Has anyone else been to a gig at the St Nicholas Centre? I can remember when the graveyard of that church was a hive of drinking, smoking, skateboarding youths and general partaking of the illicit pleasures.

Now the St Nicholas is a ‘multi-purpose events and conferencing centre’, it is an excellent venue for gigs, not least because of its useful middling size, but also due to it being a church and which adds a churchy atmosphere – if Salem ever came to Ipswich this would be first on their list.

However I got the feeling, understandably, that the diocese are keen not to see a revival of Cromwell square’s former, less than Christian usages and that probably rules out occult referencing slo-mo crunk heretics like Salem.

Luckily, on Saturday night (Feb 26) it wasn’t Salem but DJ Cheeba performing – Ninja Tune’s AV-DJ - in an event organised by Attitiude Inc. clothing.

Pikey Esquire and DJ Jimmy Green laid the foundations with typically tight sets, but then this is the minimum we have come to expect from two hip hop stalwarts. I’m going to have to demand juggling next time if the quality control is this consistent.

DJ Cheeba’s melding of scratch DJing with syncronized video clips was technically very impressive: the visuals did complement the audio and added value to the experience rather than detracting, which is an easy trap to fall in when operating something this ambitious. DJ Yoda, a leading proponent of this style, has a habit of falling into gimmickry - fine as a spectacle but the music ultimately becomes a secondary element. Not so here, Cheeba built a balanced set from backpackerish hip hop - Beastie Boys’ Bodymoving stood out - to higher tempos and harder styles. Some dubstep appeared without making a huge impression but the jungle did; there’s no bad place to hear Ganja Kru’s Super Sharp Shooters, in church is one of the best. SN