Many cities nowadays
have good facilities to give new bands the opportunity to rehears and perform
their material on a real stage. The Starsound Studio in Utrecht is such a
location. It has a real professional recording studio and several rehearsal
rooms. On Saturday evening, you can both rent the stage and the bar. The
concert hall is suitable for an audience of about 150 people and there is no
curfew. Everyone who wants to do so can organize a concert or a festival. That
is just what Dutch band
Flamborough Head
did after visiting a concert at
the Starsound Studio earlier this year. They asked local band
Silhouette
as opening act supposing that they would bring along many fans.
Silhouette
Silhouette is active
in the progressive rock scene since 2004; they released the promo CD
A Maze in 2006. To my surprise, they
only performed
Long Distance from
that promo.
Their gig did not start the best way possible. It seemed that the
band members suffered from stage fright. It took them about three songs to get
in the right mood. Their forthcoming second album with the preliminary title
Moods dominated the set.
Moods is
a 79 minutes long concept album mixed by
Gerben Klazinga (
Knight Area).
Although the new songs sounded very promising, they do not reach the same
quality level of a band like Knight Area yet. The band still has much to learn
to become as good as Knight Area. Take for instance their drummer and singer
Jos Uffing.
He must
learn
to sing in a proper way and not to scream to loud in the microphone. Guitarist
Brian de Graeve
has to practice harder to get a good solo out of his instrument.
On the other hand, he has a nice voice and he should try to do more lead
vocals. Keyboardist
Erik Laan also
has a pleasant voice that he should use more often. From time to
time, he showed the audience that he has listened well to
Tony Banks and
Rick Wakeman. Maybe bass player
Gerrit-Jan Bloemink should use
bass pedals to give the music of Silhouette more body and depth. I am sure that
this band will grow to a higher level if we are prepared to give them enough
time.
Flamborough Head
Flamborough Head must
have practiced a lot lately, because they played extremely strong and tight.
New lead guitarist
Gert Polkerman
turned out to be
a good replacement for
Eddie Mulder. He
resembles Dutch blues maestro
Julian Sas,
but thank God,
he plays in a
different way. A big compliment to Gert for his guitar solo performed during
the live classic
Limestone Rock.
At the Progfarm Festival in November,
he already impressed me, but this time it seemed as if he had invented the
guitar parts himself.
Bravo! The band always performs material from their early
albums when
Siebe-Rein Schaaf was the
lead singer of the band. They are all favourites of their current lead singer
Margriet Boomsma.
This time they included three old pieces:
Schoolyard Fantasy,
Childscream
and
Garden Of Dreams
. Margriet sang those songs as if
they were written for her voice. The band played two tracks from their upcoming
fifth studio album:
Don’t Forget Us and
Sleepless Night
, strong pieces that made clear that
Looking For John Maddock
will be a next fine release from one of the best
progressive rock bands in the Netherlands.
Also Eden
Nowadays, one of the
best progressive rock bands from England is without any doubt
Also Eden,
for me one of the reasons to attend this mini-festival. I could have visit a
double concert of
It Bites and
Saga, but I followed my heart and
went to Utrecht.
Unfortunately, there were not so many people sharing the same
feelings. The concert started with approximately fifty people, but during the
time, Also Eden finished this triple concert only a few people stayed to see
this wonderful band in action. Bad luck for them, because they missed a high-level
prog rock concert. I had seen them twice before at the Progfarm Festival,
but this performance was their best on Dutch soil so far. According to lead
singer
How Lloyd-Jones,
they came to The Netherlands in the best possible line-up ever. They found in
Dave Roelofs an excellent new Dutch drummer
. The future looks bright for Also Eden if they manage to keep Dave
in the band for a long time. Dave told me that he liked fusion but during the
concert it looked as if
Neil Peart (
Rush) sat behind the drumkit.
The band kicked off with
Star, the
opening tune from their second album
It’s Kind Of You To Ask. Wow! That
really sounded awesome. More material from this album followed. The audience
reacted very enthusiastic. The first title played from their debut album
About Time, was
Between The Lines. They did it in the best possible way. In spite of the high temperature on
stage, the musicians gave everything they had.
Bumble and the encore
Children
Of The Night
were the other two pieces taken from their first release.
Singer How looked satisfied when the small audience made enough noise for a
final encore. Those who decided to see the three bands in action did not regret
their visit to the Starsound Studio in Utrecht. For only € 10, they saw a band
that has the potency to grow to the top of progressive rock bands in The
Netherlands. They also saw two bands that already belong to the premier league
of the progressive rock scene. Too bad for those people who spent their free
Saturday elsewhere! These bands deserve a larger audience.
Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen)