The Camden Club, London
Sunday, 8th September 2024
MARIA FAUSTA
From David Cross’s Italian connections comes this engaging solo artist, playing her electronically enhanced violin, piano and synth, and singing plaintive songs, with her sonorous alto voice adding a touch of Euro-Latin emotional drama.
The opening song is accompanied by her sonically altered violin, but for the second number, Remembering Me, she accompanies herself on piano, to a simple metronomic rhythm. The drum machine comes to the fore on I’m Betting On You, which also has a meaty synth backing to another piano-led number.
Having a background in soundtrack composition, it is hardly surprising that Maria’s music has a cinematic quality, as it sweeps across the dark vistas of her heartfelt lyrics. Her soulful voice adds to the air of melancholy on Rare Woman, and with just the piano as backing, highlighting her keyboard skills, the song is a torch ballad par excellence. Add in Maria’s multi-tracked vocals, and a hint of dark 80s synth pop pervades, especially on fifth song Detach Me From This Path, with its repeated yearning refrain “Do you really know what I want?”
The violin only reappears on the sixth song, Adrenalin Rush, but this time it is unrecognisable as such. Strummed synth-distorted chords and more dark lyrics take me back to Alan Vega and Suicide. Dark pop? Pitch black pop more like! “The power of money… everybody knows it” introduces the strident and declamatory The Power Of Money. Unfortunately, the concentration of the audience was somewhat interrupted towards the end of Maria’s set, when a torrential downpour outside found its way through the ceiling, and a section of the audience behind me had to move their seats. I did wonder about that drip down the back of my neck prior to the main drama!
Maria Fausta is definitely a name to keep an eye out for, but how often she’ll make it over here is anyone’s guess in these unnecessarily restrictive times.
I Want To Paint It All
Remembering Me
I’m Betting On You
Rare Woman
Detach Me From This Path
Adrenaline Rush
The Colour Of Rust
The Power Of Money
Better Like A Machine
In This Town
Maria Fausta – Vocals, Violin, Electronics, Piano, Synth, Drum Machine
DAVID CROSS BAND
The David Cross Band continue to tour on the back of “50 years of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic”, although it’s now 51 years and counting, and why not? The album is a timeless classic after all!
Filing on to the stage to an enthusiastic reception from the capacity crowd, the band sail serenely through some splendid ambience (in Fm, apparently), which prefaces a tumultuous The Great Deceiver, with most of the audience singing along, some more in tune than others! Next up is one of their own compositions, and Tonk, from David’s 2002 nominally solo album Exiles, is one heavy mutha! It fits in with the Crim vibe perfectly. Mick’s thunderous six string bass on this one, and throughout, is matched by Jack Summerfield’s necessarily powerful drums.
Up next is Red, which destroys all monsters, leaving no-one in any doubt about the power of this band. If the rain was still leaking through the ceiling, it was scared back whence it came! The frontline of guitar, violin, and keyboards supply every musical filling to sate the most greedy audient (no apologies for the Frippism!), while David’s electric blue violin, unusual in that it is half fretted, spars with John’s Strat, which in turns swaps fast’n’furious lead lines with Mick, on Starfall. Sheila adds her her piano and synth to the mix providing the ingredient that binds all this together.
The first set ends with side one of LTIA, with all but the Jack the drummer playing thumb pianos on the intro LTIA part one, before it launches into that heaviest of themes. Woohoo! We all know how this thing develops, but David adds a fantastic violin part in the middle, embellished with Sheila’s piano additions. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising, and this time it had nothing to do with water dripping through the ceiling. Simply wonderful!
Book Of Saturday shows John Mitchell’s voice has similarities to John Wetton, but JM has the benefit of not having to strain above a combo where everything was louder than everything else. Exiles is a case in point, but Mick takes the vocal on this one, and adds a great bass solo in the first part. There’s magic in them thar fingers, I tells ye! Not to be outdone, David stretches out on a tune he first played on over half a century ago. Cripes, we’re all getting old! The song is bookended with Sheila’s sequencer part, and I guess this arrangement was from the aforementioned Exiles solo album version. This only adds to the emotion of this timeless epic. Yes, I am a Crimhead!
After the interval, Side Two, as it should be. Easy Money is on the LTIA box set about 407 times, and you might think I’d get tired of it? No chance! Especially when John lets loose a cascading and soaring guitar solo. Mick reckons you only need two strings on a bass guitar, but his dexterity across the frets of his six-string beast belies that, and some. David, when introducing the band said that Mick “keeps adding strings to his bass guitar”. They’re all needed!
The last time DCB appeared at this venue there was buckets of rain too, which added to this afternoon’s deluge makes David a Rain God, according to promoter and London Prog Gigs head honcho Chris. He leads the band with glances left and right, and the telepathy of musicians of this calibre is something to behold. Talking Drum bounds along like a greyhound leaping along after some hapless prey or other. The band lock into the groove, tight as a nut. Ending with David’s bug-eyed scream, it’s straight into the proto-avant metal riffing of LTIA part two. The crowd are now fully immersed in Crimworld, and following a roar of approval at the end, David says “I thought I had said goodbye to that song in about 1974. I never would have imagined I would be playing it now. I’m kinda glad I am”…and so are we!
The last two songs start with a “DCB classic, likening a relationship to a shipwreck” as David put it, and Calamity, which includes a reggae beat keyboard line that strangely is not incongruous at all.
Can you guess what the main set ends with? No, that’s the encore… it’s Starless of course, another timeless Crim classic. There aren’t many prog tunes from the original bands that stand the test of time, but this is certainly one of them. Mick told me in the interval that it still gives him the shivers playing it. As a mere audient (again, hah!), I concur, although in my case, rather than a shiver I think I got something in my eye.
What can you say about 21st Century Schizoid Man that hasn’t already been said? We shouted along of course, and before you know it, this fabulous gig was over. We headed off into the thankfully now dry London night grinning like loons. 🙂
[Photos by Shu Tomioka and used with kind permission]
A few weeks prior to The Camden Club gig Roger Trenwith caught up with Sheila Maloney and you can read the interview HERE.
SETLIST
Improvisation In Fm
The Great Deceiver
Tonk
Red
Starfall
Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part 1
Book Of Saturday
Exiles
– Interval –
Easy Money
Talking Drum
Larks Tongues In Aspic Part 2
Calamity
Starless
~ Encore:
21st Century Schizoid Man
MUSICIANS
David Cross – Electric Violin, Thumb Piano
John Mitchell – Vocals, Guitar, Thumb Piano
Sheila Maloney – Keyboards, Backing Vocals, Thumb Piano
Mick Paul – Bass Guitar, Vocals, Thumb Piano
Jack Summerfield – Drums, No Thumb Piano
LINKS
David Cross Band – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | X | Instagram