I never did get to see the original incarnation of Karnataka live; with impeccably bad timing I discovered their music just at the time the band split. While four members of that band soon regrouped as Panic Room, it would be another three years before they went back on the road for a long-awaited tour, starting at the Town Hall in Lydney, Gloucestershire.
Lydney is not exactly the rock and roll capital of the universe. In the late afternoon, Arriva Trains Wales delivered me to an unstaffed railway station called “Lydney”, surrounded by fields. Before the infamous Dr Beeching this station went by the name of “Lydney Junction”, where you could change to a branch-line train which might have taken you to the town itself. With no sign of anything resembling a taxi to be seen, it meant a lengthy walk through the Gloucestershire countryside to my B&B, which, although only a mile from the venue, turned out to be in the next village, a picture postcard place called Alyburton.
The Town Hall is on the road into the town. I knew I’d come to the right place when I bumped into the No 1 Mostly Autumn fan, Aniel Jangra. One of the next people I met turned out to be Jamie Field of Mermaid Kiss, who recognised me from my MySpace photo! After meeting HippyDave in the pub next door where I’d gone in search of food, we proceeded to the 300-capacity hall.
Support band Mermaid Kiss played what they described as a ‘semi acoustic’ set. The five piece band included keyboards and bass, acoustic guitar and assorted woodwinds, but no drums, and included Panic Room’s Jon Edwards on keys, who was on stage the entire night. The stripped-down arrangements certainly gave lead singer Evelyn Downing’s voice the opportunity to shine. Their confident set, including some songs from their most recent album “Etarlis“, the only album of theirs I’d previously heard, a few older songs, and some new material written for their next album, a concept album based on a journey across a mythical America. With further support slots for both Breathing Space and The Reasoning in the coming months, we’ll be seeing and hearing more of this band, and that’s something worth looking forward to.
When I heard Panic Room’s excellent album “Visionary Position“, one of my first thoughts was “How on Earth will they reproduce that live?”. The album is a rich, multilayered work, with important contributions from guest musician Liz Prendegast on electric violin on several songs. Not that I should have worried; the simplified live arrangements, though harder-edged and more guitar-driven, still do the songs justice. The band were amazingly tight considering this was their first ever live appearance as Panic Room, and Anne-Marie Helder was fantastic as a lead vocalist. While I’d never really had any doubts about her abilities as a singer, this was still the first time I’d seen her fronting a band rather than playing solo acoustic sets or performing as an instrumentalist.
As for the setlist, they played the whole of Visionary Position, with Paul Davies’ guitar taking the place of those violin lines on songs like ‘Apocalypstick’. Filling out the set were two impressive-sounding new songs, “Into the Fire” and “Go”, a couple of Karnataka oldies and a short solo interlude from Anne-Marie while the rest of the band took a break. Final encore was an amazing Led Zeppelin medly, incorporating a groove-orientated cover of “No Quarter” and a few bars of “Kashmir”.
Panic Room have certainly started their live career with a bang. I hope I don’t have to wait another three years to see them again.