Tuesday 8 May 2012

Belshazzar's Feast Review



First a reflection on the A-Z of April.

Well I failed! I did not manage to post every single day. In my defence I spent an entire weekend with no internet access, my personal computer decided to block Blogspot (I’m still having difficulty resolving this), all of my work computers block Blogspot and then when I finally found a computer that would use it… it simply decided not to work.


At this point I got annoyed and gave up.


Despite this, I am extremely glad I took part, with being relatively new to blogging I felt it helped me to improve and formulate ideas much better than I would have done previous. Thankyou to everyone who has started to follow me and left me comments during this time, I hope will continue to engage with my future posts.


Since my A-Z was pretty heavy I’ve decided for my first post since April should be a review.


As my regular readers (Hah!) should know, I have recently become quite a big fan of Folk music. One such band I have gotten into is Belshazzar’s Feast which consists of Paul Sartin on Oboe, Violin, Whistle and vocals and Paul Hutchinson on the Accordion.


I got into this band through Bellowhead which is my favourite group. They released an album called “Umbrellowhead” which was a compilation of various tracks from the different groups and artists who merged to form Bellowhead.


One such track was Ronda La Turkey by Belshazzar’s Feast. When I heard this track I instantly enjoyed it and decided to explore the other music they had. At first I was surprised, as their other music was not quite as fast paced as the track I had heard, but I still found their music to be to my taste.


I quickly tracked down their albums, finding some songs were hit and miss and others were soon to become staple favourites.


I listened to the second CD on their Food of Love album (taken from a live show) and quite enjoyed the banter and engagement that the duo had.


I began searching around for live shows of Bellowhead, Faustus (another band which Paul Sartin performs with) and other folk groups and ended up e-mailing Belshazzar’s Feast booking agent (Using my Radio e-mail address which often gets me free discs or interviews muhahaha) and found out the closest they were to Liverpool was across the Mersey in Birkenhead.


At first I would not have been able to make the date, but thankfully my schedule cleared and I quickly reserved tickets.


Upon arrival I was surprised to find the band performing in a small church hall for a local Folk Club. This of course is simply my own ignorance as since they were well known to me I expected them to be very popular in the Folk community (They are but I mean as in much bigger sold out venues).


At first I was curious as to how this would play out but I was very pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere of the entire gig. Both members of the band have an excellent rapport both which each other and their audience. Playful banter and audience participation ensured everyone enjoyed themselves.


They performed tunes such as the Primus Hornpipe, Eine Kleine Natchmusik and Widows shall have Husbands. I managed to record them doing Thresherman:








I ended up asking to have a photograph with the duo, which seemed to take them back a little? (Maybe I imagined that, but they did seem a tad surprised) They did of course make a joke… “Paul is that your hand…” which made me chuckle and really emphasised the friendship between the two (uh that was an extremely soppy sentence.)


The performance was fantastic and I whole heartedly say that they are at their best when performing live.


If you ever get a chance to see Belshazzar’s Feast then I strongly recommend you go!


Be sure to check them out on

http://www.belshazzarsfeast.co.uk and also check out

http://www.brightyoungfolk.com

Also be sure to add them on Twitter and Facebook!



DFTBA

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