| Date | 5th December 1998 |
| Venue | City Hall, Sheffield, England |
| Line-Up | Airsculpture; John Dyson |
| Availability |
We have a full multitrack recording. No release is planned. |
| Comments | |
We were asked to open for John Dyson, who wanted to perform a
home-town concert after developing a set for his E-Live performance. Although
we didn't have
 much
notice and it would only be a short set, we jumped at the chance because we'd
not played live for a while, and also because John is such a nice guy we were
pleased to help him out.Because we had to try to fit a coherent set into around half an hour, we decided we'd have to bite the bullet and apply a little structure to the concert. In the single rehearsal session, we played around with a chordal section which became the opening. We decided that Pete should perform all of the sequencing for the set, and sketched out a few ideas for the overall "shape". Sheffield City Hall has a massive oval hall which we last came to when Tangerine Dream performed there during the Logos tour (the front cover of that album is taken at Sheffield, not London, trivia fans). Unsuprisingly, then, we were in the smaller ??? room at the other side of City Hall. Still, we can pretend. The larger hall was occupied by Björn Again which prompted no end of jollity and attempts at accidental meetings. We were quite happy with the venue we got; it is an impressive stone room like only northern industrialists (when they existed) could have created. The small, high stage faces an unusually broad arc of seats. We were less impressed by the idiot Stereotype Yorkshireman who refused to move his Discovery from the parking space we needed, despite much careful explaining (Big Van Need Big Hole; There Little Hole for Little Car) and waving of parking permits. Because we'd not had much notice ourselves, we had even less time to tell people were playing, so we weren't too suprised that the audience was mainly there to see John* play. A few people had made it to see us specifically, or arrived to find us as a suprise extra. Worryingly, John* (who is not the youngest man in rock and roll) had invited a large contingent of older female relatives. We had to dismiss the thoughts of ambulances arriving in mid set to rescue apoplexic pensioners! The set got off to the planned start with Adrian's shifting chord patterns underpinning John's Prophecy themes. Pete was pretty much straight into his headphones preparing the first sequence. Soon this emerged, shifting the texture to a typical interplay as the sequence warped around. The acoustics of the room produced some hugely deep basses - turn those hearing aids down ladies! Pete cut the sequence a little sooner than we had planned, as some of the timing was proving difficult against the echoey room, and we dropped into a long sound effects passage. We'd discussed doing this, as we'd never done a "live void" but it turned out longer and stranger than we imagined. Again, you had to wonder what John's* rellies were thinking. Finally Pete cut in with a closing sequence. We'd planned an up-tempo ending with an abrupt end. John had just switched to a new sync-lead patch when Pete signalled for the end. Not ready, and his hands busy with the solo, John got into a panic and the audience were treated to a last strangled note crying out as the sequence stopped... * That's Dyson, not Christian. Sorry for the confusion... | |
| Overall | Middling. Apart from the odd cringemaking error it is not a bad concert, but suffers a little from the lack of flow when we have to do a short set. |
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