Livestream event
Robert John Godfrey (keyboards) / Jason Ducker (guitars, vocals) / Dominic Tofield (bass, percussion) / Karl Thompson (drums, percussion)
It was the same band and almost exactly the same set – minus last time’s closer, ‘The Dam Busters March / Land of Hope and Glory’ – as I had seen on livestream at the Bury Met earlier in the month. In truth, I don’t really know why I bothered. I was expecting it to be very similar and, camera issues aside, it very much was. Gone was the troublesome backlight board that they had used in Bury to be replaced by a canvas curtain displaying the modern-ish Enid “Green Man” logo but apparently the projector unit wasn’t working; ’twas ever thus with the band, there’s always something which doesn’t work as it should. Which brings me to the aforementioned camera issues… It began during ‘A Peak in Darien’ where the camera appeared to be slowly nodding off (and who could blame it?), the view of the stage drifting down to the front right, affording us a better view of the heads of the audience sitting there than that of Robert John Godfrey sitting at stage left. Someone noticed this and hastily corrected it during the next number, ‘Sheets of Blue’, but it began to drift upwards this time as though it were slumping backwards in its chair! Now we got a great view of the lights but nothing else! All was sorted before the end of the tune, but it just pretty much summed up the evening for me. The band go to great lengths to make themselves accessible to everybody and for this they deserve enormous credit (which I duly accord them), but they do seem to be getting really quite… well, naff these days. And then there’s the music… I used to love The Enid. Their 70s and 80s output was tremendous, based as it was in a very prog-quasi-classical style; now it’s often slow, rambling, repetitive and quite frankly depressing. I never thought that I would ever say that about one of my most favourite bands ever, but there it is. Robert declared that The Enid are “Mahler with electric guitars and drums” but went on to bemoan the fact that he struggles to compose without the influences of band members past – Francis Lickerish, Stephen Stewart and Willie Gilmour being ones that he actually named tonight, and I thought yes, Robert, you’re right – you do miss them! As before there was use of tapes (more probably digital backing sounds on laptop these days) as the band cannot perform without them, RJG being the only keyboards player in the band. The sound was fine, the musicianship too, it all just felt a bit dull, really. The first set was taken from the new album ‘U‘ which I at first used to enjoy but now ignore thinking it derivative and slow; the second set was once again, the old favourites. Having ‘panned’ the majority of the newer stuff, I have to say that I love ‘Shiva‘, but here’s an example of when I can’t be sure as to when Jason Ducker is singing or not; there are vocal parts to both ‘Malacandra‘ and ‘Shiva‘ some of which he appeared to sing, others he was clearly nowhere near a microphone and yet it sounded the same – was he singing or miming? Ultimately, it was a very decent gig performed in difficult circumstances. I have no idea as to how well these gigs are attended but the physical audience certainly sounded sparse (although this was almost certainly down to there being no microphones to pick up their responses). The ether-audience I would guess would be a lot larger, but quite how many donate to the cause I am not so sure. There was to be a second gig on the following Sunday night, this time from London, but I swerved it. I think that I’ll wait until there’s a new tour with some different material. I feel very guilty knocking the band when they go to such great lengths to continue gigging and to maintain a regular output of new material but I’m honestly beginning to wonder whether or not it’s perhaps best to simply call it a day, lads, and go home. It’s all just a bit sad really. 😢
Setlist: Set 1: In the Region of the Winter Star; Duplicity; Homily; Humours; A Peak in Darien; Sheets of Blue; Set 2: Judgement; Spring; Humoresque; Malacandra; Shiva; Dark Hydraulic
Gigs'n'Stuff 