12.01.2019 The Station, Cannock: Atom Heart Floyd, support act: Purple Stereo
The
doors opened 20 minutes late on a cold January evening and when Purple Stereo entered the stage they had issues
with one of their guitarists’ equipment that simply wouldn’t work for most of the
45 minutes gig, bless them.
There
wasn’t any showmanship or interaction with the audience and they didn’t even
tell us the name of their band which made me feel sort of unwelcome, maybe it
just wasn’t their night.
Musically
they were dynamic and had nice and quite different intros to some of the solos
which I quite liked plus the singer’s voice was really great.
On
a whole the set felt a bit incoherent and somehow they didn’t get into the
groove I am sure the band possesses.
Pity
really.
Not
too long after the support act Atom Heart Floyd, likely so named after Pink
Floyds 1970 album ‘Atom Heart mother’ which was the first album of Floyd to
make it to number 1 in the British chart and eventually reaching gold status in
the US too, were on stage.
The
evening was not only musically really exciting but also visually they knew how
to impress.
The
set was sufficiently weird in a Pink Floyd kinda way just as it should be and
sonically Atom Heart Floyd were on the money.
And
they performed classics such as ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’, ‘Comfortably
numb’, ‘wish you were here’ as well as ‘Brick on the wall’ and plenty more.
The
time of extended and largely instrumental parts in songs is pretty much over
except for long standing bands of certain genres who can afford to indulge and
aren’t bothered by radio play and ‘3 minutes hits’ and the prog rock elements
highlighted throughout the set were truly superb.
Brilliant
night
Comments
Im Matt, Purple Stereo bassist.
Many thanks for your review on saturdays show, some constructive critisism there for us to take on board.
Id love to be a fly on the wall when our guitarist takes his amp back for ANOTHER blackstar repair. But to be fair, that was the first live show failure any of us have had to endure in over 5 yrs, so yes you are right in saying we were a little out of sorts and never really settled into our set.
Im sure Fletch, our singer did introduce us but i can forgive him if he over looked it under the circumstances.
As for being late in setting up and delaying the venue opening, we all actually arrived at 6pm as instructed, to find main act still not set up or sound checked. By the time the sound engineer arrived and they finished sound check, the venue was due to open and we got a sheep dip of a sound check only. No time for our drummer to settle into a different kit and no time to pick up on a faulty amp, so we were well n truely on the back foot before we played our first note!
That said, we really do appreciate your review, and glad you liked our music.Theres plenty for us to build on folllwing the gig and im definately not pointing fingers at anyone else. Show biz just throws a curve ball sometimes.
We hope to play the Station again soon as it was a fab venue, and great crowd!
Maybe if we cross paths again, come n say hello and introduce yourself before we play or even after. Be great to have a chat with any reviewer or blogger, and maybe have a chance to explain our issues before reviews go to press?
Best regards,
Matt