mind you my blog* is all about TD (almost a 1000 pages of boring crap), so I’m biased as **** :)

I didn’t see TD in the 70’s….only in the 80’s, 90’s and a few weeks back in Holland.

* invite only, I got bored with people reposting my photos all over the net

I had the ‘good fortune’ to attend the first day of Ether 2008 last night, at the Southbank in London. Harmonia live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (rather than Goldfrapp at the Royal Festival Hall). Anyway…rewind back to yesterday, Harmonia (Rother, Roedelius and Moebius) were playing in the UK for the first time, it sounded, (on paper) unmissable. So at 7.20 we found ourselves in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. First impressions were very good, packed out with a wide range of youthful ‘art-student’ types, as well as a handful of right weirdos who obviously got dressed in the dark and a larger percentage of old gits (like me), it had a good ‘buzz’ for want of a better word.

The hall was starting to fill up, so we took our seats and a support group took to the stage (I’ve no idea who they were, in fact somebody in the audience shouted out the same thing). Hmm it was here the problem started for me, whilst the opening piece was promising (actually I quite liked it) the set soon descended into an Avant-Garde noodling meets Folky acoustic mess, think Efterklang jamming with Popol Vuh with rather obvious lyrics, but sadly not as good. Each song was less interesting the one before, until all they had left was the cliche (and yes I’m using that word because TD did it 33 years earlier at the Olympia Audio Fair in London) of sampling the audience clapping and shouting and then mixing the results with their song, painful wasn’t the word, and neither did it put me in the right mood for the ‘main’ act.

If they release a recording of gig I think ‘for me’ it would work much better. Just opinion though. Nice to see that other people thoroughly enjoyed the concert.

Any comments about Leaf Cutter John?

(and I can assure you that my camera doesn’t beep - it wasn’t me!)

“…A short break and then some geezer came onto stage to do a brief intro (I remember him doing the same thing in 2004)…and then Harmonia took to the stage. The band got a great reception from the audience and then started to play a long ambient track, and it was here that the problems ‘for me’ really started. Firstly, the volume was so low that in parts the noise the audience was making was very noticeable…creaks, coughs, rustles, glasses or cups being kicked over, a couple of people chatting behind me. Perhaps at a ‘normal’ concert (i.e non-ambient) this wouldn’t have been such a problem, but my attention was shot, instead of concentrating on the music I was again and again distracted by late-comers, people walking in AND out, doors opening, beeps from cameras (it was almost as if the audience wanted to fill in all the pauses between the notes). The music itself wasn’t exactly bad, but the visuals most certainly were, a few slow fuzzy close ups of old promo photos and LPs projected on to a postage-stamp sized screen do not a video make. You might have got away with it in 1974, but not now. However, parts of this first track were quite interesting, especially Roedelius’s playing on a red keyboard, sections of which reminded me of the Baron’s Forbidden Planet soundtrack (or should that read Electronic Tonalities?), but these were soon engulfed into the mire of what was for me fairly average laptop knob twiddling (yeah I know they don’t have knobs, but you get the picture). One thing I always loved about Harmonia was their lightness of touch, it was melodically-playful, but with the best will in the world you couldn’t describe Harmonia (Version 2008) as that. As the song ended a cry of ‘can you turn it up please’ could be heard from the back of the hall.
However we decided to stick around and see how things would develop. The next piece was better, a booming bass drum driven piece with complex skittering electro-rhythms, complete with waves of bass-synth subsonics, whilst Michael Rother picked out a few notes on his guitar. ‘Could be good’ I thought. However it didn’t really seem to go anywhere. Again and again I was willing them to produce a tiny melody that would grab me, a few bars of magic, but sadly it never came. So, after 30 or 40 minutes we cut our losses and left. Better to remember the group for what I love rather than just endure what they had become. Don’t get me wrong, I completely respect all three musicians, alone and collectively they have produced some of the greatest music I own, music that means something to me, moves me deeply, challenges me and has held my interest for decades. I would recommend their recorded output to anyone, but for me ‘live’ they were disappointing, a shame, but that’s how it was”.

Haha Colin, you are right - and you have just reminded me how much I want to read MES’s biography!

slightly deflated by yr review (you bastard!) as i was looking forward to seeing them at supersonic.