By Artur Chachlowski
(Please note that this review has been translated using an online translator)
As I write this text takes a long weekend in May. In the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the Majestic Theatre in Gettysburg festival starts just RoSfest 2013 (May 4 occurred on our Believe It). This renowned event annually gathers crowds of progressive rock fans who have the opportunity to see live performances by leading European representatives of the genre. What’s more, usually every year are published documenting the live CD recorded during RoSfest. Recently we reviewed in our magazine, among others albums “The Gettysburg Address” Moon Safari group and “Live In The USA: The Bottle Of Gettysburg” The Reasoning recorded in May 2011. It gets us into the hands of live album titled “Live In The USA” formation IO Earth, which was one of the stars of last year’s festival.
About the British group wrote in detail when discussing published last year, the second studio album of the band “Moments” (double debut album, released a year earlier). We wrote at the time that the driving force behind the group IO Earth is a composer duo Dave Cureton (g) and Adam Gough (k). Both men to realize their vision employed a variety of musicians (among them at one time was even Steve Balsamo – including vocalist with a wonderful compendium album “Beneath The Waves”).
However, working in the studio and live performances are two different stories and the Majestic Theatre stage IO Earth appeared as a
well-organized band with a stable composition (Claire Malin on vocals, Richard Cureton on drums, Christian Nokes on bass and Luke Shingler on saxophone and flute plus two leaders mentioned earlier) that one hundred percent corresponds to the personal statement, which last year realized album “Moments”.
It is no wonder that the IO Earth shows on their concert album as a harmonious and well-understood as a group. And yet they play a difficult music saturated with freestyle various elements taken from different species. During the 77 minutes that it takes the album “Live In The USA” (the concert at Gettysburg was a quarter of an hour longer) we are dealing with a spectacular playing rock music with elements of ambient, free jazz, prog and space rock, improvisation, the Orient, as well as music opera. The latter thanks to impressive vocals Claire Malin, who, unfortunately, a few weeks ago for health reasons left IO Earth. Thus, the album “Live In The USA” is now of an additional asset documentary. From what I know, the band IO Earth has found a new singer (Linda Odinsen) and could even contract out their presence at next year’s prog rock events: festival Celebr8.2 and Cruise To The Edge. Who knows, maybe it will come soon with concerts in our country (I know I have recently been to this fitting), so you may want now to look at the considerable capabilities of the group stage and carefully listen to the contents of this concert disc.
The program fills a successful mixture of two well-known recording studio albums the band. And that, as already mentioned, the music IO Earth to easy (not only in perception, but also to play) does not belong to the musicians creating this original and great prognosis for the future of the team, you need to have great respect for being able in terms of festival not only accurately reflect the nature of their studio recordings, but also give them a new, sometimes slightly improvised, character. I would recommend. “Live In The USA” is – for now – one of the most exciting concert discs I have seen the light of day in 2013.