Author: Primož Novak
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Gromka, Ljubljana
Concert date: February 24, 2016
Ticket price: €6
The concert season at Gromka in Metelkova is undeniably a colorful one. Under the banner of KiborgSpužva Büking, some pretty unusual gigs go down, from obscure grind and stoner to progressive and psychedelic rock. This time it was progressive rock’s turn, with the Russian oddballs The Grand Astoria, who’ve already visited us a few times.
A gig can’t happen without a proper warm-up. Taking the stage as the opener were the young Slovenian blues rockers Bad Notion, whose songs felt like a time machine. You can tell their original material takes the masterpieces of the blues classics as its model. The influence of Jimi Hendrix is especially noticeable, both in the instruments and in the vocals. As a surprise, the band served up two Stevie Ray Vaughan covers, underlining another important influence. There’s nothing to complain about when it comes to how tight they are, and guitarist Grega Smola Crnkovič especially stood out, showing plenty of skill and, above all, precision in his soloing. Bad Notion undoubtedly have potential. And it deserves all the respect that a young band takes on playing the blues rather than the chewed-up rock ditties of the eighties and nineties.
Half an hour later, The Grand Astoria took the stage, a young Russian quintet from Saint Petersburg. In their short career, the band has stacked up quite a few albums. In fact, there’s hardly a year when they don’t put something out. They’re definitely a very creative band, led by Kamille Sharapodinov, who looked like a junior version of Steven Wilson. Over more than an hour of material, the band kept surprising us. In those long songs, a lot went down. The first thing you noticed was that they look to seventies progressive rock for inspiration, but they were quick to make clear they don’t want to play just one style. So the band delivered countless style changes. A single song could throw in a thrash metal section in the style of Metallica, grunge, psychedelic rock, and the list goes on. In a way you could take the whole thing as a joke, but on the other hand the band showed incredible breadth of taste and a total lack of limits.
The band was solidly tight. The sound wasn’t exactly the best, though, as some of the instruments simply couldn’t be heard. The keyboardist, who also added extra high vocals, wasn’t even plugged in at first. The other members didn’t exactly stand out either. With Sharapodinov, you could see he’s got some serious touring mileage behind him. The drummer stood out quite a bit despite an extremely small kit, the bassist a little less, while the second guitarist, who contributed quite a few harmonies, was static and pretty cold. With their long songs, full of surprises, The Grand Astoria definitely impressed. But long songs also trip up quickly: there are stretches that start repeating too much, so some tracks were needlessly long. Still, The Grand Astoria showed enough innovation, and if they keep at it, they’ll soon become a recognizable name in the progressive rock scene. They just need to take more time and give their arrangements a bit more sense.
To sum it all up, one more out-of-the-ordinary gig went down on a cozy Wednesday night at Gromka, with The Grand Astoria and Bad Notion covering a wide stretch of progressive and blues rock.
Setlist
THE GRAND ASTORIA:
1. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy
2. Deathmarch
3. Serpent and the Garden of Eden
4. The Man. The Sun. The Desert.
5. Pale Blue Dot
6. (Nine Lives of) Dersu Uzala (var. 2)
—encore—
7. Masterplan
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