HAZE

VENUE THE TALKING HEADS, SOUTHAMPTON

DATE 24/06/2018

Ascorching hot evening on the south coast greets Haze, one of prog’s great enigmas. Once regular visitors to southampton, they’re now seldom seen in the southern shires. However, this historical connection is one reason why they’re back on their 40th anniversary weekend for the second of two special celebration shows.

a cluster of diehard fans make this a highly personal, intimate night for the performing McMahons. the clan comprises founders and brothers Paul and Chris, joined by Paul’s son Danny on drums, along with Chris’ significant other, goth-booted flautist Ceri ashton.

Haze are always entertaining, eccentric and, as tonight reveals, unpredictable. in his cloak and crooked hat, barefooted bassist and keyboard player Chris McMahon resembles the love child of Merlin and Catweasel. apart from his extravagant onstage armoury of axes, brother Paul plays a straight bat, his warm, mellow voice and fluid, penetrating guitar runs a great foil for his brother’s hippie tomfoolery.

a Celtic fanfare heralds the start of a two-hour trip through the annals of time, opener the Last battle channelling their inner Jethro tull through ashton’s folkish flute flourishes. train takes off on a funkadelic folk ride, while the dramatic new nine-minute prog epic a Call to arms shows there’s plenty of creativity left in Clan McMahon’s musical well.

For Wilderness Of eden, Paul

McMahon starts a series of elaborate acoustic guitar loops that build into a great overlooked psychedelic prog anthem that references babel and unicorns. He then delivers a remarkably straight-faced, acoustic-folkie version of “Mr Jonathan Osbourne’s” Paranoid – yes, the sabbath classic.

Old crowd-pleaser in the Universe morphs into their unashamedly genesisinspired song Dig them Mushrooms, ending with Chris McMahon recreating the beautiful flowing keyboard section of that band’s the Cinema show.

a sunday curfew means they have to cut out the planned encores. However, evenings don’t come more joyful and delightfully dotty than this. a DVD and double CD of this weekend’s merrymaking, which are now in production, will ultimately confirm this.