Reviews

North Sea Navigator were fantastic. Another band exploring the hauntingly surreal, dark, circus-shanty, fairground realm of ideas akin to bands like Flipron. The band consisted of a female celloist who sat in the center of the stage.

To her right was a guitarist and vocalist, to her left was another guitarist and backing vocalist and behind her was a genius character who appeared to lead the band. I thought at first that he was playing a hidden keyboard but he in fact was playing an accordian followed by a series of drums. I loved their dark edge mixed with their hauntingly beautiful echoed soundscapes.

They all had great stage presence as well. Manically swaying their heads and contorting their bodies to the music. Third song was introduced as "being cleared by the legal department" which I assume was a cover. The genius at the back sang a rather punky lead vocal. This was followed by a brilliant song called 'Dancing Bear' which had your classic haunted fairground at the en! d of the pier sound going on. 'Lights in darkest england' was next and contained a fantastic build up while the whole band shouted 'Make It Stop'. Another evil circus tune with a classic englishness about it followed. It began with the guitarist and the genius both hitting the drums before the genius cracked into a brilliantly evil fairground falsetto.

The track ended with the kind of evil laugh that I sometimes hear outside my window at four in the morning on a saturday night. They had a long discussion with the audience about wrting songs about suicide bombers and serial killers before the genius told us a story about a conversation he had with Brian Blessed, complete with a great vocal impression. They played two more songs before finishing their set. A great band and another genius new find!

www.myspace.com/northseanavigator

Rose Kemp has changed her look and her performance since I last saw her about five months ago at Porter. She was very relaxed and very confident. She had her long dark hair hanging down and wore a black t-shirt and I thought she was really attractive. I remembered her as being much more subdued last time but tonight she was in high spirits. Her music was very diverse.

She opened with a very similiar tactic to Men Diamler involving walking around the pub singing a gospel tune a cappella to get the audiences attention straight away. She then took on a very PJ Harvey esque style consisting of her singing over a dirty electric guitar. She has a very strong voice and isn't afraid to push it as far as she can.

The next track introduced the audience to another style involving multiple sampling of vocal harmonies to create a song built solely from beautiful and again haunting voices. This style reminded me a lot of Bjorks recent experimental stuff and it was great to see a solo arti! st mixing two different styles and making them her own successfully, not to mention brave. Rose would simply rest on her knees in the center of the stage while singing her harmonies. Her set climaxed in what must have been nearly 10 different vocal harmonies intertwined with the words "there's a fire...the flames are getting higher". Very impressive and quite moving.

www.myspace.com/rosekemp

I can't find anything to whine about either of tonights acts. I really enjoyed both and wish them the best of luck!