Fish has announced another UK tour in May 2014
2 Seffield Ballroom
3 Liverpool Academy
4 Durham Gala Theatre
6 Wolves Robin 2, Bilston
8 Norwich Waterfront
9 London Islington Assembly Hall
10 Cardiff Globe
11 Bristol Fleece
13 Brighton Concorde
15 Exeter Phoenix
16 Northampton Roadmender
17 Holmfirth Picturedome
18 Glasgow ABC
This follows on from his very success UK tour this May, and his extensive European tour this Autumn.
Colours in the Dark is the third solo album from Finnish metal diva Tarja Turunen, following on from 2010′s “What Lies Beneath. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Nightwish dramatically sacked their lead singer way back in 2005. Her old band have re-invented themselves while Tarja herself bounced back strongly and quickly found her voice as a solo artist.
The album begins as it means to go on, starting with an excerpt from Ravel’s Bolero leading into powerchord riffs and falsetto vocals that come over as a heavy metal Lena Lovich. Despite a little less use of choirs and orchestras, it’s still perhaps her strongest and most musically ambitious album to date.
The album takes in metal and pop with a heavy dose of progressive rock alongside some big sweeping ballads that wouldn’t sound out of place in a West End musical but for the metal guitars. There are a couple of very commercial numbers with huge pop choruses; indeed, “Never Enough” is effectively Abba with powerchords up to the distorted white noise of the outtro.
Classical motifs reappear in the epic “Lucid Dreamer”, containing an eerie atonal instrumental section that eventually gives way to a theme from Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” suite; for once, it’s something other than “Hall of the Mountain King”. The snatch of John Barry’s James Bond theme at one point in “Deliverance” makes you wonder if Tarja is angling to sing a Bond theme. If she did she’s be the most powerful voice since Shirley Bassey sang “Goldfinger”. The album ends with the epic “Medusa” with its evocative flute line. Much of the album demonstrates how symphonic metal and progressive rock have always been close cousins, with the combination of big guitars and complex classically-derived arrangements.
It’s all completely over the top, but then it’s a Tarja record, and you wouldn’t really expect anything else; it would be like expecting Meatloaf to make a lo-fi Americana album. As the ice-queen of symphonic metal, she doesn’t put much in the way of soul-baring emotion on this record, but like the bombastic arrangements, it’s what Tarja does.
If you prefer a record with a lot of emotional depth, then perhaps this record is not for you, but if you have room for over-the-top melodrama that isn’t afraid to verge on the cheesy, then there is a lot to like about this album.
(This review also appears in Trebuchet Magazine)
A few photos from my recent trip to North Wales.
We start with the Conwy Valley line, which is possibly the most scenic of the standard gauge line in Wales, the only part of the National Rail network to run into the mountainous heart of Snowdonia. I’m not convinced that the a commuter DMU is really the ideal stock for this route, and I think there’s a good case for running heritage stock, at least during high summer. Doesn’t have to be steam; something like a class 37 and four or five Mk1 coaches would be idea.
At Blaenau Ffestiniog we change to the 2′ gauge Ffestiniog Railway, one of the longest established of Britain’s steam tourist lines, for the run down to Porthmadog. Motive power is the 1879-built double Fairlie “Merddin Emrys”, dating from the days when the railway was primarily a slate carrier.
The Ffestiniog Railway doesn’t consider itself a preserved railway, but a working railway operated to suit today’s needs. While there are several historic locomotives in the fleet, they’ve also got a number of recently built replicas of long-scrapped designs. The single Fairlie “Taliesin” is such a locomotive, built in 1999 using the design of an original locomotive scrapped in 1932.
“Lyd”, the newest addition to the fleet is another example, based on the locomotive “Lew” of the Lynton and Barnstable Railway in Devon. The original “Lew” was shipped to Brazil on closure of the L&B in 1937, and its ultimate fate remains unknown.
The Welsh Highland Railway is the longest narrow gauge line in Britain. The original line opened as a through route from Dinas Junction to Porthmadog in 1922, and closed after just 15 years. The recent reconstruction as a modern tourist railway has been controversial, with big South African Beyer-Garratts brought in to work long corridor trains, a far cry from the small tank engines of the original line. The coaching stock on this train includes a surviving coach from the original WHR, right behind the loco.
The high-season timetable has three services a day, so it’s possible to break the journey for a couple of hours it you start out on the first train and come back on the last. I got off at Beddgelert and walked down the valley to the bridge over Afon Glaslyn to photograph the train I’d been on heading back to Caernarfon.
90 minutes later I’m back at the same spot, on the last southbound train of the day, which crossed the northbound train at Rhyd Ddu, now heading back to Porthmadog through the spectacular Aberglaslyn pass.
And finally, it’s five hours on board an Arriva Trains 158 with non-functional air-conditioning to see the wonderful Panic Room at Bilston. But that’s the subject of another blog post. The Cambrian Coast line is another very scenic route, hugging the coast through Harlech, Barmouth and Aberdovey before heading inland though the Dovey and upper Severn valleys.
No matter how much we railway modellers try to stick to a single location and era, there’s alway the odd model that ends up breaking your own self-imposed rules on what should and shouldn’t run on a layout. This beastie is an example.
No, London Midland class 350s do not run in Cornwall, nor are they ever likely to. But I think it’s an attractive model in an eye-catching livery. I do own Cross-Country and Virgin Trains Voyagers, plus a London Midland 153 railcar, all of which do or at least did run in Cornwall, but also shared tracks with 350s in the West Midlands.
If in doubt, then Rule One (“It’s My Train Set”) applies.
I first saw Maschine at the 2012 Cambridge Rock Festival, when they played as the opening act on main stage on Sunday. Despite being a member short and playing as a four-piece they went down a storm to an audience whose average age was probably twice that of the band.
At the time they had no merch to sell, so anyone wanting to buy their music just had to wait. Almost exactly a year later, the band have finally released their debut album, “Rubidium”.
From the spiralling guitar at the very beginning of the album the dominant sound is Luke Machin’s fluid lead guitar. Luke also handles the majority of the lead vocals, with keyboardist Georgia adding harmonies, and some very sparing use of so-called Cookie Monster for effect.
The album displays a remarkable variety over its seven tracks. The jazz-flavoured “Cubixtro” features a dub-reggae section with some soulful vocals from Georgia. “Invincible” with it’s fluttering flute solos goes pastoral folk-prog. “Venga” and the two-part album closer “Eyes” combine atmospheric passages with full-on metal sections, both featuring some jaw-dropping soloing from Luke Machin.
Unlike some younger prog bands whose songcraft lags behind their instrumental ability, Maschine have the compositional skill to match their fearsome virtuosity. They don’t go in for anything resembling conventional verse-chorus-middle-8 song structures, but their ambitious numbers show strong use of dynamics and a keen ear for melody. The album is full of extended instrumental passages, the sort of thing that could easily have turned into formless jams in the hands of a lesser band. But Maschine have honed the arrangements to make things flow beautifully. A great example is the build-and-release moment at the climax of “Eyes” when a series of riff-based passages gives way to a beautifully expressive solo at exactly the right moment.
Rubidium is certainly an impressive début in a genre where bands usually don’t start produce their best work until several albums into their career. It represents contemporary progressive rock at its best, mixing metal, jazz, rock and all sorts of other styles in a seamless blend that, aside from the occasional nods to Frank Zappa and Opeth doesn’t betray any obvious influences, and manages to avoid sounding like a copy of anything else.
It’s been a long wait for this album, but it’s well worth that wait.
Mostly Autumn came to Sub89 in Reading on Thursday. For a band I’ve travelled all over the country to see over the past few years, this was the first time they’ve played my local venue, and it felt strange to be able to walk to one of their gigs.
Support was five-piece The Room, playing a short but sweet set with one foot in the melodic rock camp and the other in neo-prog, showing strong songwriting and some impressive lead guitar work. I’d like to hear more from this lot.
Mostly Autumn put in a strong performance with Bryan and Olivia both on very good form, before a very enthusiastic and appreciative crowd. The setlist was more or less the same as earlier in the year, opening with “Winter Mountain” and “Never The Rainbow”, with the whole set emphasising the hard rock side of the band’s music. “Unquiet Tears”, first of the newer numbers came over very strongly. As has been apparent to anyone who’s seen the band over the past couple of years, Olivia has made older standards like “Evergreen” and “Passengers” her own, while the newer songs show the remarkable power and range of her voice. “Questioning Eyes” never fails to tug at the heartstrings, and she pulled out all the stops on “Wild Eyed Skies” and the final encore “Tonight”.
Hannah Hird’s backing vocals as the replacement for Anne-Marie Helder were excellent, although I can’t pretend I didn’t miss Anne-Marie’s flute playing and strong stage presence. The absence of the flute part was obvious in one or two places, and I can’t help feeling that it would have been better to rest songs like “The Dark Before The Dawn” in favour of newer songs from “Ghost Moon Orchestra” as long as the band are without a flute player.
Although it was still a very enjoyable gig, it didn’t quite reach the levels of power and intensity of some of their best shows over the past two years. The slightly mushy sound probably didn’t help, and the chopping and changing the lineup over the first half of this year may have cost the band a bit in terms of momentum. For this weekend’s run of three gigs the band’s regular drummer Gavin Griffiths returned to the drumstool because this year’s temporary replacement drummer Alex Cromarty had other commitments. Both of them are superb drummers, of course, but stability has it’s benefits.
The band should have a stable lineup for the remainder of 2013, and return with an ambitious programme of gigs over the second half of the year, with quite a few of the higher profile shows featuring the talented Chantel McGregor as special guest.
Another day, another twitter storm, this time directed at Caroline Criado-Perez for expressing an option a bunch of sexist trolls didn’t like. No matter how much you disagree with someone’s opinion, rape threats are never, ever acceptable, and it really shouldn’t need explaining why.
I’ve seen one or two people, notably James Desborough, defending the right to troll in the name of freedom of speech. But that ignores the fact that the trolls’ threats are themselves a silencing tactic. If you cannot voice controversial opinions without getting flooded with more threatening posts than you can cope with, then you’re effectively being censored.
But it’s very wrong to claim that there’s any one simple solution. Moderation of any online space (including Twitter) is very, very hard to get right, and far too easy to get horribly wrong. Even successful moderation policies in smaller communities don’t scale to something the size of Twitter. Unfettered freedom of speech can result in a playground for sociopaths where bad speech drives out good, but who gets to decide what’s good and bad?
Twitter’s big problem is flash mobs, when grown adults start acting like playground bullies. Many different groups are guilty of this. There are a lot of parallels on Twitter between the behaviour of clumps of misogynist trogodytes. and what happens when social justice types grab the torches and pitchforks in self-righteous fury. It doesn’t make much difference to the victim whether the mob is motivated by self-righteousness or sexist douchbaggery.
We should be very, very cautious about trying to use a quick technical quick fix for what’s essentially a social problem. It’s next to impossible to construct an automated abuse handling or crowd-based karma system that isn’t going to be gamed by the trolls and used as a weapon against their victims. And human moderation will involve subjective judgement calls which would have to take context into account.
I’m not saying that the status quo is the least bad option, just that we need to treat proposed solutions with caution, and be very wary of unintended consequences or unspoken agendas. I don’t want to live in an online world where people can be harassed and intimidated online, but neither to I want to see a situation where politicians and high profile media figures can shut down any criticism of their policies and views. What do we gain if we cannot call out a bigot for being a bigot?
New video for the song “Chasing Storms” from Rob Cottingham’s solo album “Captain Blue”. The album goes on general release on August 5th through Plastic Head Distribution.
I reviewed the album back in January; it’s an excellent work with great guest contributions from Heather Findlay and Touchstone’s Adam Hodgson.
In the aftermath of the terrible train crash in Spain, I’m seeing a lot of people who know nothing about railway technology trying to blame everything on the driver, and quoting things he’s allegedly said on Facebook as evidence. With the level of automated safety systems on high-speed rail, an accident of this nature is very unlikely though driver error alone; the investigation will almost certainly reveal some kind of technical failure.
A few days ago I polled Mostly Autumn fans asking for songs to recommend for new listeners. I’ve collated responses from here, Facebook and the Unofficial MA forum (Nobody responded on Google+) to give this list of songs.
It’s significant that your responses span the band’s entire career, with songs from eight out the band’s ten studio albums represented, including several songs from the two most recent albums. So here are thirteen selected songs, along with some of your reasons for choosing them.
Unquiet Tears
“Showcases the amazing voice of Olivia and pulls of the trick of sounding modern and contemporary but instantly Mostly Autumn”
- Ian Almond, blog comment
Storms Over Still Waters
“One of the few to include lead vocals from both Bryan and Heather as well as typically powerful guitar solo. A long track, but any new fan would need to get over that”
- Paul E, blog comment
“I think you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved at all by it”
- HippyDave, blog comment
Shrinking Violet
“The live version from the Leamington CD is absolutely spellbinding and contains everything that makes Mostly Autumn special”
- Paul Gunhill, blog comment
The Gap is Too Wide
“Honestly, this works. I’ve shown this song to a few people and they have really got into it immediately. Of course providing they are the kind of people who have patience to start with a 10+ minute track. It has the emotion of the best of Mostly Autumn’s material, it has that build-up and a great climax”
- Wander, blog comment
“blew me away first time I heard it (and has reduced me to tears since)”
- Ian Massey, Facebook
Fading Colours
“Has a bit of everything without being too overwhelming for a newbie”
- Sam Lewis, blog comment
Passengers
“Not too long, not too short, an older track but not too far removed from their current sound”
- David Meadows, unofficial MA forum
The Last Climb
“Shows the epic nature of the music & the inspirational emotive lyrics”
- Ian Foster, Facebook
“Always been my favourite. I’m a sucker for a slow burner! There’s something very pure about that song which for me sums up the MA sound.
- Adam Dawson, Facebook
Evergreen
“The structure and style of it just seem to sum up the band for me. Also, I have never heard them perform a bad rendition of it live. It always hits the spot. Not my personal favourite, but the most iconic I guess?”
- Ian Hodgetts, Facebook
And When the War is Over
“Powerful lyrics, amazing power in the vocals (both Livvy and Bryan) . Raw emotion and wonderful melody. Guitar just rips through the track and just builds this up into a brilliant piece of music”
- Ian Redfearn, Facebook
The Night Sky
“It’s the first song I ever heard from the band. Still outstanding”
- Rob Jarvis, Facebook
Wild Eyed Skies
“The pick of the new material – great guitar and vocals and Anne-Marie’s wonderful harmonisation which is the making of the track”
- Tom B, blog comment
For All We Shared
“There’s not one particular aspect I like as such, just the overall feel and sound of the song. I find it uplifting”
- Mike Foley, blog comment
Mother Nature
“A good one for the prog crowd, I think. It’s got a bit of everything the band do best.
- HippyDave, blog comment