Panic Room hit the road again with six live appearances, beginning at The Flowerpot in Derby on 28th June, and ending at Sound Control in Manchester on 13th July. Special guests on all dates will be the excellent Morpheus Rising, and the London show at The Garage on 6th July will be a three-band bill with Touchstone.
These will the the final dates on the SKIN tour before Panic Room head into the studio to work on their fourth album.
“My Dark Surprise” is the new solo album from Iain Jennings, keyboard player of Mostly Autumn.
Iain released his first solo album “Breathing Space” back in 2005. What started out as a side-project took on a life of its own to become a band in its own right during Iain’s two-year sabbatical with Mostly Autumn, and saw two further well-regarded albums before the band disbanded in 2010. Since then Iain has returned to taking a bigger writing role with Mostly Autumn, making significant contributions to their last album.
“My Dark Surprise” is a concept album with SF storyline exploring themes of identity and reality, featuring Mark Chatterton on lead vocals. Iain composed the music and Mark writing all the lyrics.
The rest of the cast list includes a few familiar names; Gavin Griffiths (Mostly Autumn, Panic Room, Fish) on drums, Stu Fletcher (Halo Blind, The Heather Findlay Band) on bass, and Mostly Autumn’s Liam Davison on guitar. It also features Andy Newlove and Colin Elsworth on guitars, and James Russell on sax.
The whole thing has a song-orientated contemporary feel, with touches of electronica, hard rock, and even some jazz-flavoured dance-pop. All these were found in Iain Jennings’ earlier work, but Mark Chatterton’s vocals give the whole thing a quite different feel and mood. There’s a touch of Peter Gabriel’s delivery in one or two places.
There’s a greater emphasis on songwriting rather than virtuoso keyboard playing. Iain has always had an understated less-is-more style, his playing more part of the foundations of the song, and providing atmospherics, textures and colour rather than flashy soloing. Saying that, of the delicate piano lines on this record are quintessential Iain Jennings, such as on the ballad “That’s Why I Fly”, one of several standouts of the album.
The supporting cast all make strong contributions. Gavin Griffiths and Stu Fletcher make for a very powerful and tight rhythm section, while the guitarists add plenty of crunch, with some great soloing from Liam Davison. James Russell’s sax, though sparingly used, adds another dimension.
The way the album combines some very different styles to make a coherent whole shows Iain’s skills as an arranger; “Change The Shape” is a good example; it switches seamlessly between electronica and full-band hard rock within the same song without showing the joins. “Hiding From My Fears” is stripped right back to a simple piano and vocal ballad, which leads straight into the electro dance-pop of the title track. “Stand Inside The Shadow” starts by mixing electro rhythms and rock guitars and turns into jazz-rock workout driven by a powerful bass riff. The epic “A Choice To Make A Change” and “Nowhere In My Head” with it’s keyboard soloing head more into prog territory.
It all adds up to a very strong album, containing the strengths of Iain Jennings’ earlier work without repeating his past, and Mark Chatterton is a real find as vocalist. Any fans of Iain’s work with Mostly Autumn or Breathing Space ought to buy this without hesitation. But it’s also strongly recommended for anyone with a taste for forward-looking song-orientated contemporary progressive music.
The album is only available direct from Iain Jennings via paypal at breathingspacecd@aol.com (£10 + £3 P&P).
Update: It can also be ordered from Iain’s Bandcamp page for the album.
Announced on Maschine’s Facebook Page.
The young and hotly-tipped UK-based progressive rockers Maschine have announced the release of their debut album entitled ‘Rubidium’ on the 29th July 2013. After being in the studio for several months, the band are ecstatic for the album to finally see the light of day, and band leader Luke Machin had this to say about its release: “I am extremely happy with the way this album has come together, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. We cannot wait to bring this album to the stage and start performing this material at live shows in the near future, it’s gonna be killer! An album is a documentary of ones life at the present time and finally I can now share this experience with you all on record.”
The track-listing for the album is as follows:
1. The Fallen
2. Rubidium
3. Cubixstro
4. Invincible
5. Venga
6. Eyes Pt.1
7. Eyes Pt.2
Maschine made a very strong impression at the 2012 Cambridge Rock Festival despite being one member down and playing as a four-piece. I know a few people were disappointed that the band had no merchandise on sale, since their album was still a work in progress at the time. Their wait will be over on July 29th.
Some industrial techno-metal from Mertesacker. “Junge Blau”, is the single from their album “Backpfeifengesicht” due for release on Monday 17th July.
“There is something distinctly galling about witnessing mainstream media commentators gushing about Glastonbury signifying the beginning of the British summer festival season. For those of us who enjoy music that allows for a touch more aggression and energy than Mumford & Sons, the true start of the summer comes with Download” – Dom Lawson tells it like it is. Never thought I’d read words like that in The Guardian.
I’m not even remotely a fan of hip-hop or rap. But you don’t need to be to recognise this piece as hilariously ignorant pieces of music criticism I’ve read all year. Pro tip; if you want to make a serious critique of “modern music”, you do need to listen beyond top 40 radio if you want to be taken remotely seriously.
While Chantel McGregor has made a name for herself playing guitar-shredding electric blues-rock, there’s also a gentler acoustic side to her music. Here’s her beautiful cover of Bruno Mars’ “Grenade”, a version which will be familiar to anyone who’s seen her play live recently, since it’s been a regular feature of her set.
Chantel has also launched a new blog.
Promo for Shineback’s Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, the new project from Tinyfish’s Simon Godfrey, a concept album with lyrics by Rob Ramsay. It takes a very different approach from Tinyfish’s guitar-based sound.
“For reasons I’ve never understood, electronica seems to be shunned by a lot of prog bands. They’ll play seven-string guitars and think they’re right on the cutting edge of music, which is nonsense. I decided to put away my guitar and not use it at all on the Shineback album. Instead, I play keyboards, computers and some synth. There are moments of guitar work, but not from me. I thought I’d get in people who could really play.”
The album features contributions from Matt Stevens and Henry Rogers, along with plenty of other names from the prog scene.
Panic Room at the 2012 Festival
I’ve decided that I’m probably going to give The Cambridge Rock Festival a miss this year.
It’s not that bands who had been highlights of previous years, such as Stolen Earth and Panic Room are missing, it’s not the absence of any big-name headliners, it’s just that the retro blues-rock and rather dated old-school metal that dominates this year’s bill really isn’t for me.
It might be that we prog fans were spoiled the last couple of years, but the genre is reduced to a token this year. It’s only really Mostly Autumn who fly the “new generation prog” flag on the main stage, and I will see them plenty of other times this year.
I have no idea whether the bill reflects an intentional change in direction, perhaps in response to feedback that there was too much prog last year. I’m hoping this isn’t the case, and 2014 will see a return to the sort of diverse, prog-friendly bills we saw in 2011 and 2012. Certainly there are plenty of great prog bands out there who aren’t CRF regulars. The recent Celebr8.2 festival in Kingston (which I never had the time to review properly) was filled with bands that would fit the Cambridge bill perfectly; I would name Alan Reed, Harvest, Threshold and Arena as bands with precisely the sort of crossover potential that would go down well with the CRF audience, and none of them have played the festival before.
With a few bands like that on the bill, I’ll certainly be back. And if you’re not really into prog but love old-fashioned metal and blues-rock, CRF 2013 should still be a great festival, with a great vibe and good beer.
Since it’s that time of the year again, it’s time to ask that same old question. Why does the BBC always give blanket television coverage to the indie-dominated Glastonbury and Reading Festivals, yet completely ignores festivals like Download, Cropredy or High Voltage? Do they never realise that rock, metal and folk fans are TV licence payers as well?