From the Panic Room Facebook Page: a studio update that names the lead guitarist for the forthcoming album and tour.
Some of you have been asking, and we’ve been biding our time to tell you (while we jam & learn our new songs together)… but for this album, we are delighted to welcome on lead guitar a fantastic musician by the name of Adam O’Sullivan!!!
Many of us in the band have known Adam for a few years now, as he and his family are well-known as some of the most respected musicians in this area… Gav & Yatim even play occasionally in a band with his dad, Paddy!
But for a few years Adam was away in London studying music at university, so our paths didn’t cross for a little while…
He’s now back in Wales though, and after spending a long time debating our options this year, we realised we needed someone local to us for working together on the future Panic Room music.
We’ve been absolutely blessed to have the amazing skills & energy of Pete Harwood on guitar with us for this year’s shows so far, but as will become apparent this week, his band Morpheus Rising have some big stuff coming up, and we want to wish him an incredible future ahead with all the success he and the band so thoroughly deserve!
He will always be a part of our Panic Room family, and we’re sure it won’t be the last time we all share a stage / tour together!
But now, for the new Panic Room album and this next unfolding chapter of our journey, we knew it was important to be brave and leap into the future, and think about who could possibly fit our band sound & vibe the best while being close enough to jam and create with…
And we all thought of Adam, as one of the best and most versatile players we know, and certainly one of Wales’ finest!
He’s a rare find, in that he can rock hard & yet play with great sensitivity too, as well as having a fantastic funky/jazz flair which will suit our stuff all round!
We think you’ll all Love his playing.
And that’s good, because he’ll be playing all lead guitar parts on this new album! …As well as joining us on stage for the autumn/winter shows..
And after that, who knows! If he likes what he finds, he might stick around ;oD
As anyone who saw those two incredible shows at Bilston and Manchester at the end of the Summer tour will attest, Pete Harwood did an incredible job, absolutely nailing the guitar parts and adding so much energy it was like having two Yatims on stage (or, as happened in at Bilston, in the middle of the audience). Quite a few fans would have loved to see him stay for longer, but with Morpheus Rising having ambitious plans of their own it was always going to be unlikely that he’d ever be able to continue double duty in both bands.
So, we welcome Adam O’Sullivan to the band, for the next few months, at least.
It’ll be very interesting to hear the new album. The band raised the bar so high with Skin, a staggeringly good album, that you are left wondering how they can possibly reach that level again. But the Helder/Edwards songwriting team is so prolific that I’m sure they will produce another classic.
Be very interesting to see how the new album sounds; Jon’s been posting on Facebook that it’s going to be quite different from SKIN. Probably a good thing; SKIN was essentially Satellite writ large, and pulling off a third album in the same vein might risk repeating themselves.
Get the feeling it might be more experiemental this time, especially when you consider how well the Luna Rossa album, which did take off in some experimental directions, was received by fans. Just about the only criticism I’ve heard of “Skin” was that it was a bit too safe.