Tag Archives: concert

Unkle at Royal Festival Hall

19 Friday Apr 2019

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An Unkle performance is always going to be a little unusual given James Lavelle is very eclectic crossing many genres such as the ground breaking Psyence Fiction album.

The first half of the performance was very much DJ lead by James at a desk and decks, live drums, keyboard/guitarist and Cello. This instrumentation alone really shows the diversity of the musical styling.

No live locals as a result the staging certainly didn’t have a central focus, everyone was with their instruments. Even Moby who crosses genres, as a live artist is in front of the other musicians or moving around the stage when not using a singer. Like any rock concert the performance ebbed and flowed with raising and lowering of the tempo. With the slower pieces being the more cinematic pieces like Heaven.

Unlike a conventional performance the lighting didn’t pick out any of the performers, and like a club made more use of strobing light effects, but in contrast a lot of video was used as well including the amazing Spike Jonze directed skateboarders for Heaven.

Part 2 …

An intermission or perhaps a very long encore? Not what you’d expect half way through a performance of this nature. But the change gave emphasis to the use of 5 different vocalists.

This changed the dynamic but also gave the second half a bit of a stuttering feel as the different singers can on stage and left.

Added to the fact that the delivery of performances originally by the likes of Ian Brown and Richard Ashcroft had the timbre of a female voice. But things got going and and then just built to a thumping finale.

Interestingly even with the use of live vocalists they weren’t lit up.

All said and done, Unkle doesn’t perform live very often and it’s great hearing the music performed live. I would love to have caught James Lavelle working with the Orchestra as he did with the Heritage Orchestra.

More photos here.

Faithless live

22 Sunday Nov 2015

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 Faithless performed at Alexandria Palace last night in support of their new remix compilation album.  


When they performed the big hits the place was pulsing, but in the chilled numbers the audience seemed to lose attention – shame really as it took the edge off a good performance.

  
More photos available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mp3monster/sets/72157660900174080

Faithless at Bournemouth International Conference centre

01 Wednesday Dec 2010

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We have been lucky not have been overly affected by the snow, so managed to get across to Bournemouth last night to see Faithless perform again in support of their album The Dance. Some photos can be seen at mp3monstrer photos .

It was a great gig, with a lot of the tracks from the latest album working very well in a live format (I have to admit I was disappointed when I heard the album). Some of the older numbers have been made a lot ‘beefier’.

In addition for this tour you can buy almost immediately after the concert a live recording (these can also be ordered from the Faithless website).

If you get a chance to see Faithless live, we would recommend it.

Peter Gabriel – New Blood Tour

08 Thursday Apr 2010

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The New Blood tour is following on the back of his Scratch My Back album – A different take on the covers album, by working the covers as orchestral pieces.

So the tour means a large Orchestra rather than his regular touring band. The concert has much in common with a traditional orchestral performance with the first half being the new album end to end. After the interval we’re treated with some great reworkings of his own songs. Some obvious choices and others not so.

With a large orchestra Peter can’t provide the usual style of performance he lays on with zorb balls, Sedgeways, massive moving floors. That’s not to say this was not a class Gabriel visual feast. No, we get curtains made from massive U2 style displays, visuals behind the orchestra; several camera crews filming, often right in the middle of the musicians so the stage side screens get you into the heart of the action.

So a beautiful and stunning concert. I have posted some photos on our flickr account. What is cool is that the guy (Stefan Goodchild) who produced some the visuals has found my pictures ans some by a few others (possibly more professional than mine) and put them together into a collection to show his work which can be found here.

If you read the journal, the artist will be making some video clips of the work available. We would highly recommend checking them out, along with the blog.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mp3monster/sets/72157623594005837/

FabChannel – Quality Streaming Live Concerts

12 Friday Sep 2008

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I’ve come across a rather interesting resource called FabChannel.com.  FabChannel are providing quality video streams of whole concerts from legitimate sources, either licensed concert recordings from music companies such as Universal and V2 or professional recorded performances from Dutch based venues.  The video quality is good enough that it could be expanded to watch full screen with only a small amount of graininess on a 1600x1200monitor with streaming through a Flash player. FabChannel’s performances cover a wide range of well known artists such as The View and Martha Wainwright, and they claim to have got over 900 performances available already.

 Martha Wainright on FabChannel

The site also has integration with last.fm and can also provide useful artist bios etc. To generate income to pay for the service there are some adverts on the site, but they’re not annoying popup’s etc.