Dreaming In Paradise

Friday 9th December: There was a bit of a theme running through the gigs I attended this week. Previous headliners, Amplifier and The Pineapple Thief are both bands that, until this week, I hadn’t heard anything by but that I had read about in Prog magazine. The same is true of tonight’s support act – Also Eden.

Many years ago, when I was young(er) and (even more) musically naive, I dismissed Marillion as Genesis wannabes. I suspect that, if Also Eden had been around then, I may have dismissed them as Marillion wannabes. Thankfully, my tastes have matured since then and I can appreciate both bands for what they are. Also Eden play a more eighties orientated style of prog, but with enough modern influence to allow them to to pick a somewhat rocky but still atmospheric set for tonight’s gig, to fit in a bit more with the headliners. Rich Harding, still on crutches off-stage and barely mobile on-stage after what I believe was a near-fatal motorbike accident, has more than a passing vocal resemblance to Fish and the band, as a whole, have a more traditional line-up (guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and vocalist) than the others mentioned above. From what I remember, most of the set came from this year’s superb (I can say that now that I’ve had a chance to listen to it) release – Think Of The Children – with the title track providing an excellent opener with powerful lyrics. Oversight contains some great guitar work and showed that, in some ways, prog can defined as “heavy metal with added keyboards while 1949 used those keyboards to eerie effect. Distortion Field, released as a free download and with vocals recorded by Rich whilst sitting on a bed on in his living room (recovering from the crash, presumably) showed influences from another of my favourite bands, Rush. The set ended with the epic, three-part Reality Cheque, taken from the Differences As Light E.P. The track started out a lot slower, but no less powerfully, than the rest of the set before building to a stunning climax and convincing me (not a fan of the format at all) to add the E.P. to my purchases that night. I have liked all the prog bands I have seen this week, but I have to say that Also Eden, based on this performance are my favourite of the three.

Also Eden were in York in a reverse line-up of their album launch gigs, which saw them supported by Morpheus Rising. I have been a fan of the Morphs (as Also Eden referred to them) since I first saw them two and a half years ago and they have gone from strength to strength since then, even overcoming the departure of original vocalist Graeme Tennick earlier this year. His replacement is, in some opinions (even, apparently, Graeme’s), even better and he seems to be growing in the role with each performance. I have made no secret of the fact that I have been looking forward to tonight’s gig for some time, as it is the launch of the band’s long-awaited debut album – Let The Sleeper Awake. What can I say about tonight’s performance that I haven’t said about previous ones? Not much, being honest, as I’ve gushed about them a lot in the past. The truth is that their brand of heavy metal is what I originally started listening to when I first properly got into music back in my teens. My one Thin Lizzy and handful of Iron Maiden CDs may not be played as much as some from my collection and the likes of Saxon may not be represented at all but Morpheus Rising could well have single-handedly rekindled my interest in that particular style of music. If anything, tonight’s performance was the most relaxed I have seen them play, almost as if a weight had been lifted from them. One fellow member of the audience commented that it was the best he had seen from them. The only complaint I would have is that the songs, as good as they are, are getting a bit familiar now. Time to start work on some new material, maybe? Having said that, I (obviously) bought the album and I have barely stopped playing it since. Familiar, perhaps, but still very, very good.

Don’t Stop Thief!

Wednesday 7th December: It seems slightly incredible to me that, in a week when three highly regarded prog acts are playing headline acts in York, two of them are scheduled to clash. Surely such clashes end up taking money away from both venues. Tonight saw Fish playing the Duchess while the slightly less “mainstream” The Pineapple Thief are a matter of yards away at Fibbers. For me, having seen (and enjoyed) Fish last year, the choice was to see a band I hadn’t had the opportunity to see before and while there were people in the audience who were sporting Amplifier T-shirts from the previous night’s gig at The Duchess – Amplifier and Pineapple Thief being closer in sound than Pineapple Thief and Fish – there must surely have been people who chose to see the arguably(?) bigger name.

Tonight’s openers were Playing The Pilot, a young local band with that wonderfully generic label of “alternative/indie/rock”. The high-slung guitars had Roj worried and, being honest, the band seemed a little out of place on tonight’s bill. At least vocalist Kat had a bit of stage presence and an engaging smile whenever their own fans, dancing at the front, cheered and showed their appreciation. Vocally, Kat sounded very like Lily Allen, with that sort of Cockney-accented spoken style of singing and a propensity for extending words by increasing their vowel count (if you see what I m-e-e-e-an…) but, when she did sing, she had a pleasant enough voice. Musically, it was all a bit generic and samey. In fact it was only with the fourth song of the set that I noticed the beginnings of a bit of variation. The mix sounded a little wrong as well – most of the guitar was muffled behind a very loud bass. Having said all that, I’ve certainly seen worse support bands and this one got a better reception than some who don’t quite fit the bill. At the end of their set the band left the stage to generous applause from the whole audience, perhaps showing that prog fans aren’t necessarily as narrow-minded musically as they can sometimes be portrayed.

Of course, calling prog fans “narrow-minded” opens up a minefield in itself. Gone are the days when you could easily point to a band and label them as “progressive rock”. In my day, it was the likes of Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes and most people can see similarities between them. These days prog rock has, ahem, moved on and the sub-labels sometimes read like a secondary school timetable, with Space and Kraut Rocks sitting alongside Math Rock and Art Rock. All we need to invent is Biology Rock, Frog Rock (sorry, couldn’t resist) and Free Period Rock and we’ll have ourselves an A-Level curriculum. These days prog-rock can be all but indistinguishable from its own roots. And that is the case with The Pineapple Thief. While they are similar to what is considered modern prog bands – one that immediately sprang to my mind was Porcupine Tree – you would never get them mixed up with any of the bands mentioned above. Their’s is, for the most part, a heavier, darker sound, sometimes mixed with an occasionally annoying electronic pseudo-dance beat provided by one of Steve Kitch’s laptops (I think I saw two nestled in with his keyboards).

As with Amplifier the night before, I hadn’t heard any of the Thief’s output before tonight. I reasonably certain that the set started with three song from the highly regarded 2010 album Someone Here Is Missing. These consisted of moments of calm interspersed with intense activity Then, vocalist, guitarist and founder Bruce Soord announced that they would be playing new material which was currently being worked on for a new release next year. The first of these, receiving its world debut tonight, was introduced as the heaviest song on the next album, consisted in parts of what I can only describe as “grinding” keyboard playing, with Kitch producing sounds you wouldn’t normally associate with keyboards before changing to a more symphonic style of playing. The next song, also a new one, was a quieter, acoustic number which showed a nice variation and also allowed the keyboards to take more prominence.

…and it was there that I stopped taking notes and allowed myself to become immersed in the superb music - a set containing a mixture of old and new songs all thoroughly entertaining and ending with an epic, nearly fifteen minute encore. Soord is an energetic frontman and both his guitar-playing and vocals were superb. In what seems to be the way of keyboard players, Kitch is the quiet, almost studious, man of the band and was often seen studying laptop screens while playing (I’m fairly certain I saw him reading the music for some of the songs – maybe they are so new that he hasn’t learned it yet…). The rhythm section of Keith Harrison (drums) and Jon Sykes provided a solid backdrop for the set, with the latter also providing backing vocals. Overall, it was a very tight performance and I really hope that the band returns to York in the future. Maybe Sykes being a local lad will help. Inevitably, I visited the merchandise table after the gig and treated myself to a couple of CDs. 

Furious And Loud

Tuesday 6th December: “Uh-oh, here we go again,” was pretty much my first thought tonight. I had arrived at The Duchess ten minutes after the doors would normally open to find a “crowd” of just half a dozen people still standing outside in the cold, damp evening. To make matters even more worrying, one of them seemed to only be there to hand out flyers for a music shop. To be honest, I never know what sort of turnout to expect these days. Music rarely seems to attract anything like sell-outs in York and, given that I had only heard of tonight’s headliners through a couple of articles in Prog magazine, maybe a small crowd was to be expected. By the time the doors opened numbers had swelled into double figures but, like the weather, it was still looking a bit bleak on the crowd front.

Support tonight came from Belfast’s Mojo Fury and they started promisingly with an instrumental track that immediately brought to mind Lost From Atlas, only louder. And it was that loudness that was the problem as the rest of the set contained songs in which the vocals were pretty much drowned out by the music. What vocals did make it through during the second song reminded me a little of David Byrne from Talking Heads. Other than that, though, they barely raised above indistinct. Having said that, the music was OK, mixing an indie sound with a touch of progressiveness thanks to time changes and variations of sound within the songs. A good example would be All In All, which featured quieter sections interspersed with crashing drums. Sadly, one song was backed by an electronic rhythm which, annoyingly, gave it a sort of 80’s, Howard Jones type vibe. The rest were intriguing, atmospheric rock. I just wish the mix had done them a few more favours. One other thing, for some reason, the bass-player spent most of the gig playing with his back to the audience. I’m not sure why – if he was aiming for moody and mysterious, it came across more as rude. (If it was a nerves thing, I apologise…)

By the time Amplifier had started setting up the crowd had increased into triple figures, many of whom were sporting various T-shirts or ties featuring the front cover picture from the band’s latest release, The Octopus, which had been lauded as one of the albums of the year by Prog magazine. Indeed, the merchandise table – probably the best stocked I had seen in nearly thirty years of gig-going - seemed to be doing brisk business. It took a while for the set-up to be completed as, for the first time that I can remember, the monitors were removed from the front of the stage and trays of effects pedals were put in place. Each of the two guitarists (Sel Balamir being joined by Steve Durose, ex of Oceansize, for touring duties) and the bass player seemingly had access to more pedals than your average band put together. So impressive were they that some of the audience were taking photographs of them. The band finally took to the stage dressed uniformly in black with the aforementioned Octopus ties and unleashed a wall of sound that immediately reminded me of The Engineers with a generous dollop of Muse mixed in. I couldn’t tell you what songs were contained in the ninety-minute set but the music was an effects laden mix of teasing harmonies and crashing chords. The vocals were clearer but, even so, none of the songs could be said to be catchy enough to lodge themselves in my brain (except, perhaps, for one which may have been called Faster Than Light and which contained more than a hint of a Rush influence). But that’s not the point of bands like Amplifier. They’re not trying to produce radio-friendly music but music which pushes the boundaries, music that’s different and, in some ways, music that makes you think and that has to be listened to properly to be appreciated properly. I enjoyed the set, but maybe I’ll have a better appreciation of Amplifier when I get a chance to listen to The Octopus, the special edition of which I bought tonight from bass-player Neil Mahoney who, when the band left the stage, pushed the merchandise guy out of the way and proceeded to shake the hand of everybody buying anything and thanking them profusely for turning up, while Sel chatted with fans and calling out goodbyes to everybody who walked past him. Nice touches.