CARAVAN ENSLAVED

VENUE UNION CHAPEL, LONDON DATE 07/10/2021

Early in the first of their two sets tonight, there’s a moment that sums up the joy of Caravan’s performance. Having started with the classic couplet of Memory Lain, Hugh and Headloss (from Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night), the band prepare to play In

The Land Of Grey And Pink. As an introduction, the versatile Geoffrey Richardson (“Shove a broom up his arse and he’d sweep the stage!” quips Pye Hastings later on) explains that when recording the song bassist Richard Sinclair was so bored that he started to make gibberish vocal noises, which you can still hear in the background on the album of the same title. Now, Richardson asks the crowd to mimic those sounds. And when this happens, there’s much hilarity on and off stage.

…Grey And Pink leads into Golf Girl, featuring an unusual percussive duet between Richardson’s spoons and drummer Mark Walker on washboard. And the positive message of Better Days Are To Come (from Hastings’ solo album From The Half House) is followed by new track It’s None Of Your Business, a highlight of the first half, which ends with the evergreen For Richard.

Caravan start the second set with the jaunty The Dog, The Dog, He’s At It Again, before the more recent Smoking Gun (Right For Me) takes us into the current century, after which the impressive new album is once more showcased through Every Precious

Little Thing and Wishing You Were Here.

From hereon, it’s the past that’s accentuated as the slightly mysterious Nightmare and the elegant Winter Wine (with new bassist Lee Pomeroy given the chance to shine on vocals) set up the inevitable climax, namely Nine Feet Underground, the spellbinding epic holding everyone in a trance.

The addition of Pomeroy adds an extra dimension to the band as not only is he an outstanding musician, but his rapport with the others is obvious. It creates a renewed sense of unity and at times it feels like those in the crowd have been invited into a rehearsal, such is the relaxed attitude on the stage.

The encore stays modern with I’m On My Way from Paradise Filter, and a lone female fan is moved to stand up and bop – not a common sight at a Caravan show!

If new album It’s None Of Your Business is the band’s finest since the 70s, then this line-up is arguably the best since that era, and tonight’s performances are stunning. And while as undemonstrative as ever, Hastings is clearly still very much Caravan’s leader and inspiration, being the centre of everything they do. But Richardson, Pomeroy, Walker and long-serving keyboard player Jan Schelhaas are more than able lieutenants – they are a crucial part of a band who belong as much to 2021 as they do to the 70s.

VENUE UNION SCENE, DRAMMEN, NORWAY DATE 21/10/2021

When prog metal masters Enslaved announced they’d be teaming up with the psychedelic rockers Shaman Elephant for a special Norwegian Big Band Tour 2021, Prog wondered how the augmented line-up might work.

Just a few weeks after the release of Enslaved’s Caravans To The Outer Worlds EP, we get to find out when the supergroup come to Drammen.

The gig opens with Ruun II – The Epitaph permeating through the darkness. Ivar Bjørnson’s electric guitar joins the rhythmic sound of a pair of acoustics, while keyboards and drums add to the ambience. Given there are nine musicians cramped together on a small stage, it’s impressive how coordinated they are and there’s no compromise on quality of the sound. By the time the ethereal vocals enter with ‘The walls are trembling’ it’s clear that several members of the crowd already are. After 30 years, Enslaved still know how to captivate their audience.

Without speaking, perhaps not wanting to break the spell they had just cast, Bounded By Allegiance (from the 2004’s Isa) begins. The extra layers provided by Shaman Elephant really bring it to life. Menacing synths combine with heavy riffs and plenty of pace changes, which along with bassist Grutle Kjellson’s snarling vocals make it a feast for progressive black metal lovers. It’s followed by Sequence from last year’s Utgard in which guitarist

Arve ‘Ice Dale’ Isdal shines with an intense guitar solo that’s complemented by Håkon Vinje’s melodic keyboards.

The title track of Caravans To The Outer Worlds is one of the highlights of the evening: the heavy bass and Iver Sandøy’s punishing drums particularly stand out. It receives a rapturous applause from a crowd that’s clearly delighted to hear the new music live.

Havenless, from 2003’s Below The Lights, is a fairly regular feature on Enslaved’s setlists, and is a crowd rouser. The band and audience reach out their arms and chant in unison as if taking part in a Viking ritual: it’s a mesmerising experience live. We’re then transported back to 1993 and the blackest track of the evening, Slaget I Skogen Bortenfor, from their debut EP Hordanes Land, which was an important release in the development of Viking metal. The raw and fast-paced song is surprisingly followed by their melodic Röyksopp cover What Else Is There?.

Enslaved close tonight’s concert with one of their proggiest tracks, Hiindsiight, taken from 2017’s E. Its melodic discordance combines with harsh vocals as the track alternates between dreamscapes and doom. Imaginative and yet disciplined, this is Enslaved at their best. Taking a bow after only an hour on stage, the only downside to tonight’s almost perfect gig is that it isn’t longer.

VENUE ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH, LONDON DATE 23/09/2021

It’s probably been said before within these pages, but watching Jack Hues perform, one is always left with the impression of a man who is playing music for the music’s sake. That might not possibly be the case when he fronts Wang Chung at any 80s revival event, but since he invested in his jazz outfit The Jack Hues Quartet, reworked

Beck’s Nobody’s Fault But My Own into a lengthy prog workout with members of Syd Arthur or finally set out on a solo career with 2020’s Primitif, one gets the sense of a man loving music but caring not for the spotlight.

That was certainly the case when Prog caught Hues at this venue a couple of years ago, and it’s exactly the same tonight, as he and the band, who feature Syd Arthur’s Josh and Joel

Magill as well as Hues’ own daughter Violet Ryder, open into the rippling, lengthy Whitstable Beach from the aforementioned solo effort, Primitif. There’s a sense that the time invested in creating this thoughtful, proggy music itself is enough to transport you on the journey Hues has decided to take.

Tonight’s set is split equally between his Primitif debut and this year’s Electro-Acoustic Works 20:20, which sees Hues broadening his solo palette slightly. Zairean-English singer songwriter Baby N’Sola joins Hues for the bump and grind of the call of inclusivity, We Gotta Work Together, which adds a slice of rocking funk to proceedings. Slow Gyrs is moody fusion whose keening trumpet echoes the work of late period Talk Talk, and the brilliant proggy/psych multi-part workout iNyenga (named after the Zulu moon goddess – of course!) sandwiches three more choices from the debut album: A Long Time, Astrology and Video Games.

Sadly, Hues and band reach their allotted curfew time before they can play their planned encore of Wang Chung’s Dance Hall Days, which would have added a fun ending to an impressive night that had already seen members of the audience up and grooving to several of the songs.

A gentle and thoughtful presence on stage – evidenced by his lengthy introduction to Don’t Waste Words, recalling the life of 19th century eccentric and ‘Professor Of Adventure’ Millican Dalton, who lived in a cave in the Lake District, one senses more prog fans would delight in his output were they to give it a chance, although one suspects some remain reticent because of the 80s pop connection.

Perhaps an ideal solution would be for the organisers of one of the UK’s prog events (Hi, Summer and Winter’s End!) to get him on the bill, where

Prog swears he would easily win over the whole crowd within a matter of minutes. Just a thought. Tonight, however, is a sheer delight.