Time went slowly. I didn’t think I could bother hanging on until 2am, it would just be too much. I was there on my own and it’s always easier to just go home if you’re there on your own. Thinking about just going to sleep… aaaahhhhh sleeeeeeeep. niiiiiiice.
Sometime around 1.15 the stage on the opposite side of the room with Ceephax’s set up started lighting up and since I was dancing at the back of the room from the DJ, I was now near the very front of the room for Ceephax. He went up on stage and started taking bubble wrapped gear out of a suitcase and adding it to the gear already set up on the stage. He put on a captains hat and some weird looking glasses. The feeling in the room started shifting, the excitement was palpable. As Adam Curtain played his last few tunes (including Cobblestone Jazz “Dump Truck” which sounded incredible), the crowd turned around to face the stage.
Ceephax’s set up was a sequencer/sampler (I think it was a Yamaha RS-7000), a mixing desk, couple of acid boxes i couldn’t see (prob a tb303) and a Roland TR8.
The mix between the last DJ track and his first live track was the smoothest I’ve ever heard! He mixed his track into the last track, matching the tempo by tapping the tempo into his Yamaha RS7000 by hand. Class stuff. This was his first track:
After the seamless mix into his liveset, Ceephax went into some extremely tasty acid house with chord progressions and melodies which sounded like this:
and the thing about hearing this kind of liveset is that it has all the energy of a live performance (because it IS live – you can see and hear that he is tweaking everything live, doing off the cuff drum switch ups and fx and whatnot) AND all the bangingness of a DJ set all in one.
My tiredness completely left and I was energised, and I didn’t leave the spot I was dancing in until the gig was over at 3am. Ceephax played an hour and 15 minutes of a wide variety of live techno, house and acid with many variations of his sound… warm and melodic and banging.
Towards the end of the night it started leaning towards a kind of sea-shanty acid that only Ceephax can do…
End of the Night
He really has a very musical take on acid music – something I tried to do myself on records like Pin Row Acid EP – but Ceephax has taken it to another realm. It’s Detroit, but it’s London, it’s unique, it’s Rephlex and Aphex and Luke Vibert and it’s none of those things, it’s uniquely Ceephax Acid Crew. Truly a legend of acid music.
So glad I’ve got to witness one of his famous livesets! And The Old Blue Last in Shoreditch was a brilliant place to see it. Great crowd, great night.
I left and walked back to Old Street cause I thought I could get one of the night trains that run Friday and Saturday nights in London but Old Street was shut, that’s not one of the stations you can use for a night train. Doh. Got an Uber instead and it was £30, ouch.
Here’s one more of Ceephax’s last tunes, he went all out on a kind of Toccata and Fugue, Bach style acid. Anyone else doing this would make it sound cheesy but Ceephax can do whatever he wants and it’s not cheesy, it’s cheeky and fun. Can’t wait until the next set!
Hey, congrats, you read until the very end!
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