If we have learnt anything from 25 years of The Streets' music, it’s that when Mike Skinner gets off his box, things get very sketchy indeed. Opening 2025’s Little Simz-curated Meltdown season at the Festival Hall last night, the image had never been rendered more literally. “When I jump off this box,” Skinner said, teetering atop an upturned monitor, “you can all stand up and it’s gonna get a bit wild.”
Had it come to this? One of UK garage's most celebrated auteurs orchestrating visual prompts to get his usually rave-ready audience on their feet? As someone this reviewer last saw lobbing his shoes into the Ally Pally audience and then crowd-surfing out to retrieve them, Skinner was always going to feel hemmed in by the seated austerity of the Southbank's "Brutalist utopia" (although the description fits most of his beats too). He emerged to the sirens, emergency lights, operatic wails and synth-goth strings of Turn the Page in chatty but warily reverent mood: “I imagine this is what it’s like being in Hamilton,” he said as the theatrical setting hit home, “we should be watching a classical concert.” As days in the life of geezers go, this was a proud but imposing one.
