Concert Reviews

The Birmingham & Midlands Institute, Birmingham With masterclasses, performances and talks including Q&A, the electronic music conference in Birmingham had interesting and influential musicians to offer. While organiser Chris Wave said very little and showed a 26 minute 1980’s film called ‘Knights electric’ with a great soundtrack and a crappy storyline during his 30 minutes set the event really became meaningful when the various conveyors of electronic music gave their talks and allowed plenty of time for audience members to ask questions. First up was synthesist Richard Barbieri whose band ‘Japan’ enjoyed success in the mid 1970s into the early 1980’s and especially their album ‘Tin Drum’ is seen as ground-breaking. Not as big in their home country as they should have been, Japan still had a large following in the UK. Barbieri was a down to earth guy who openly talked about the trappings of working on projects alone and the joys of collaborating and recalled some ...

Symphony Hall, Birmingham The date of this amazing gig coincided with my 50 th birthday and YES formed in 1968 and the guys could have played for weeks and not exhaust their back catalogue. Quite a fractured proposition at times with many changing members YES still never lost their essence on their numerous albums and seeing Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin together with two outstanding musicians on drums and bass was simply amazing. Anderson had formed YES with is buddy Chris Squire who sadly passed away in June 2015. Jon Anderson said that ‘he was Obi Wan Kenobi and Squire was Darth Vader and that they were the ying and yang of the band but true musical brothers’ and it was nice to hear that. The evening was amazing: Rick Wakeman in T-Shirt, Jogging pants and his infamous cape surrounded by two Korg™ Kronos’s, a Korg Triton, a Minimoog and other synths I couldn’t quite make out from where I was sat is a towering figure and larger than life, quite a con...

The Flapper, Birmingham, 11.03.2017 A sold out evening in aid of the ‘promise dreams’ charity (a charity that aims to fulfil the dreams of seriously and/or terminally ill children) can only be a good thing. And the bands delivered beautifully. One of my favourite bands Shelter kicked off the evening and they were amazing from start to finish and out of the three bands of the evening certainly the most ‘obviously synthy’ act. They performed material from their two albums ‘Emerge’ and ‘Ascend’ and some of the tracks were presented in new and exciting remix formats as well. From the word go the audience was hooked on Shelter and the duo ended their set with the song ‘Beautiful’, co-written by Erasure ’s Andy Bell and their set was just that: beautiful. 4-piece Sinestar from Bristol had a 10 track set and were difficult to pidgeon hole (always a good thing in my opinion) and their set was mostly high energy songs but with a slightly softer voice than one wou...