Blissed Out and Ambient

Courtesy of that fine blog Silent Ballet I have floated, bleary-eyed and cosmic-man into a couple of really rather good acts, both playing to this weeks rather hippy/psychedelic sort of vibe ( I have even bought new CD versions of the Floyds Meddle and Relics this week - desperate as I am to regain that 1971 state of mind)

First up is Century of Aeroplanes from Louisville Kentucky who put out what they describe as ambient/classical/indie material. It reminds me inparts of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra stuff but with less sacherine. They are most generous in making some of their albums freely available to download through various places. Their first, rather lovely, release Travel in Any Direction, can be downloaded from a WM Recordings site as can a further album A Simple Process. Slow and Drastic was released in 2007 and can be obtained through Capston Records.


The second band is called This is Your Captain Speaking from Australia and have new album out called Eternal Return through Missing Link Records. Apparently a digital release is being prepared and should be ready 'soon'...As befits my mood at present, this is another ambient/experimental set and jolly beautiful it is as well.

Sigur Ros at Colston Hall

The two openers for last nights extraordinary set were either new or I didn't recognise them - but how wonderful they were; things of rare beauty, soaring aurgasmic affairs which set the scene for the whole of the evening.

I for one was delighted that Sigur Ros harked back to their more elaborate material, although not ignoring the rather more 'commercial' elements of their most recent outing. Their power for me is in that crescendo-rock stylee that they deliver with such consumate ablility, showing up the plethora of looky-likey bands that attempt the same trick but fail to deliver.

The bowed guitar of Jón Þór Birgisson, heavily distorted, provides an etherial quality helping to fill the hall with those crashing walls of sound that are so mesmerising and elevating, toppped off with his falsetto vocal delivery. Honorable mentions must also go to Jón Þór Birgisson on drums and Georg Holm on bass for their rock solid underpinning and to Kjartan Sveinsson on keyboards for his understated but indispensible work

Inevitably some of the loudest cheers came for the more eassily identifiable 'hits' - Hoppipolla and Goggledigook etc - and whilst good they weren't the highlights for me. The final encore and closing track from the ( ) album was the spine tingling climax - magnificent.

Also mustn't forget to praise the staging - the combination of scratchy film on the cloth backdrop, the use of some on stage cameras to project up abstracted bits of the band, the now legendary 'balloon' lights behind the back cloth and the ocasssional retina burning blast-lights, all helped augment the phantasmagorical feel to the whole shebang (yes, go on , check out that old 1972 Curved Air album, Phantasmagoria!, my second ever gig in Chatham Cental Hall, ah yes)




Openening for SR were another young band of fresh-faced norse chaps from Iceland, For a Minor Reflection who acquitted themselves pretty well. Obviously part of the neugaze/crescendo rock school they wear their influences and aspirations clearly on their sleeves. Although some of their tracks could do with a more carefully structured approach; it became quite predictable where the quiet noodlng would explode it the crash bang wallop, tracks like Okrryd show real promise - good luck to them.