Where Worlds Collide

Posted on the Karnataka forum this morning

Dear Karnataka fans and friends…..

Karnataka is set to begin a new chapter following the announcement that Lisa, Ian Harris and Gonzalo will be leaving the band.

We look forward to bringing you further news and line up announcements in the near future.

We also look forward to seeing you on the road!

Thank you for your wonderful support!

We wish Lisa, Gonzalo and Ian Harris all the best.

As one door closes another opens…

This came as a complete shock. They’d just released a stunning album, were getting better and better as a live act, and one got the impression they were well on the road to bigger and better things.

As the statement says, it’s not the end. Ian Jones and guitarist Enrico Pinna plan to regroup and promise to be back with a new singer, drummer and keyboard player.

As announced on his website, Ronnie Dio passed away this morning.

There were premature rumours about his death circulating yesterday, but it’s now confirmed he died early this morning, after a long battle with cancer.

The little man with the big voice, he was perhaps one of the greatest hard rock/metal singers of all time, fronting Rainbow, putting his own mark on Black Sabbath, and followed this with a lengthy and successful solo career. Few people have managed to produce all time classic albums with three completely different bands, but with “Rainbow Rising”, “Heaven and Hell” and “Holy Diver”, Dio is one of those few. He was a true legend, one of my biggest heroes in my formative years.

It’s worth noting that 90% of the Facebook updates in my timeline tonight are about Dio. That says something about how much he was loved.

Anyone who’s not being going to Mostly Autumn gigs since Heather Findlay left the band in April really doesn’t know what they’re missing. Admittedly a lot of people had reason to be sceptical; few bands manage to survive the loss of a singer, and those that manage the transition the best are those that use it as an opportunity to re-invent themselves.

At Olivia Sparnenn’s first gig as lead singer, in Gloucester, just over a week since Heather’s tearful farewell gig, we saw the new-look Mostly Autumn hit the ground running. Manchester a couple of weeks later saw a great (if very loud) gig. And Saturday’s performance at Bury Met was better still. Livvy has grown in confidence as the tour has progressed.

Although nothing from the forthcoming album “Go Well-Diamond Heart” has been premièred live yet, we’ve still seen a major shakeup of the setlist. Gone are most of Heather’s deeply personal songs such as “Shrinking Violet” and “Unoriginal Sin”. We’ve seen the welcome return of some oldies such as “Out of the Green Sky”, which I’d always thought would suit Livvy’s voice, and a great new arrangement of “Dreaming”. They’ve also brought in a couple of Livvy’s own songs originally recorded with Breathing Space, including a version of “Questioning Eyes”, which fits the MA set far better that I expected, as well as “Slow Down” from Bryan’s solo album. It’s also great to see the return of Liam Davidson’s effects-drenched solo spot, particularly good at Bury; it makes you realise how great a guitarist he can be.

The end result is a rawer, rockier sound that sounds like the beginning of a completely new band. It’s now making me really look forward to the album, to see what the new-look band is capable of doing in the studio.

Welcome to the election which everyone lost. The voters have returned with a verdict of “none of the above”.

• Labour have done as badly as they did in 1983, so they’re kidding themselves to say it’s anything other than a massive defeat. No way can Gordon Brown expect to stay in office.
• The Tories have also lost. They were up against the most unpopular prime minister people can remember, in the middle of a recession, and 37% of the popular vote is the best they can manage. The verdict of the British people on them was “we don’t trust you guys with a majority, so we’re not going to give you one”.
• The Liberal Democrats never expecting to form a majority government, but their goal was to get a big enough wedge of MPs to be able to form a majority with either of the other two parties. That hasn’t happened, which is why they have also lost.

So now we’re in the post-election period while the parties investigate coalitions, and try to make deals. Commentators from countries with proportional voting (i.e. most countries) are bemused that so many people in Britain find this strange. We seem to have three options:

• A coalition (or some agreement short of a coalition) between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. While the parties are right to enter discussions, I doubt that they’ll be able to hammer out a deal that both parties will be able to accept. The ‘Orange Book’ faction of the Liberals and David Cameron’s moderates may have something in common, but there are a sizeable section of both parties who’d consider such a deal to be anathema.
• A minority Tory government, perhaps doing ad-hoc deals to get certain legislation through. At the moment I think this is most likely option, although it’s likely to end in a second election within a year.
• A Lib/Lab coalition. Sadly I think this is a non-starter; the numbers simply do not add up. They’ll be well short of a working majority, and nobody really wants to cut shady pork-barrel deals with the Scottish Nationalists or Democratic Unionists.
• A grand coalition of all three parties as government of national unity, with David Cameron as Prime Minister. Possibly the least likely of all, and only justified if the problems with the economy are really as serious as some of the more apocalyptic commentators are suggesting.

Whatever happens next, we’re going to be living in interesting times. There’s been a lot of talk about electoral reform during and after this election. Whether or not parties can work together successfully when no one party has a majority will be one test of whether or not both the British people and their politicians can deal with the results of an electoral system which would never give an overwhelming majority to a single party.

It’s been one of those bank holiday weekends - four gigs in four days, which I think is the greatest amount of music in the shortest time I’ve ever done outside of a festival!

Thursday was The Reasoning ably supported by Morpheus Rising at Bury Met. Morpheus Rising are a five piece band shamelessly citing the 1980s NWOBHM as a principle influence, now reclassified as hard rock following boundary changes. Entertaining high energy stuff, and I’m sure I’ve seen their bass player before somewhere - he looked naggingly familiar!

I’d seen The Reasoning a week earlier in London, where a very poor sound mix really hadn’t done the music justice, and the performance suffered badly as a result. Tonight was far, far better. Bury Met is always a great gig whoever is playing, and The Reasoning I know and love were back with a vengeance, now expanded to a seven-piece with new members Jake Bradford-Sharp on drums, ex-Fish keyboard player Tony Turrell and vocalist Maria Owen. The new album “Adverse Camber” features heavily, which takes a slight step back from prog-metal in favour of some elements of the atmospheric melodic music that Rachel did with Karnataka. Not that the twin guitar attack of Dylan Thompson and Owain Roberts doesn’t still rock hard plenty of times, but the overall effect is to make their live set a lot more varied and multi-dimensional, which cannot be anything other than a good thing.

On Friday I travelled down to Cardiff to see Hawkwind supported by Panic Room at St David’s Hall. I’ve seen Panic Room many times before at their own shows, here they made the most of their five-song 30 minute slot, naturally including a great version of “Apocalypstick”. Blessed with a good sound mix for a support, they seemed to go down well with Hawkwind’s audience, and told me they sold a lot of albums after the gig.

Hawkwind themselves I hadn’t seen since 1980, and had lost track of what they’ve been doing since the mid-80s, so I really didn’t know what to expect. They turned out to be amazingly good - they played a great mix of 70s classics like “Lord of Light”, “Magnu” and “Lighthouse” with more recent material. And there plenty of Theramin courtesy of Tim Blake. Nowadays they seem to be the missing link between metal, prog and rave/techno culture - Their music ranges from heavier songs atmospheric floydian bits, and several moments where they all started playing laptops and looked and sounded like Orbital. On quite a few songs they had two bass players, with guitarist Niall Hone playing ‘lead bass’ and Mr Dibs playing ‘rhythm bass’, strumming chords like Lemmy used to do, producing a sound with an awful lot of bottom-end. And hats off to drummer Richard Chadwick for getting Simon King’s very distinctive drumming style off to a tee. Amazingly Dave Brock looks no different from how he looked 30 years ago. The first encore of Hasan-I-Sabah with a lengthy techno middle section was amazing, and I really wasn’t expecting them to finish with Silver Machine.

Saturday was Veteran Welsh proggers Man at The Garage in Swansea. There were two supports ,the first being a bluesy-rock trio who all looked about 15, some meaty riffs and good songwriting let down by poor vocals, but their youth must show long term promise. Next up was a truly dire landfill indie band. There might have been a few flourishes from the guitarist, clearly a frustrated rocker, but the tuneless songs did nothing for me at all, not helped by the fact they were louder than Hawkwind.

Man themselves were great, even if, like so many veteran bands, they only had a couple of original members left, Martin Ace on vocals and bass, and Phil Ryan on keys. Without knowing any of their songs, I found the most enjoyable moments were when when they went off into extended jams, with the rhythm section saying down a solid groove with Hammond organ soloing over the top. Proof that grey-haired wrinkly rockers can still do it.

As for Sunday, I’ve always meant to step out of my comfort zone of prog, metal and classic rock and investigate genres like jazz and folk, so spending a weekend in Swansea at the same time as The Mumbles Jazz festival seemed like a opportunity not to be missed. From the programme, the most attractive sounding one seemed to be Sunday night’s double bill, even though I’d never heard of either act. First on was the Mark Nightingale All Star British Jazz Quintet. With trombone, sax, electric piano, bass and drums, it was pretty muso stuff, with 13/8 time signatures (7/8 and 9/8 favoured by prog is for wimps!) and many, many bass solos. Still very entertaining even if they occasionally strayed into easy listening territory.

The second act, Protect The Beat, were billed as “seriously funky jazz/groove from five top UK session musicians”. Their session credit CV read like a who’s who of rock and pop with artists like Massive Attack, Sting, Chaka Khan and, er, take that. Led by sax player Derek Nash they were both awesomely tight and completely on fire, and clearly enjoying every minute of their two hours on stage. One of those nights when you realise that recorded music on CD is just a pale imitation of live music; there really is nothing like being in the same room as a bunch of great musicians giving it all they’ve got. Not that anyone reading this needs to be reminded.