Venue: The Camden Underworld, London       Date: 28th March 2004

Ars Nova/Anthony Dawson and Siemy Di group

Not strictly one my favorite venue's,  the Camden Underworld. A little tatty, a very small stage area, not the best acoustics and pillars in the middle of the floor area in front of the stage.  And this being a Sunday night it was not particularly well attended either. But the smallness of the venue does add to the intimacy between band and audience, and they do seem to be putting on more and more prog bands these days, so amen to that.

Support  were the Anthony Dawson and Siemy Di group. They played a jazz fusion oriented set - sometimes they rocked, sometimes they sounded somewhat bluesy. Technically they are all superb musicians (though I am still not convinced about drummer Siemy Di's concept of "melodic drumming"), but I have to say they left me kind of cold.

This was my first time seeing Ars Nova live, and I was not sure what to expect. I know they have a habit of using different musicians and changing the line up of the band depending on the gig.

Tonight they were a 3 piece – Keiko Kumagai on keyboards, Shinko Shibata on bass and Masuhiro Goto on drums. They were all dressed in traditional Japanese costumes (So what happened to those skimpy outfits from the album covers, eh?), and the drummer came to the front of the stage and took a traditional Japanese bow to the audience before the concert started. A nice touch.

It soon became apparent that the band were using mostly borrowed equipment from the Anthony Dawson/Siemy Di group.  Keiko seemed a little phased by this at first, and was concentrating intensely on her playing. But once she got used to the keyboard rig she was like a woman possessed – it sounded like 3 keyboard players up there. To be able to reproduce the complex, double tracked keyboard arrangements from the albums was incredible.

Transi was the first track we were treated to, and it had a somewhat harder edge to it due to the powerful drumming from Masuhiro and the more than capable bass playing from the diminutive but highly talented Shinko. This was true of most of the tracks that were played tonight, which included The 42 Gods, Fata Morgana, Noba and Metamorphoses from the new album Biogenesis.

Despite the small but very appreciative crowd, they were called back for an encore, and duly obliged with a stunning rendition of Succubus.

My good friend Tim who was at the gig with me was impressed enough to purchase 3 of their CD's afterwards (and he is not even a prog music fan), and it was nice to see the band selling their own CD's and chatting with the members of the audience.

As far as I know this was the bands first London Gig, but I for one hope to see them back again very soon.

John Morley.