ASTRA, DIAGONAL AND LITMUS –
LONDON SCALA 14/04/10
It was fast, hard and heavy and suggested that Hawkwind had returned from their 70s heritage. This was Litmus, who opened up proceedings at the Scala tonight. The audience was allowed to enter in good time to see the start of the show, which isn’t always the case, so credit to the venue management there, and we joined the band’s musical spacecraft as we entered orbit with a dynamic opening. Such is Astro Rock. Here the whooshing of the Silver Machine mingled with the rocking movement of Motorhead, as we charged on our bikes down the intergalactic freeway. “We came to a Prog gig by mistake, but things are panning out”, quipped the bassist who shared the vocal duties with his fellow guitarist. These guys had good stage presence, and exuded plenty of power, pace and personality as they bashed on with their energetic mix of rock n roll, metal and psychedelia. The drummer played a blinder meanwhile. The final 15 minutes of the 40 minute set was taken up with “Beyond the Sun”, a long bass-led psychedelic passage in the middle. I was half expecting Nik Turner to walk on to the stage and take over the Space Ritual. The set ended as powerfully as it began and Litmus deservedly went off to warm applause. I went off and bought their latest album, which must say something.
Why do so many Prog musicians have beards, I asked myself as the 6 piece Diagonal came on stage with 5 beards and a dodgy haircut. Before they led us off into their adventure, a few technical adjustments had to be made, as is the way with second bands who have to hurriedly set up. “This is our avant-garde theatre set” announced he of the dodgy barnet. I thought there was a note of irony when he said this but in fact avant-garde Progressive music is what we got. A jazz-orientated, funky orientated groove was an early highlight but where was it all going? It was all going somewhere because the music moved from one passage to another in a rather disjointed way. The musical mood turned to danger, and then we had a drum solo and we were still on the first “piece” – I’ll call it that because there were so many sections, and it was just too intense for the band spokesperson to tell us what we might be listening to. The second piece had an exotic guitar passage evoking emotion and melancholy, but like the wind and the waves, nothing stayed still and the transformation was constant. Ideas, ideas, ideas. There was no shortage of them here. This was difficult, degree-level Prog. The picture being painted was complex. Interestingly, Mrs D’s view on all this was that Diagonal had plenty of ideas, but lacked the maturity to channel them into anything coherent. I guess this is the problem with being avant-garde, which can have a multitude of interpretations and meanings. It didn’t help that the band lacked charisma on stage. Maybe it’s just me but I thought that introducing the bassist, who like his drumming colleague earlier, performed a solo, was a bit naff. The solos were good though. As pretentious and self-indulgent as it all was, I liked parts of it and especially appreciated the jazz guitar sections, but then was equally turned off by the singing which seemed to come from the Wailing Wall. Calming and magnetic riffs mixed with the inaccessible, dull and frankly the incomprehensible, as if the band had come from another planet where the musical values are different. I looked around me and the reaction ranged from rigor mortis to people having near epileptic fits, presumably hooked inextricably into this maelstrom of moods and multitude of constituent parts. As Diagonal stumbled from passage to passage, I had visions of Whispering Bob Harris eulogizing about them on his Old Grey Whistle Test. One of the final acts was a short post-doom section which I enjoyed but my overall conclusion was that this band was telling a story of which sometimes I felt part and most of the time I didn’t. Enthusiastic appreciation was the reaction of the ever swelling crowd as the band left the stage, so I guess I was in the minority with this view.
I’ve never seen so much cabling on stage as there was for Astra. The mellotron and moog synthesizer which put the psychedelic edge on their Prog outpourings were largely responsible. It took a while to get it all set up, but once it started, the band knew how to get us in the mood. It was the guitarist who led the way with a dreamy and expansive post-doom build-up. A mountainous entity arose out of small beginnings. After five minutes of intro, the band launched into The Weirding, the track title of their album. The wistfulness and dreamy power that is so reminiscent of Pink Floyd flowed melancholically and ponderously. This was a faithful interpretation of the album, whose scale and size were captured here. The drums and the electronic equipment played their part, superimposing the delicate touches needed to make this special and taking it onto a higher plane. The slow beat mixed with intergalactic interventions. Meanwhile there’s something simple and childish about the lyrics which reflect our vulnerability in this sinister world where we are “asking darkness for a favour”. The sound of an eruption signalled the end of this impressive track, yet I had doubts. This is a live performance where I might expect an interpretation of what I had heard on record. I reconciled that with the fact that “The Weirding” is a good album. I cannot hide a slight disappointment even so. The band were disadvantaged also by sub-standard sound quality. The mix level was high, which was not conducive to picking out the subtleties which generate so much of the imagination on “The Weirding”. The Astra guys dealt with that well though and were putting on a slick performance. “Ouroboros” followed and after a heavy 70s style synth start, another entrancing guitar solo followed. The drum gave us the steady backbone, and with the keys providing a strong influence, we were taken off into other worlds. Once again the mix was rough and loud, so the scope for delicacy was reduced. Fortunately the guitar-playing was sublime and I was not alone in hanging onto every note. On the background screen, a volcanic eruption took place, coinciding with a multi-instrumental climax. The band was certainly getting the set list right, at least in my eyes, as they went on to “The River Under” and its powerful instrumental and lyrical emotion. Slow and sad beginnings envelop the deceptively sinister words – “The hangman came and took you by the hand”. The apparently child-like world is not so rosy. Astra are brilliant at getting this across. The lyrical story telling is enhanced by the guitar intricacy and the hypnotic and memorable chorus. The band was visibly capturing its audience. Some stood still, unable to take in the magnitude. Others swayed along in their own world. We were an hour in now and the band changed direction with a 70s style guitar-led instrumental extravaganza. The riff was straighter than before. I detected a jazz influence. Instead of story-telling, it was now self-indulgent Prog showmanship, but the music had mobility. It was also heavy. I noted that the sound quality was better now. Like Diagonal before them, there hadn’t been much movement from the Astra band members and there was even less now. I decided to close my eyes and “dig it”. Then it stopped. That was to be Astra’s last track but they came back for an encore and played another instrumental track. It started with a long, sweeping passage. It was plaintive and powerful. The heavy guitar mastery mixed with the drums and the galactic sounds of the synthesizers in the background, the suspense built up and it all rose to an impressive crescendo. For those of us who’ve only heard “The Weirding”, this was a new and fresh side of Astra. It was a feast of heaviness but still smooth and controlled. As it developed, it became more spaced out in the musical sense, but maybe in other ways too. Appropriately for this evening of Astro Rock and psychedelic Progressive Metal, the synthesizers intervened to take Astra’s encore into outer-worldly territory and bring the event to a lofty conclusion.
Andrew Doherty
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