Where Worlds Collide

The 2011 Cambridge Rock Festival is looking like another good one! Return appearances by Panic Room and Chantel McGregor following their great sets last year; hopefully both will be higher up the bill. Mostly Autumn are on the bill yet again for the fourth year running.

And perhaps most significant of all, Heather Findlay will be playing with her new band, featuring Chris Johnson, Dave Kilminster, Steve Vantsis and Alex Cromarty, for what will be one of her first appearances as a solo artist. I remember some rather heated arguments on her forum over whether she ought to start off her solo career with high profile headline sets or to play some supports to build up an audience; it didn’t occur to anyone that she’s launch her career as a solo artist by playing some of the summer festivals. But it does make a lot of sense given that she won’t have a full album’s worth of material to promote.

Love to see both Stolen Earth and whatever Chris Johnson’s Parade (or whatever they’re renamed to now some “ciphers of budget rave-tinged Auto-Tuned dance muzak” backed by a lot of hype have stolen their name) on the bill. Stolen Earth are certainly up for it, and most of Parade will be there anyway.

There was an announcement on Facebook a couple of days ago about a new band, “Stolen Earth”, with the following lineup:

• Heidi Widdop - Vocals, Acoustic guitar, Low whistle
• Adam Dawson - Lead guitar, vocals
• Paul Teasdale - Bass Guitar, vocals
• Barry Cassells - Drums
• John Sykes - Keyboards

Regular readers of this blog (all four of you) will probably notice that four out of the five members of the band were in the final incarnation of Breathing Space.

While many fans were saddened that Breathing Space had decided to call it a day a month ago, there was always the expectation that at least some members of the band would continue to work together on new projects. Indeed, it soon became apparent to anyone with the ability to read between the lines that most of that final incarnation of the band were likely to continue as a band with a new name. Stolen Earth are that band.

Breathing Space’s final few gigs with new members Heidi and Adam showed us a very different band from the one fronted by Olivia Sparnenn, and it feels like the much of spirit of that final lineup will be continuing as Stolen Earth. Obviously with a different keyboard player and a new songwriting team Stolen Earth will have a changed sound and a new trajectory. Certainly I hope that the new songs premièred at the Cambridge Rock Festival, work of Adam and Paul, become part of the new band’s songbook. They’re too good to fall through the gap between bands.

It will be very interesting to see how they develop. Can’t wait to see them live.

Their new website will be up and running soon, they assure me. In the meantime, go and “Like” the Stolen Earth Facebook page.

So the two gig-free months come to an end, and the gigging season begins again. Yet again, I’ve been putting in serious amounts of rail miles to see two gigs by Panic Room, the first at Fibbers in York, the second the following night at The Factory in Manchester. Are they really worth spending so many hours on board Arriva Cross-Country Voyagers to see? I think so, or I wouldn’t keep doing it.

Friday night was was the second time I’ve been to the recently refurbished Fibbers. It’s now more of a nightclub than a rock club, no draft beers any more, and decor that seems to lack character, and focuses on the dancefloor rather than the stage. Still, unlike in December where what turned out to have been Breathing Space’s final gig was spoiled by very poor sound, this time the venue seems to have got it’s act together in that respect, and the sound was excellent, good separation with every instrument clear.

The Factory in Manchester the following night didn’t have quite as good sound as the night before, a little bit too loud. But we did have one of the most enthusiastic audiences I’ve seen at a Panic Room gig to date. The Magnum-style arm-waving during “Satellite” was a new one on me. There was one downside, though, which I’ll come to later.

A few words on the support acts. Friday’s support was a solo acoustic singer-songwriter who’s name I forget. I find these sorts of performers rather hit-and-miss. Marc Atkinson, Chris Johnson, or for that matter Anne-Marie herself, can win over audiences with strong performances and good songs. But this guy wasn’t really in the same league. To give him some credit, he did write his own songs rather than take the easy route and play covers, but his act really needs a bit more work. Saturday’s support was David R Black, fronting an indie/metal trio who brought along a lot of their own fans and helped sell tickets for the gig. They didn’t do an awful lot for me, I’m afraid. They were musically competent, and pretty tight too, but their songs rather generic to my ears. But they weren’t really my kind of music, so I might not be the best person to judge.

As for Panic Room themselves, they more or less picked up where they left off last year. As I know I’ve said before, Yatim Halimi’s arrival as their new bass player seems to be the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has turned them from being a good live band to having all the makings of a great one. They’re now got the magical combination of tightness and onstage energy, all five members giving it absolutely everything and making an equally important contribution. Gavin and Yatim make a powerful rhythm section, Jon and Paul on keys and guitar perfect foils for each other, especially with a set that alternates between guitar-led and keyboard-led numbers. And of course Anne-Marie demonstrating just why she was voted Female Vocalist of the Year by readers of Classic Rock Presents Prog. And while their music has plenty of depth and complexity to satisfy progressive rock audiences, many of their songs are direct enough to give them crossover appeal.

Much as on their tour last autumn, the bulk of the set came from “Satellite”, with just two or three songs from their debut album. They’re still playing their as-yet unreleased swamp-blues cover of ELP’s “Bitches Crystal”, which I find far superior to the original. Since several songs from “Satellite” had become live favourites long before the band went into the studio to record them, there was the feeling that it was about time some new material started appearing in the set. And we got two brand-new songs, of which one, a twin-guitar prog-metal epic with a working title of “Song for Tomorrow” has all the makings of a future classic. My only regret is they’ve retired the lengthy epics from the first album. I’m not suggesting they exhume “The Dreaming”, which never really worked that well live, but “Endgame” used to be a live highlight, and it’s a song that means a lot to me personally.

One annoying thing about both venues was the way they turned into nightclubs after the gig, and the DJs started up at a volume at least twice as loud as the band had been the second the band finished playing. In this respect The Factory was far worse than Fibbers in that they started letting clubbers into the venue while the band were still on stage, which meant fans had to fight their way through the crowd to reach the exit at the end. And this was after a truncated set due to of a very strict curfew. I’ve since been told they started letting them in a good half-hour before the band finished, and their chatter was drowning out the band for those towards the back. Some were even making juvenile attempts to take the piss out of band and audience. The atmosphere as I was leaving the venue was felt vaguely threatening; it certainly wasn’t the sort of place I wanted to hang around for any time. I would recommend that Panic Room, and other bands in the same scene, give venues like this a wide berth in future. No band should be playing in a venue where their own fans do not feel safe.

Panic Room have one more gig on this leg of the tour, at The Peel in Kingston on Saturday 26th. I know the place is a bit of dive, but at least it won’t be full of lagered-up yoof at the end. Be there and see a band who I believe are now on the edge of something bigger.

Liam Davison is best known as guitarist for Mostly Autumn. When he left the band at the end of 2006 he stated that he was to work on a solo album. In the end it would be three years after he rejoined the band before the album was to see the light of day.

Liam is something of an enigmatic figure on stage with Mostly Autumn. He prefers to shun the spotlight and lurk at the back of the stage; but his playing is not that of a typical rhythm guitarist, playing melodic fills and lead runs rather than merely strumming chords. His name has only appeared a couple of times in MA’s songwriting credits to date, both for folk-flavoured numbers. But he’s also been playing a live improvisation on tour with echoes of Robert Fripp. Which made it difficult to predict the direction his solo album might take.

The music varies from the indie-flavoured opening hard rocker “Ride the Seventh Wave”, the electronica loops on “Into the Setting Sun”, and the acoustic ballad “One in the Lifetime”. But throughout there’s a strong emphasis on atmospheric progressive rock with a very strong Pink Floyd flavour. Standouts for me are “Eternally Yours”, ending with that epic slide solo featured in the album’s promo video, and “Heading Home”, with it’s wonderful interplay between Liam’s soaring lead guitar, Iain Jennings’ swirling Hammond organ and Paul Teasdale’s propulsive bass riff. It’s a big, rich, cinematic sound, superbly engineered and mixed by John Spence.

Liam shares vocals with Heather Findlay and Anne-Marie Helder, and the three distinctively different voices complement each other well. While Liam sings much of the lead vocals, several songs are duets between Liam and either Anne-Marie or Heather with some great use of harmony. One exception is “Once in a Lifetime”, sung solely by Heather, who also contributed the lyrics. Heather and Anne-Marie give excellent performances, but neither of them steal the show, this is still very much Liam’s album, showcasing his songwriting, and above all his superb lead guitar. If you like it when the solos can last for two or three minutes, and are still good enough not to outstay their welcome, you will love this album.

While much has been made of Heather’s and Anne-Marie’s contributions, on an album like this the instrumental supporting cast are just as important. In particular, Liam’s Mostly Autumn colleague Iain Jennings excels himself on keys. It’s the sort of all-enveloping cinematic sound we heard on early Mostly Autumn albums, and as such provides the perfect instrumental foil for Liam’s own playing.

This is a superb album, and while it’s only February, it’s a potential candidate for album of the year. Like many independent releases, it’s got a general retail release in March, but is available online now

A long-awaited announcement from Heather Findlay today:

The time has come to announce the imminent release of my debut solo recording ‘The Phoenix Suite’.

It is the first 5 track EP in a series of 4.

Alongside myself and guitarist Chris Johnson, The Phoenix Suite features performances from Dave Kilminster on guitars, Steve Vantsis on bass and Alex Cromarty on drums and will be available to order very soon!

Thank you all for your patience and enthusiasm!

More details very, VERY soon…

Love Heather xxx

I’m very much looking forward to this release. Heather always had a distinctively melodic songwriting style within Mostly Autumn, and in the past we’d heard the sort of songs that have fitted comfortably within Mostly Autumn’s sound. While she’s recorded the excellent acoustic album “Offerings” with Angela Gordon as Odin Dragonfly, it will be very interesting to hear her stretch her musical wings with a full electric band. No real idea quite what it’s going to sound like, and Heather’s deliberately been giving us very few clues, but given the nature of the musicians involved I’m expecting it to be quite rocky. And I do have to say naming it a “suite” is a more than a bit Prog as a concept.

Interesting to see that Heather’s mapped out a further three EPs, which (depending on the song length of course) will amount to a double-album’s worth of material.

Sometimes I wonder if there are people out there who really believe there are no ways to find new music apart from either listening to Radio One or surfing MySpace completely at random. Just read this commenter in a thread about the failure (so far) of digital music products.

I know this sounds trite but it would really help if the big music companies did their job as “gatekeepers” and keep the mediocre music away from the masses. What ever happened to quality A&R departments? With the proliferation of cheap music sequencing programs, horrible club DJs and radio that is beyond unbearable, quality control is more important than ever!

It’s actually worse that that, Big Music is actively keeping far better music away from the masses. They’re pretty much only interested in the lowest common denominator music that follows a small number of proven formulas that they know how to market. And with more and more discerning music fans having made their excuses and left the mainstream, Big Music is increasingly left with the people who can’t or won’t seek out new music for themselves.

I personally think the gatekeeper/elite tastemaker model is fundamentally broken anyway and deserves to die. For better or worse, the Internet has fragmented the market, allowing artists in niche genres to market their music directly, bypassing that small and corrupt clique of gatekeepers and tastemakers.

Such artists rely on fan-to-fan recommendations to build an audience rather than on Big Music’s shock-and-awe advertising campaigns. Perhaps the role of new digital music startups ought to be to encourage that sort of thing, rather than prop up the dying major label business model? The thing about independent artists in niche genres is their business model depends not so much of gaining the largest possible audience, rather on minimising the number of middlemen between them and their audience. Digital startups are new middlemen, they’re only of any use to artists if the value they add is more than the cut they take. And they’re only any use to music fans if they act as a sort of smart filter, perhaps using some kind of wisdom-of-crowds approach to filter out the stuff that falls below the Sturgeon threshold.

Don’t expect the major labels to support such a thing - While they claim to speak for up-and-coming artists, the reality has always been that they’ll do their damnedest to marginalise every new artist except for the small minority that they choose to sign.

The latest issue of Classic Rock Presents Prog came out today, containing the results of 2010 readers poll, in which I remembered to vote this time!

It’s great so see so many of the bands I’ve travelled around the country to see feature a lot in the results. Both Mostly Autumn and The Reasoning did well, with MA’s “Go Well Diamond Heart” and The Reasoning’s “Adverse Camber at #3 and #5 in Best Album. The Reasoning also made #4 in Best Band, and Mostly Autumn’s “The Night In Leamington” at #5 in Best DVD, the latter very creditable when you consider the other four were Rush, Transatlantic, Porcupine Tree and Opeth, all bands of far higher profile

Not only that, Anne-Marie Helder, Kim Servior and Olivia Sparnenn took the top three positions in Best Female Vocalist. Not only lovely people, but three are great singers who have paid their dues slogging around what’s euphemistically knows as “the toilet circuit” for several years, and it’s certainly time to see them start to get the recognition they deserve. They’re all real singers who don’t need auto-tune and can very definitely cut it live, which is more than can be said for far too many of today’s chart-toppers. Forget X-Factor, it’s the Prog Factor that really counts.

And we shouldn’t underestimate the significance either. Classic Rock Presents Prog is not a subscription-only niche publication with a limited audience, it’s a widely-available newsstand publication with a readership of more than half that of the NME.

The other big prog news this week is the announcement of the several of the bands who will the playing the Classic Rock Presents Prog stage at High Voltage in July. Jethro Tull will be one of the headliners, with Mostly Autumn, Spock’s Beard, The Enid, Caravan and Pallas also on the bill. This is looking like a fantastic weekend already.

Cambridge Rock Festival 2009, with Mostly Autumn’s Bryan Josh on guitar

A sad announcement today is that York progressive rock band Breathing Space are calling it a day. As said on their official website:

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we are sorry to announce that Breathing Space has decided to disband.

We would like to thank everyone that has supported us over the last few years. It has been an exciting and wonderful journey and we have all enjoyed every moment. Whereas I am very sad that this project has come to an end, as one door closes another door opens, so watch this space…

All the best,
Iain Jennings

Iain Jennings, The Riga, Southend, March 2010

For those of you who aren’t regular readers of this blog, Breathing Space are the band Mostly Autumn keyboardist Iain Jennings and vocalist Olivia Sparnenn put together to promote Iain’s 2005 solo album “Breathing Space”. After Iain left Mostly Autumn at the beginning of 2006, the project took on a life of it’s own and became a band in it’s own right. Like many bands at their level, they’ve been though a number of lineup changes over the years. Barry Cassells replaced original drummer, Iain’s brother Andy in 2007. There was the departure of guitarist Mark Rowen in 2009, and most significantly of all the departure of Olivia Sparnenn in 2010 to take up a new role as lead singer for Mostly Autumn. The final incarnation of the band featured Heidi Widdop on vocals, and Adam Dawson on guitar.

Olivia Sparnenn, 2009 Cambridge Rock Festival

I first became of fan of the band after I met Olivia after a Mostly Autumn gig in February 2007, and she personally invited me to their gig at The Roman Baths in York the following weekend. At the time the band were without a permanent drummer, and Olivia’s father Howard was standing in; I remember him remarking to me that he didn’t want to occupy the drumstool on a permanent basis, since he thought having her dad on drums would rather cramp her style. That gig was plagued with severe technical gremlins, but I could see the potential there, and I thought Olivia Sparnenn was a real star in the making, A month later I saw them play a superb set at the Mostly Autumn fan convention in Ringwood, Hampshire, and said to bassist Paul Teasdale that give them a couple of years they’d be giving Mostly Autumn a run for their money. And I think I was right.

Paul Teasdale, The Riga, Southend, March 2010

Over the course of the following four years the band recorded two excellent studio albums, “Coming Up for Air” and “Below the Radar”, and played a great many memorable gigs. Among those that stick in the mind are the very emotional performance in Mansfield in May 2008, the stunning show at the Cambridge Rock Festival in 2009, and what appeared at the time to be a spectacular rebirth of the band with a brand new lineup at the same festival in 2010. Over the years their sound evolved, from the dominance of big soaring ballads and jazz-rock workouts in the Mark Rowen era, to the tougher hard rock orientated approach they took over the last couple of years. Even after Olivia left the band they managed to reinvent themselves once more with new singer Heidi Widdop, and things looked set for another chapter in the story.

Mark Rowen, 2008 Cambridge Rock Festival

In terms of the number of their gigs I’ve attended, Breathing Space are second only to Mostly Autumn. I’ve likened being a fan of a band at this level to being an away supporter of a lower-division football team. It involves travelling to towns like Crewe, Mansfield or Southend, often staying in dodgy B&Bs when it’s not possible to arrange lifts home. But there’s a great camaraderie amongst fellow fans, many of whom have become friends, as have some of the band. It’s quite different from being a fan of someone like Oasis. Part of being a loyal fan is you stick with them through the bad times as well as the good. Yes, there were times when a cloth-eared house soundman from a toilet of a venue rendered their finely-crafted music all but unlistenable to a sparse crowd. But there were times when they delivered mesmerising performances to appreciative audiences, or went down a storm at festivals. Sadly they were a band who I always felt deserved far more success than they ever achieved; they were worth far more than playing for sixty people in working-mens clubs in the East Midlands.

Heidi Widdop at the 2010 Cambridge Rock Festival

At the time of writing, nobody from the band has given any specific reason for the split, and since I know some of the band personally I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to speculate about it on a public forum. So here’s to the past four years. Let’s remember the good times, and I hope to see all the band involved in exciting new projects over the coming months and years. There may not be any more chapters in the Breathing Space story, but I hope for and expect at a sequel.

Music streaming and downloading site mFlow has been having a January sale. For a few days, they reduced the price of all downloads to 20p a song, or 20p x the number of songs for the whole album. It’s resulted in something of a feeding frenzy; I think I bought ten albums altogether; and judging by the steady stream of credit notification emails I’ve been getting, many others have been doing the same thing. 20p for a song or two or three quid for an album is well within impulse-buying territory in a way a £7.99 album is not.

My purchases included a couple of lesser back-catalogue albums I’ve only got on vinyl from Rainbow and Blue Öyster Cult, a few albums I’d passed on when they came out, such as a couple of recent Marillion live albums, and “After” by Scandinavian metal artist Ihsahn, which I decided to check out since it had appeared in several people’s end-of-year lists. I flowed on track from that with the words “This album is so awesome I feel guilty for paying only £1.60 for it”, and promptly got three 20% commissions for further sales!

Since I’ve seen both The Reasoning and Mostly Autumn coming up in my credit notification emails, I do wonder how artists feel about their work being sold for such low prices - I do remember one RPG writer I won’t name being not at all impressed to find one of his works in the remaindered bin at Stabcon a few years back. But surely any revenue is better than none, and gets there music heard by people who might not otherwise have listened. From such beginnings, fandom can start, if the music is awesome enough.

It does make we wonder what the rational price for MP3 downloads ought to be nowadays. This year I’ve paid everything from that £1.60 for the download of the Ihsahn album, to well over double the price of a regular CD for the pre-order special edition of “Go Well Diamond Heart” by Mostly Autumn, and I really can’t say that either was not a “fair” price. In one case I was taking a gamble on a completely unheard-of band, with only Dom Lawson’s word for whether it was any good, and the other was a fan pre-order for an album which would not have been possible to record otherwise.

Time will tell what sort of pricing strategy labels and artists will take in the future. It may well be that with universal “always on” internet connections we’ll all move towards streaming anyway. But I think the days of pricing album downloads so as not to undermine CD sales are almost certainly numbered.

What does anyone else think?

OK, so this post is a test to see if I can now embed YooToob videos after upgrading to the newest version of WordPress.

I never did get to see the original incarnation of Karnataka live before that lineup imploded back in 2004. But I have seen all six of them in action in different bands in 2010 (In the case of Gavin and Anne-Marie, more than one band).