iOPages Festival (Day 1) Dilemma, Yogi Lang & Pallas
April 15, 2011 - De Boerderij, Zoetermeer (NL)
For several years, the
iO Pages Festival has been one of the most important prog rock festivals in The
Netherlands. This year the volunteers of iO Pages Magazine had made a very
special edition. To celebrate the publication of the hundredth issue they had organized
a three-day concert festival. Together with the management of venue De
Boerderij they had put together an amazing program. The first and the second
day featured most of my favourite acts. This review is about the performances
by Dilemma,
Yogi Lang & Band and Pallas
on the first day (see also review iO Pages Festival 2011, Day Two).
Dilemma
The newly re-formed Dutch
band Dilemma opened the festival. In 1995, they released their debut album
Imbroccata. Drummer at the time was
Frank van Essen,
who later on became well-known as the drummer for
Iona. He was replaced by Collin Leijenaar.
Some people might know him as the drummer for
Neal Morse during the European concerts. He also used to be one
of the reviewers for iO Pages Magazine. That was probably the reason why the
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Butler |
band could make their comeback gig at the festival. Two members of the current
line-up also participated when they recorded their debut album. It really surprised
me that lead singer Butler
sounded about the same as on Imbroccata.
The aging process has had little effect on his voice. Butler has all the
talents to entertain an audience as he showed during the band's performance. During
Duck he was dressed like a sort of
Dame Edna. This was for him a way
to make prog music less serious as he explained after the show. He wasn't aware
that he had acted a bit like the late Geoff Mann
(Twelfth Night).
In the nineties Mann also wore a sort of
army uniform to give the songs a certain meaning. However, Butler didn't wear the
uniform to make something clear to the audience; it just looked good on stage. Dilemma
played several tracks from their sole album, but it was easy to conclude that
songs like Duck,
Believe, The Horror Of Travel
and Goodbye Cruel World
hadn't been played for a long time in front of an
audience. Although the musicians rehearsed many times, it wasn't enough to convince
the spectators. Occasionally guitarist Paul Crezee,
keyboardist Robin Z and
drummer Collin Leijenaar
did some nice things on their instruments, but the overall
feeling remained that the band weren't ready yet to do a strong performance. This
might change after the release of the new album and some more try-out gigs.
Yogi Lang & Band
In 2010 singer Yogi Lang of RPWL recorded
No Decoder (see review),
a very strong first solo album. It contained lots of music related to
the music of Pink Floyd and his own band
RPWL. When I heard that
he would perform the album on a live stage, I was very curious to find out if
he could manage to equal the studio sound in a live setting. With six musicians
on stage - most of them played on the album as well - he had built a safety net
which he could rely on. The rhythm section consisting of former RPWL-drummer
Manni Müller and
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Yogi Lang |
former Arena bass player
Ian Salmon brought
a lot of groove into the
music. They kept the music very tight and gave the other musicians enough room
to play their solos like we could hear in the opening piece
Sacrifice.
Yogi Lang played a splendid solo on his new toy: a brand-new Moog Voyager-
synthesizer. It was the only keyboard he played on, but he played it excellently
as I noticed during the rest of the concert.
Markus Jehle, his fellow-musician in RPWL, played all
the other keyboards including another Moog Voyager. While he played the main
keyboard parts, Yogi Lang focused on the rhythm guitar and of course on his vocal
contributions. After the great opening tune the show seemed to move on in a
rather slow tempo. The narration of Ian Salmon on
A Million Miles Away didn't
appeal to the audience either, but when they played the strong instrumental
piece Sensvalue
the show really came to life. The fantastic synthesizer
and guitar solos lifted this song to a higher level. Guitarist
Thorsten Weber
played the studio parts splendidly, but he proved to be an excellent
live performer as well. The first RPWL-piece
Sugar For The Ape doesn't belong to my favourites. The second cover
Breathe In, Breathe Out appeals more
to my musical taste. It was performed after a superb version of
No Decoder. It once more showed that
Mr. Lang is a virtuoso on his Moog, but also Thorsten Weber proved why Yogi
Lang had asked him to play the guitar parts. Before the final song Yogi
explained why he recorded A Better Place For Me.
He felt this song to be
a fine conclusion, because seeing his daughter or a friend makes this world a
better place. It was a perfect ending of a live show that came pretty close to
an RPWL live performance. You could hear and see that this gig was the sixth of
the No Decoder-tour. Most songs were played very relaxed and nervousness could
hardly be noticed; the musicians enjoyed playing together.
Pallas
So far the Scottish veterans of Pallas probably made with
XXV
one of the best progressive rock albums of 2011 (see review). They were invited
to headline the first day of the iO Pages Festival. In my opinion
XXV is a masterpiece and therefore my
expectations ran high. A friend of the band who saw them in the UK wrote me 'Pallas
will blow your mind'. However, I wanted to ascertain myself whether he was
right or not. I wondered if the new singer Paul Mackie
could perform the typical vocal lines of Alan Reed
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Paul Mackie |
on stage. Was he able to equal his strong vocal performances on
XXV? Could he
entertain an audience with the story of the new album? Well, I can answer these
questions with a positive 'yes'. Of course, he was backed up by a group of chastened
musicians who were willing to give everything to deliver an outstanding
performance. It was obvious that the main part of the show would be dedicated
to the new album. They kicked off with Falling Down,
the opening tune of XXV, followed by
Crash And Burn.
I thought maybe they play the entire album, but they didn't.
Something In The Deep,
the third track from the album and one of my highlights was left out,
but instead they performed a strong version of
Monster. The images at
the back of the stage and the light show during the first tracks of the
XXV-album were breathtaking. The band
had pulled out all the stops to come up with a high level professional show.
Also songs like Rat Racing,
Ghostdancers and
Midas Touch from
previous albums got top-notch renditions with excellent vocal performances of
Mr. Mackie. Of course, his voice differs from Alan Reed's voice, but he sang
those songs with the same passion and emotion. The remainder of the regular
live set was again dominated by tracks taken from XXV.
With a leather
mouth cap on his face Paul Mackie performed the Alien Messiah. This way the
track Alien Messiah even had
a bigger impact on me together with the images at the back of the stage. During
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Niall Mathewson |
Violet Sky
the lights turned violet and set the right atmosphere for
this fantastic song beautifully sung by Mackie. The end of the regular set was quite
impressive. The end of the world was very well visualized during
XXV Part 2.
What was next after this superb live show? How would they end this performance
that really blew my mind? I expected the
Atlantis Suite from The Sentinel-album
because without this wonderful epic piece XXV
would never have been made. However, the audience got
Sanctuary, a favourite of bass player
Graeme Murray. This is also
one of my favourite Pallas-tracks, because it features a long guitar solo by
Niall Mathewson.
He managed very well to make it sound the right way, but it still
wasn't the end of the show. Next was Cut And Run,
one of the usual encores. It surprised me how strong Paul Mackie sang
the vocal lines of the original singer Euan Lawson.
Compared to the
voice of Alan Reed, the vocal ranges of Mackie and Lawson are much more related.
Maybe they should have done more songs from
The Sentinel after all, but
also without them, for me this performance undoubtedly was the highlight of the
first day. Hopefully the band will soon return to The Netherlands to perform the
entire XXV-album and
record it for a DVD. It would be a crying shame if they don't document this
awesome stage show on video.
Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen)
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