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Touchstone and The Heather Findlay Band at The Borderline
Touchstone came to London’s Borderline for the second night of their short Christmas tour. These three dates were the band’s first live appearances since the 2015 farewell gigs for Kim Seviour and Rob Cottingham, and gave audience the first opportunity to see the band’s new lineup featuring Aggie Figurska on lead vocals and Liam Holmes on keys.
Support was an acoustic version of The Heather Findlay band. Billed as a trio with guitarist Martin Ledger and harpist Sarah Dean, they were augmented with Touchstone’s Henry Rogers alternating between cajon and keys. Beginning with “Eyes of the Forest”, they delivered a beautiful set with Sarah Dean’s harp given a lot of prominence.
Most of the set came from the newly-released “I Am Snow”, the exceptions being the dreamy “Lake Sunday” from “The Illusion’s Reckoning”, and a stunning cover of Steeleye Span’s version of the medieval carol “Gaudete” with all the band contributing to the multi-part harmony. The two brand new songs, “I Am Snow” itself, and “Dark Eyes” came over strongly, as did the cover of Sandy Denny’s “Winter Winds”. The medley of “Winter is King” and “Day 13″ was another highlight. 2016 does seem to be the year Heather Findlay came into her own as a solo artist; there’s a new-found confidence about her performances this year.
Touchstone hit the stage with metal guitar barrage of “Flux” and proceeded to play a very hard-rocking set with a greater emphasis on shorter, punchier songs than some of their epic-laden sets of the recent past. They drew heavily from the riffy “Oceans of Time” as well including all three songs from the new EP, although they did find room for a few longer songs from earlier albums. “Half-Moon Meadow” from “The City Sleeps” turned into an extended wig-out of guitar and keyboard soloing.
Aggie’s voice has the range and power to hit all the right notes, even if she hasn’t quite got inside the songs and made them hers yet. Her stagecraft still needs work; there was very little interaction with the audience and much of the set proceeded without announcements. Much like Karnataka’s Hayley Griffiths, she comes from a background in musical theatre rather than rock, and needs time to grow into the role of rock frontwoman.
The main set ended with bombastic versions of Wizzard’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” and Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas”, before the band encored with the epic “Wintercoast” with that distinctive machine-gun bass riff, and Moo and Aggie singing Rob Cottingham’s former male lead parts in harmony. Then came the soaring title track of the new EP “Lights from the Sky” to bring the high energy set to a conclusion.
This short tour represents a new beginning for Touchstone. It’s never easy to replace a much-loved lead singer, especially when Kim Seviour’s sometimes fragile vocals and quirky stage persona were a big part of their appeal. With just three new songs from the EP, Aggie is still singing a set made up largely of older songs written for a different singer, and to some extent the new-look band is still a work in progress. Like Karnataka (twice!) and Mostly Autumn, a new lineup with a new lead singer often comes into its own once they have a substantial amount of new material to perform live. With a new album “Dangerous Days” due in 2017 the best of the new Touchstone is surely yet to come.
RIP Rick Parfitt
Been off-line over Christmas, so didn’t have the chance at the time to mark the passing of Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt, who died on Christmas Eve. And that in turn was overshadowed by the passing of a far bigger figure from the world of pop just a few days later.
People took the piss out of Status Quo; they only knew three chords, all their songs sounded the same; they endlessly riffed on “Roadhouse Blues” by The Doors. But that missed the point. They were one of those bands who did one thing but did it very, very well, rock’n'roll stripped back to its primal essence in the same spirit as Motörhead or The Ramones. Almost everyone I’ve met who’s ever seen The Quo on stage affirms that they were an awesome live band.
Read Michael Hann’s excellent tribute in The Guardian, who puts it better than I ever could.
2016 has been a dreadful year for musicians, actors and writers dying at a seemingly ever-increasing frequency. Part of it just because the heroes of our generation are growing old. But another factor has to be the explosion of popular culture in the 1960s and onwards. There are far more high profile musicians and actors from the generation now reaching their 70s than their equivalents from previous generations. The passing of music hall stars from the 1930s in the 1970s never had quite the same impact.
Bi-mode Class 319s for Northern
Train leasing company Porterbrook have announced that some class 319 dual-voltage EMUs are to be converted into bi-mode trains for use on Northern.
It’s an interestng development. These trains were built for Thameslink in the late 1980s, operating on 25kV AC overhead along the Midland main line to Bedford, and on 750V DC third rail on the Southern Region, switching between the two at Farringdon.
It’s that dual-voltage capability that makes them suitable for conversion, since there’s already a DC power bus running the length of the train carrying traction current from the 3rd rail shoes on the driving trailers to the motor coach in the middle. The plan is to add underfloor diesel generator sets to the driving trailers, enabling the train to run on diesel power away from electrified routes while retaining AC overhead capability while running under the wires.
Rebuilding thirty-year old trains in this manner seems a bit “make do and mend” compared with shiny new trains. But it does say something about the build quality of rolling stock from the later years of British Rail that such a thing is being considered.
Orange Goblin Announce Benefit Show For Team Rock Staff
Having raised nearly £60,000 in less than two days for the 73 former employees of music publisher, Team Rock, British metallers Orange Goblin have announced an intimate fundraising gig at The Black Heart in Camden, London for Thursday January 5th, 2017.
Ben Ward has said this regarding the show:
“A few days ago when I heard the news that my good friends at Team Rock were being made redundant with no pay during Christmas week I just felt that I had to do something. That night my girlfriend and I set up the Just Giving page and within 2 days we had raised almost £60,000 and we were blown away by the response and generosity of people all over the world. To help raise even more funds, Orange Goblin will play a very special show at the Black Heart in Camden on January 5th.
This will be a minimum £10 donation to get in and admission will be on a first come, first served basis as the venue only holds 120 people! All proceeds for the night will go to the Just Giving page in hope that we can give something back to the journalists that have supported our band and our scene for many, many years.â€
Threshold name new album and announce tour
British progressive metal veterans Threshold have revealed the name of their eleventh album, which the band are currently recording at Thin Ice studios. It’s “Legends of the Shires”, and will be released in 2017. More details will be revealed in the new year.
The band also announce a tour with dates across Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and The Netherlands, ending at London’s O2 Academy on 10th December 2017
Filling the Hole
As an independent blogger, I was sometimes annoyed that so many prog bands sent their press releases announcing new records, tours or even new lineups exclusively to Prog Magazine, who would frequently announce things before they appeared on the band’s own websites. But I understand why the bands all did it; Prog has a reach no independent blogger could match, and if exclusively was their price, it was a price worth paying as far as the bands were concerned.
Prog’s sudden and unexpected demise leaves a huge hole.
Independent bloggers can’t hope to fill a hole that big, but we’ll try to do whatever we can. I try ro curate the news section of this site rather than copy-pasting every single press release that shows up in my email. But it goes without saying that any of the bands who feature on this site regularly (You know who you are, and so do our readers) won’t be ignored.
Karnataka announce 2017 tour
Karnataka announce a 2017 European tour taking in many of the usual venues, in which they will be playing the albums “The Gathering Light” and “Secrets of Angels” in full.
Coro94 at Christmas
As you all ought to know, I’m really a rock reviewer, so this isn’t a conventional review; I’ve written a lot more about myself that is proper for a typical rock review, but feels appropriate to set the rest of the review in context.
Before I discovered rock and roll in my late teens I listened to a lot of classical music. My mum was a member of an amateur choral society, and I sat through their concerts from an early age. I was probably too young to appreciate some of the seemingly interminable oratorios, but the Christmas carol concerts were always entertaining. In more recent years, while living in Cheadle Hulme, I always attended the very traditional Nine Lessons and Carols at the Parish Church, often the last thing I did up north before heading south to spend Christmas with family. That’s something I’m missed the last couple of years; very often I’ve found myself at a gig as a reviewer the last Sunday before Christmas.
So attending a Christmas concert by one of Britain’s top amateur choirs wasn’t so much a step outside my comfort zone as it was a sense of things coming full circle, especially when the choir in question includes Anne-Marie Helder of Panic Room and Luna Rossa, who needs no introduction to to regular readers of this blog.
The concert itself was as beautiful as the building it was held in. They put together a hugely varied program; with a lot of modern classical compositions especially in the first half, alongside an African-American spiritual, an Oregonian folk carol, a traditional number from Botswana as well as well-know carols and secular Christmas songs. Highlights of the first half included “Serenity (O Magnum Mysterium)” by Norwegian-born composer Ola Gjeilo, a piece accompanied by violin and cello, and works best if you close your eyes and let the music waft over you. They followed this with the completely bonkers “Christus Est Natus” by Slovenia’s Damien MoÄnik.
For parts of the concert, Coro94 shared their stage with a children’s choir in the shape of the Fulham Cross Girls’ School Glee Club, a reminder of Coro94′s origins as a youth choir. They performed some numbers on their own, including an arrangement of Sia’s “Chandelier”, and joined Coro94 on others, such as the traditional carol “O Holy Night”.
The second half was more up-tempo with an emphasis on traditional carols, with some audience participation on the ambitiously complicated folk carol “Come and I Will Sing You”. They ended with a couple of well-known secular Christmas songs which came over as something equivalent to prog bands covering 70s standards as Christmas encores.
It’s something a little different from your typical rock gig; as is common in events held in churches. the bar served wine but not beer. But much like some contemporary folk or jazz there was nothing that shouldn’t be accessible to a more open-minded progressive rock fan; the Gjeilo piece in particular had a strong Iamthemorning feel about it. It makes me wonder how much being steeped in classical and choral music from an early age has influenced Anne-Marie Helder’s subsequent songwriting, and whether that explains something of why I love her music.
Posted in Live Reviews
Tagged Anne-Marie Helder, Choral Music, Coro94, Featured, Luna Rossa, Panic Room
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