Tag Archives: rock

Kula Shaker – Camden Roundhouse, London 17.02.2016

FINALLY!!!!  After 20 years, I’ve finally seen Kula Shaker live!

As a wannabe musician, I absolutely envied Kula Shaker’s unique fusion of Indian culture and psychedelic rock during the Brit Pop era of the 90’s; it was inevitable and somewhat cliché that I identified with the Hari Krishna public schoolboy converts on a major scale during my Joe Daki self-discovery teenage years for obvious reasons. 

I never got to see them in their hayday because I was so often in the States when they toured; so I knew it was probably my last opportunity to see them play live following the recent release of their new album, K2.0, which conveniently coincides with the 20th anniversary of their debute album K.

K2.0 is a fitting successor to K and I thought the band sounded fucking excellent tonight as they belted out tune after tune with great energy and flawless performing. 

The sight of Camden Roundhouse, packed to the rafters with Caucasians ‘singing’ along to the song Govinda in Hindi gibberish will remain with me until I forget it completely; in fact it made me think of Mark and Lard’s cover of Tattva back when BBC radio 1 was entertaining.

Bindi bhaji poppadom tala!!!

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Spin Doctors – Croydon Fairfield Halls – 21st February 2014

I did a very surreal thing on Friday; I met the ORIGINAL Spin Doctors after their Croydon gig at the Fairfield Halls! Blimey?!?

The Spin Doctors came on after the very energetic and entertaining ‘Brothers of the Mothershovel’ support act; the brothers are a decent bunch of local lads who just about stomped the stage to pieces whilst going about their set.

The brothers in funky hats impressed me so much with their mixture of folk and ragtime swing, I bought their album (Nicely produced it is too!). Hopefully it’ll pay for new strings after the guitarist broke a few during his vigorous strumming!

I last saw the Spin Doctors at the Islington O2 academy on the 30th of January 2013; the main thing I love about seeing the band live is that you never experience the same gig twice! They are an exceptional jam band who love to improvise and it’s a privilege seeing them ply their trade at such small and intimate gigs.

They covered ‘Revolution’ by the Beatles this time which was very cool, before belting out the vast majority of their most excellent back catalogue along AND some tracks from their recent album ‘If The River Was Whiskey’. Oh yes, and the Goodies inspired ‘Everybody Loves String’ improv piece! Genius.

Waiting for my turn to meet the band afterwards, I was extremely nervous. What do you say to Gods? Do they like small talk?

I eventually stumped up the courage to walk over to Eric Schenkman and ask why they didn’t play the excellent ‘About a Train’ from their new album? The track absolutely grooves with lazy blues attitude and I was disappointed not to hear it “Yeah, we’ll do it tomorrow!” came his reply.

What?!? Are you for real?!? I thought it was just lip service, you know, banter?

So I cheekily asked if they’d play ‘Refrigerator Car’ as well (also absent from the Croydon gig) as it’s one of my favourites. “Yeah we’ll play that too!” said Eric. What a genuinely lovely fella he was though, chatting to anyone who popped over, trusting fans to hold his customised telecaster?!? A class act.

It’s one thing for a DJ to take requests, but a world class band? I think I was probably beaming so much, I’m surprised the smile didn’t cut my head in half.

I eventually made it to talk to lead singer Chris Barron after briefly ‘chatting’ to Mark White (bass supremo) about his love of BBC comedy ‘Are You Being Served’ which was very surreal; Chris and I chatted about the new album while he enjoyed a pint before reiterating that they would play the tracks I mentioned to Eric before we all went our separate ways around midnight. Huzzah!

It was an utterly, utterly, utterly bizzare experience that I’ll never forget; thankfully for my nerves, the band are extremely down to Earth and they genuinely seemed to enjoy chatting to everyone who stayed behind.

Good thing I had bought tickets for the following night at the Garage in Highbury and Islington eh?!

Hot off the press – Blick

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Antikrish are proud to present a very basic working demo of ‘Blick’ which was recorded using the Tascam a couple of months ago by Al and I; It represents the first of our new material and marks the first time we have recorded together since the new millenium kicked in.

Blick was always one of our favourite tracks to jam with because it’s one of those tracks that sounded reasonably good no matter how we were playing at the time given our familiarity of the song. From my personal perspective I (Kev) could stick to the basics if playing a bit rough, or improvise my nuts off if I’m feeling confident on a good day (rough translation = put in a few bendy twangs). This particular take is played with a much quicker tempo than normal (in an attempt to brighten things up and change the sound a little).

From memory, the song was originally written by Alex to try and write a track purely starting with the bass guitar first; which when you think about it, is pretty unorthadox and something I always really liked about the song. Over the years we fiddled with the track, put in some extra bits and it changed from a slow latin rock track to a progressive blues rock number.

I decided to add a bassline to the live recording in order to give a rough idea of how it would sound with a little more depth and I have to say I’m really happy with it after mixing down (I put the mixed master through Sony Soundforge Editing Suite to brighten things up a bit).

I would like to also point out that today saw me (Kev) play the bass properly for the first time in years; I now have a blister about the size of an M&M sweet located on both tips of my index fingers. If I were to describe the tight sensation on my fingers, I’d have to liken it to the feeling you get when you try and glue an airfix model airplane as a kid using superglue, get your thumb and index stuck together and then after you prize them free THAT is how my finger feels at the moment*.

More work in progress to follow shortly.

*Please do not try this at home. Antikrish.com does not accept any liability for people who ruin a promising career as a pianist by bonding their digits together with glue.

The Otherside

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This track originally started out with a few lines of verse I’d penciled whilst at Boots when thinking about my godfather who passed away a couple of years beforehand (think we’re talking about 1994-1995 here), until then I think I’d only really written joke songs or cover versions of famous songs with a twist of profanity so I was somewhat lifted that I could at least put some feelings down on paper. I distinctly remember getting to Alex’s totally absorbed by the song with him eventually adding a few lines of lyric along with my favourite part in the first verse. This snippet of the track is really just the play out on the 2nd version (much heavier than the original accoustic blues stomp), the harmonica played through a Electro Harmonix Polyphase is definately my favourite thing about this version.