Today I witnessed a completely different band. The five piece seemed to be perfectly at home on the small and gear filled Tivoli stage. They clearly showed to be enjoying themselves on stage; a major difference compared to the 013 show where the band was too much focused on the new music. As in 013 the band played a selection of songs from the new album as well as two older tracks. Absolute highlight was the last song played, the final song on Chains, “Breaking The Chain”.

It was good to see quite some people showing up at the merchandise stand to greet the band and to buy their copy of Chains. They won’t be disappointed, At the moment Ricocher is without a doubt the best progressive band from The Netherlands.

Kino
Two days ago I saw Blackfield playing their first gig in The Netherlands, today I witnessed the first ever Kino gig in this country. Blackfield had already released a forty minute debut, where we’ll have to wait until February to get a chance to listen to the first ever Kino release. I remember vividly concerts of both Fish and Marillion presenting new material long before the official release. I can’t remember any excitement returning from one of these gigs. Listening to new songs for the first time almost never leads to much excitement. Partly due to the far from excellent sound - listening to songs being played for the first time at a too high volume isn’t easy - tonight wasn’t very different.

The band couldn’t present the 350 audience with more than the tracks from their upcoming debut album, resulting in a sixty or seventy minute show. Seeing Steve Hogarth turning up in the venue just before the gig started, gave me the impression that we could expect a couple of Marillion or Hogarth songs but since the band had only had a couple of days to rehearse, this wasn’t going to happen.

The first thing I thought when the band started of with “Leave A Light On” was that Kino was another attempt to bring commercial success to both Pete Trawavas (Marillion) and John Mitchell (Arena). I should have known better, the second rocker “People” immediately proved me wrong. The only stuff I had heard so far were snippets from two songs, “Perfect Tense” and “Loosing Day”. It might come as no surprise that exactly these two songs made the best impression on me. The first with its catchy but powerful melodies, the latter being the Kino epic, a culmination of the best Kino has to offer.

Taking in mind the short time span the band had to rehearse the songs, the fact that the album isn’t released yet, this being the first gig and the fact that drummer Chris Mainland had to bail out of the gig, the band seemed very relaxed. When Pete forgot one of his backing vocals he got smiles from behind the keyboards and drums, something I’ve seen otherwise in the long Marillion history.

The picture I have of the debut album is that it is going to be quite diverse ranging from popular to epic approach.

The Pictures of Ricocher are by Geert Oldenmenger. All the Kino pictures are by Ronald den Dekker (www.wacon-images.com)

(Review: Geert Oldenmenger
Pics: Ronald den Dekker)