[atlantaprog] Re: Where's the bass player, anyway?

ARIA Memebers, Here's my review of NEARFest '07.


NEARFest 2007 Review

FRIDAY PRE-SHOW

One-Shot – France – Essentially a Magma spin-off project. Instrumentally and 
compositionally kind of like Magma sans the Kobian. Strong interplay between 
the members. Really good fusionesque stuff.

Secret Oyster – Denmark – Together again after a 30-year hiatus, S.O. easily 
showed why they were considered an equal to Weather Report, etc. back in the 
early ‘70’s. They were fantanstic. Sadly though, I was feeling very ill (after 
an 11.5 hr drive and little to eat), I excused myself to my car where I slept 
for the remainder of SO’s set, leaving me with only hearing 2 of their songs. 
Deep disappointment that I missed so much of their set.

Allan Holdsworth – UK – OK, I know I’m going to get slammed for this but, 
Holdsworth BORED THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ME! I just don’t get the 
“auto-volume-swell" string of major13th, minor9 flat 11th, etc. chords, then a 
few runs and back to the aforementioned jazz chords. The only saving grace of 
the set was Chad’s drumming. He is a living legend. I saw AH back in the early 
‘80’s when he was still into the fiery fusion stuff. That was great. This was 
lousy. Very disappointing.

 

SATURDAY

Feeling 100% better, I was ready for…

IZZ – USA – Proggy fusion with 2 drummers and 2 female singers. I had never 
heard them before and now after hearing them, I can’t recall what they sounded 
like. I guess that that is not saying very much for their impact on me. I do 
however recall liking their longer instrumental sections much better than the 
singing parts. I guess overall, kind of forgettable. Good, but not very 
original or impactful.


NeBeLNeST – France – There’s just something about all of these French bands 
that I just like. I loved the soprano sax against the Ric bass and keys. Very 
tight playing with rich/dense harmonies.


Bob Drake – USA – What were Chad & Rob thinking/smoking????? I can only 
describe this as: Way off-kilter Americana, singer-songwriter, finger style, 
alt-rockabilly pretentious crap!!! 

Here’s why: In addition to Bob playing guitar, he had a second fellow playing 
guitar too and a drummer (we all found out later that it was Dave Kerman from 
Present). Well, the drummer “arrived” to the stage in slippers, robe, shower 
cap and pillow in tow. He preceded to fluff is pillow, place it on the floor 
tom, turn off the nightstand lamp that he had taped to a small chair and “fell 
asleep” only to “wake up” on cue to play his drum kit. WTF? This was not 
progressive or even remotely artsy. It was just plain dumb.

Magenta – Wales – OK these guys seem to be the new darlings of the prog scene. 
They have been winning awards all around the world. Best new “this, Best new 
“that”. I have got to warn you. They are embarrassingly cliché. At best, they 
are trying to sound like IQ or Marillion. If that is the case, then, one should 
conclude that: IF Genesis were the perfectly-aged wine then IQ and Marillion 
would just be the grape, leaving Magenta as being nothing but, well, the water. 
Very bland water.

Some pros and cons:

Pros: The female singer can sing like nobodies business. She went for some very 
high pitches and just nailed then spot-on. AND, she’s hot looking. Good combo…

Cons: The lead guitarist would not stop using his wha-wha pedal everytime he 
went for a riff. On top of that, he was the worst poser that NEARFest has had 
since the lead singer for Knight Area. The other guitarist was useless. The 
drummer was so un-inspired that a drum machine could easily have provided more 
soul. Every song sounded exactly the same. Many were in the same key.


Hawkwind – England – I saw HW back in the early ‘90’s. They were a 
dis-conjointed mess back then. This set however was much more polished. The 
computerized back-projections were out-of-this-world. Musically, their stuff 
was very 3-chord, blues-based riffology. For my money, it could have been even 
spacier than it was but I enjoyed their set very much.

 
SUNDAY

Indukti – Poland – I bought their debut CD last year at NF and have been 
playing it fairly regularly throughout the year. I was really excited to see 
them live. I would have to say that Indukti has to be the closest thing to 
Heavy Metal that NF has ever booked. The asphalt-melting power chords were 
perfectly off-set by the soaring beauty of the violin. The two extreme 
opposites created a deeply hypnotic and mesmerizing cocktail. Very powerful 
indeed.


La Maschera Di Cera – Italy – If you love, or even just like Italian Symponic 
prog ala PFM, Banco, Le Orme, Deas Ex Machina then you will like these guys. 
Interestingly, No guitar. Keys (Vintage moog, mellotron, Hammond, Rhodes), 
bass, flute/sax, drums, vox. (The lead singer did play acoustic guitar on a few 
songs.) I would rank these guys as one tier lower than the aforementioned 
classic Italian bands but still very good.


Robert Rich – USA – In the vein of Klaus Shultz, Steve Roach, etc. Robert Rich 
delivered an absolutely beautiful sonic feast of modular moogs, sequencers, 
processed slide guitar and deep-piched Native-American flutes all accompanying 
a stunning computerized backdrop that had me spell-bound for the entire set. 
Sadly the 3rd slot is only 30 minutes long. He could have done 90 minutes and I 
would have been complete immersed. Highly recommended.

Pure Reason Revolution – England – Billed as “The missing link between Pink 
Floyd and the 21st Century” I was expecting much more of a truly classic 
psychedelic sound and feel. What we got was 2 guitarist who just love fucking 
around with their echoplexes. I would call it psudopsych-alt-pop-rock for 
teenagers. Pitiful at best. Rob & Chad gave these guys the 4th slot? What were 
they thinking? Not progressive and not very well done either.


Magma – France – FINALLY, something of real original substance. They delivered 
their set with absolute precision again, just as in ‘03. Christen Vader has to 
be one of the best, most powerful and musical drummers alive. Again I was 
totally taken in with their entire set. Very interesting was the fact that one 
of the keyboard players also played a marimba which sometimes he played with a 
violin bow. Bowing the wooden bars to create a errie, angelic singing quality. 
Very cool.

 
All-in-all I would say that this was the most uneven line-up of the 4 NF’s that 
I have been to. I still had a good time meeting old friends dispite being sick 
on Friday and missing most of Secret Oyster.

 
CD & DVD purchases:

Elsewhen – a free CD from a friend of mine
Jade Warrior – Waves (Remastered)
Flowerkings – Alive on planet earth (double CD)
Secret Oyster – Straight to the Krankenhaus
Klaus Schultz – Live (double CD)
Univers Zero – Live
Robert Rich / Daniel Colvin – Atlas Dei (DVD)
NEARFest DVD ‘05

Harold

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