Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Spanish Art Rock Experience II: 29-Jun-2013


The Spanish Art Rock Experience was an event held in Sala Charada, right in the heart of Madrid.  The venue is a night club where a raised part of the room is reutilised as a stage.  This meant there wasn't a lot of room for the musicians to move about much and lighting was limited.  The most impressive lighting being above the audiences head where a multi-coloured LED matrix (about 3M x 6M) which displayed an animated series of geometric shapes (except when it crashed, when it displayed the Asus logo and an error message).  The night promised 3 bands, which is exactly what was delivered.

Cloudmap

Cloudmap was the first of the bands that were completely new to me and are from Madrid. The group comprise:

Chema Segoviano:  Guitar
Alberto Segoviano:  Keyboards
Javier Espejo:  Vocals
Manuel Coromina:  Bass & Acoustic Guitar
Ángel Muñoz:  Bass & Mandolin
Hector Calderón:  Drums


Their set began with the playback of HAL's death/shutdown sequence from '2001: A Space Odyssey' and the band came in where HAL began singing 'Daisy, Daisy' in the original.

Initially Manuel Coromina was on acoustic guitar and Angel Muñoz on bass. After two songs Manuel Coromina took over the bass and Angel Muñoz picked up an odd instrument that I first thought was an electric lute (yeah, let's hear it for more rock lute), but later thought it was more likely a very short scale 12 string electric guitar – He was moving around so much it was difficult to get a good look at it. It was only later when I consulted the Subterranea web-site that I saw he was credited with 'mandolin' (which usually has 8 strings), so perhaps this is a prog mandolin, in similar vein to the ubiquitous 7 string guitar so beloved of prog metal bands.

Throughout the performance there were sound montages between songs, including additional sections from '2001: A Space Odyssey'. Overall Cloudmap were enjoyable. In terms of influences (or trite comparisons on my part) I couldn't help thinking they'd listened to a good dose of Porcupine Tree / StevenWilson with some Rush and Black Sabbath thrown in.


Sonutopia

This group were also unknown to me prior to this concert. They are based in La Coruña, in the North of Spain and comprise:

Xoan Limia: Guitar
Javi Paz: Keyboards
Cristóbal Castro: Drums
Santy Souto: Vocals
Víctor Gacio: Bass

There were two things that stood out about this group. The first being that the entire set seemed to consist of guitar solos. The keyboard player was allowed a couple of short organ solos and the vocalist was allowed to warble a few words between fretboard virtuosic widdlyness but it was very clear that the star of the show was Xoan Limia on guitar. Or at least he would have been if it wasn't for one other member of the group – the drummer.

They announced towards the end of the set that the drummer had had to learn the set in two weeks, so I cannot be certain if he was actually Cristóbal Castro as listed above (and taken from the Subterranea web-site). What was beyond doubt was that this guy could groove. He played with great feel and imagination and contrasted against the guys of Cloudmap to show just what a difference a good drummer can make.

The groups/musicians I was most reminded of by this set was Mostly Autumn (sans female vocalist) and Jimmy Page, but then this group was all about the guitarist.

The vocalist took a couple of songs to get warmed up but then put in a sterling performance with some excellent rock vocals and also played rhythm guitar on some numbers.

Harvest


Harvest were the main attraction of the evening. I first heard of Harvest after many reviews of the Celebr8.2 festival (held in Kingston, London) raved about this group. After some youtube research and inspecting their web-site (www.harvestband.com) I downloaded the two CDs from Bandcamp.

Harvest comprise:

Monique Van der Kolk: Vocals
Jordi Prats: Guitar
Jordi Amela: Keyboards
Alex Ojea:  Drums
Toni Munné:   Bass


It was glaringly obvious from the outset that this band are in a different league to the previous groups. The sound is much more sophisticated with beautiful arrangements and thoughtful use of the keyboard sounds. Where the previous two groups had a wall of sound that made distinguishing the individual instruments difficult, if not impossible, with Harvest each instrument had its place and fitted perfectly into the whole. The result was a sparse yet powerful sound that was a pleasure to listen to.

The outstanding element had to be Monique's vocals. In turns delicate and powerful, but always perfectly pitched, her performance was pure ear candy (OK and maybe some eye candy as well).

Once again the drums were a decisive factor in the overall performance, sadly not in the positive way that was the case with Sonutopia. I felt that the drums were consistently played behind the beat and the other musicians were having to hold back to remain in time. The drummer wore headphones throughout and I can only guess that he was playing along to a click-track and something was wrong with the track as other live performances on youtube do not exhibit this tendency.

Conclusion

An enjoyable evening where each group provided something of interest.  I hope the Spanish Art Rock Experience continues to promote progressive rock in Spain and introduces me to new bands and new sounds.  Maybe they will for you too?