Fri 10 Jul – Night of the Prog Festival IV
Few words about the bands of great follow-up of the Loreley festival
Also Eden - openers, not bad, but a bit amateurish neo-prog compared to others. They have fine Gabriel-like singer.
Arena - together again on stage after two years since small festival in Lithuania. As usually proficient, but in the same time very relaxed and in good humour. Complain there is that sound was sometimes quite uneven, at least in the front. Epic track Solomon was one of apexes of the festival. But I liked the way they covered
Michael Jackson's Billie Jean very much as well.
Agents Of Mercy - blues-prog side project of
The Flower Kings members, Roine Stolt, Jonas Reingold and Zoltan Csozsz with tall, transvestic singer Nad Sylvan. Aside title great title track of their debut album, I'm not very fond of them. But nice surprise was
Karmakanic (Reingold's band) song When the Earth Meets the Sky and
Beatles' I am the Walrus.
Riverside - I like how the band have progressed through years, presenting the whole very fine new album (Anno Domini..). Tight, with lot of emotions and technically skillful.
Gazpacho - though headliner of the first evening, the weakest band to me, boring and sleepy, music I really can't get into. We had left it before they ended.
Subsignal - second best (even their debut) performance in my opinion - project founded by former members of great band
Sieges Even - german Marcus Steffen (guitarist) and dutchman Arno Menses (singer). Playing similar music to S.E., slightly more accesible and straightforward, but not less beautiful. They played song The Lonely Views of Condors from S.E. masterpiece Art of Navigating by the Stars. Mainly singer was incredible, clearly one of the stars of festival.
Pineapple Thief - decent band, to my tastes much "high school" sounding alternative, nothing groundreaking, I'd say cheaper version of Porcupine Tree
Lazuli - french band, unconventional and very refreshing for the festival, with variety of exotic instruments. Impressive show, though their music itself isn't very deep to me.
Pure Reason Revolution was cancelled without some noticing, shame on the organizators this time.
Pendragon - slightly disappointed by setlist, a bit uneven - nothing from Believe, everything from Pure. Older songs weren't my favorites either. But I liked again very relaxed atmosphere and Barret's funny stories during their show.
Steve Hackett - my biggest expectation belonged to this man, real legend and on of the most important and influental musicians in (prog) rock music. And his performance was even beyond these expectations. Almost sixty years old, still in great form, when he pulled the strings, it had such power, vibrations, emotions like no one else - hard to describe, it has to be experienced...lucky to had such occasion. Big note to his superb band, bassist Nick Bates funnily dressed in the costume of german sterotypical beer girl Heidi. Singing drummer Gary O'Toole was outstanding as well as Roger King on keyboards and Rob Townsend on piccolos, flutes and prominently on wonderful melancholic small soprano sax. They played fantastic full versions of
Genesis songs (Firth of Fifth, Blood on the Rooftops, Fly on a Windshield, In That Quiet Earth), short acoustic set and solo classics (such as Spectral Mornings, Please Don't Touch, Every Day, The Steppes, Slogans, Ace of Wands, Mechanical Bride, Serpentine Song). Funny was also when during tuning pause crowd started to sing Smoke on the Water riff, showing nice sense of irony and let's say respect to skills of these musicans.
Mick Pointer's Script for Jester's Tour - though hardly to beat Hackett who played before, great ending performance of
Marillion's debut nevertheless. All musicians did excellent job. I was surprised mostly by endurance of guitarist Nick Barret who had lot of work that evening, he was almost 4 hours on stage (incl.
Pendragon gig), but till the final note he played with ever lasting energy.
In short - This year was even better than last, and I can't wait what will be prepared for the next one.