This was a last minute dash up the M62 over the Pennines to the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds to capture some of the embers of the Last Blast tour, the final installment of the Gong/Ozric Tentacles double headliner bills of the last few years. This time around the bands have alternated headline slots rather than play gigs in blocks where one band will always go on last for several consecutive dates. Tonight saw Gong going second, although set times seem to clock in at around 90 minutes per band, whichever way the order falls.
The first thing to say is that I’d heard great things about the Brudenell and it was thoroughly merited. Situated within a vibrant multi-ethnic part of Leeds, it is surrounded by Turkish eateries, Indian supermarkets and more traditional looking boozers, with youth milling around everywhere, but itself is a brightly illuminated complex, set back from the road and with several bars and lounges. The bands played in a smallish, relatively intimate room with standing room stretching out in front of the band in a crescent shape, with people further back slightly elevated – views of the stage were good from all vantage points. The gig was sold out but it didn’t feel overpacked. Gong and the Ozrics both had fairly extensive merchandise stalls with the usual vintage fayre and special tour T-shirts – it was difficult to work out who most people had come to see – perhaps Gong as the GAS stall always seemed teeming.
Ozric Tentacles have changed lineup since the last time I saw them. Vinny Shillito, who I think was the bassist on the Ed Wynne tour a few years ago provides a rather brooding presence at the back of the stage, and the new drummer is Pat Garvey. But beyond this the core of the band remains mainman Ed, on guitar and keyboards, and his son Silas on additional keyboards, although Saskia Maxwell is present for the majority of the performance, largely on flute.
My last two viewings of the Ozrics were slightly one-dimensional, firstly a stripped down ‘electronics’ set where the band was essentially cut down to Silas and Ed, and largely memorable for Ed’s soloing over classic Ozrics tunes from the 1990s, whilst the Sheffield gig on the first ‘joint’ tour, we saw from a distance whilst chatting to Gong who’d just come off stage. My view here was much more up close and personal, to Ed in particular, and it struck me that this might just be the most I’ve ever actually ‘heard’ his guitar playing. I remember the first time I saw Ozric Tentacles, at the legendary Treworgey Tree Fayre in Cornwall, in 1989 and being crushingly disappointed at the difference between the pristine, multi-faceted styles of their studio albums and the muddy thrash of live performances aired. That’s something of an oversimplification – the Treworgey gig was something of an impromptu jam on the ramshackle Wango Riley truck stage, and later gigs in the early 90s showed much more faithful reinterpretations of tracks from Pungent Effulgent and Erpland. It was just that at those gigs the sound was so dense and the guitar so treated that often the intricacies were lost.
Tonight was different. The slightly dead sound in the Brudenell, whilst unforgiving, allows each component of the music to be heard in isolation, and served to show what a phenomenal guitar player Ed Wynne is. There was definitely also a desire to step away from the most thrashy stuff – whilst classics like ‘Eternal Wheel’ were aired, the highlights were magnificent performances of atmospheric pieces from either end of the timescale: the title track of the band’s latest album ‘Lotus Unfolding’ and a great ‘lost’ track from ‘Pungent Effulgent’, namely ‘Ayurvedic’, which genuinely had me in tears. Both had common components: Ed’s crystal clear guitar and Saskia’s gorgeous flute lines. The classic ‘Sniffing Dogs’ from ‘Tantric Obstacles’ was another highlight, and at times appeared like a genuine jam – Silas showing unexpected dexterity and jazzy touches on electric piano – the band just seemed to respond to each other in a lovely languid manner – nothing rushed – capturing an almost laid back feel to their ‘support slot’. I’d have been happy to see the set conclude here, but two final tracks, the first with its weird sound effects, and ‘Sploosh’ the almost anthemic ravey piece from the early 90s ratcheted things up again somewhat incongruously to conclude, the bass player now centre stage leering somewhat oddly at the audience.
And so to Gong. I’ll keep this part relatively brief as I believe I’ve published up to 10 gig reviews relating to them since I saw them for the first time in this (re)incarnation back in 2016. The band performed 5 tracks from the latest album ‘Unending Ascending’ – including the superb opener ‘My Guitar is a Spaceship’, their wide-eyed riffy romp, and the concluder ‘Choose Your Goddess Now’, a bombardment of bewildering strobelights, heart-pulling melodies and brassy counterpunch. Elsewhere we had ‘Tiny Galaxies’ and ‘All Clocks Reset’, as well as the pummeling set-definer ‘My Sawtooth Wake’ from Forever Recurring, ‘Kapita’ and ‘Rejoice!’.
Somehow within all this chaos the band managed to fit in three epic pieces of largely contemplative, transportative material which seemed to suspend the crowd in a state of abeyance, set against glissando backdrops and the shimmering light show. After almost 3 hours of being on your feet, pulled from pillar to post by the various crescendos and crashes of both bands, there’s a slightly unreal quality to all of this – the atmosphere enhanced by the reappearance of Saskia Maskell in a sheer white gown adding further to the ethereality. The band performed ‘Through Restless Seas’, ‘Ship of Ishtar’ and the IAO chant before finally releasing the shackles with the cacophony of ‘Master Builder’.
Hats off to the Brudenell for delivering such a balanced sound mix – the band might have come away with an abiding memory of a brief couple of moments when the sound dropped completely, leaving Ian East and Cheb Nettles temporarily exposed on sax and drums, right at the culmination of possibly Kavus Torabi’s finest ‘Rejoice!’ guitar solo yet; but otherwise the balance was perfect: one got to make sense of East’s fine and underrated contributions throughout, and the vocal harmonies between up to 5 members of the band (including Saskia) were delivered with astonishing clarity.
The band now conclude their tour north of the border this weekend, before heading off to South America and then returning for the summer festival season amidst talk of new album recordings.
The Canterbury scene(zine) continued.... 