During may, after Desertfest Berlin, I had a rough week again : I saw Colour Haze twice ! One in France at Le Rex, Toulouse and then one in Portugal at Hard Club, Porto. It’s about the last one I ‘m going to talk about below.
I arrived in Porto at around 14h in the afternoon and I went directly to Hard Club. I already know there was a Super Bock, the Portuguese beer, waiting for me around ! I don’t know if you have ever been to Porto, but it’s a beautiful city to visit if you are prepared to climb a lot of steep streets! The venue is in the very center and there are 3 rooms inside, tonight was in the big one.
I was excited waiting for my Portuguese friends from Jesus The Snake. Last time with them was at SonicBlast Moledo 2017 and let’s be honest, you need to be prepared when you hang around with these guys, just sayin’… When Jesus the Snake and my other friends arrived, I had the chance to follow them in the backstage, I really want to thank them and also thank Ricardo and Thelma who organized this beautiful event for letting me being there. They are amazing people !
Little anecdote : as you can see, there is a portrait of Jorge, Rui & Matte ( My Sleeping Karma’s bass player ) and it wreally real good surprise to see him there, honestly, my heartbeat rose a little when I saw him talking to the Colour Haze’s guitarist.
But now, let’s talk about the real thing, music !
Jesus The Snake
This night with Colour Haze we had two more bands: Jesus the Snake from Portugal and TAU from Germany.
When Jesus the snake began, a lot of people were already there, good for them because they were so glad to be here !
Jesus the Snake is a four-piece band starring Jorge as singer/guitarist, Rui as bass player, Joao as the drummer and Gonçalo at the keyboard player, who joined the band a few months ago. They are from Vizela, a Portuguese city 1 hour away from Porto where they rehearse in the amazing Callidas club bar ! Trust me, you don’t know this place but I can assure you this is the place.
The influence of those crazy men come a lot from old classics such as Pink Floyd (first two songs of their EP are called Floyd I and II) but they are huge fans of bands such as Elder, Fuzz or All Them Witches. Of course, they all love Colour Haze and good news, I saw keyboard players of each band talk to each other 🙂 Jorge is strongly infused with Roger Waters’s riffs and it’s very pleasant to see that kind of psychedelic rock instead of Brian Jonestown Massacre stuff (not that I don’t like BJM of course !) simply delightful riffs with beautiful sound you can enjoy fully and without a whole bottle of vodka !
You can feel that Rui, the bassist listened to some Snarky Puppy’s songs, the groove is not that far. This is very interesting to have this combined with what Joao plays on his drum. As I said, Gonçalo freshly arrived in the band a few months ago and my advice is: If you never saw Jesus the Snake with this keyboard player, you got to do it ! I saw them last summer and I can tell you that they are really improving themselves.
You can find an EP they recorded at Hertzcontrol studio near Moledo last summer but I can assure you that new songs are coming soon and France, if you hear me, let them come to our country !
Tau
Tau is a German band on Fuzz Club Records composed of 4 musicians. I didn’t know this band so after the show I discover that Shaun Nunutzi, the singer / guitarist, is also in Dead Skeleton. I understood many things when I saw that! We have a psychedelic rock legend here my friend.
The band is also composed of the Venezuelan multi-instrumentalist Gerald Pasqualin and I think that’s why we have so much world music influences in what they presented to us here.
Shaun is playing with a folk acoustic guitar and I wanted to say that this is uncommon from this kind of band but really interesting with his voice because we totally understand that the lyrics are important for him and maybe if he was with an electric guitar it won’t be the same.
This band was perfect as support of Colour Haze and I hope to cross their way again in an outdoor festival, hopefully in the forest to be even more into Tau’s music.
Colour Haze
Ah Colour Haze… you are reading a report from a big fan of this band so how can I even be objective…
For those who don’t know about them ( Really ? ), this is a German band which began in 1995 run by Stefan Koglek the guitarist/singer (who also created the label Elektrohasch Records) and since 1998 to nowadays Philipp Rasthofer as the bass player and Manfred Merwald as the drummer. You can feel that their influence of different genres came after their 90’s album and still continues today. They are inspiring in both ways, the music and the sound of their instruments which stay quiet the same along all those years. I can even say that this sound is the same live now, in 2018, especially for the guitar. If there is a guitarist here, the tube amp clean sound of Stefan is real and approved!
For this tour, they were playing a 2h30 show, just to put everything you need about a Colour haze live ! They were also 4 on stage because this time there was a keyboard player with them!
We had some songs from 2001 to 2017 album’s and they started with the long “She Said” from the same-titled album. When you listen to this song at home next time, think about the fact that the keyboard player was here and how it was so amazing to get all these nuances.
The “Tempel” album was played on stage too of course, with “Aquamaria” and “Tempel“. We heard some songs of the last album “In Her Garden” with “Skydancer“, “Skydance” and “Labyrinthe” and there was “Uberall” from the “Highest God We Know” album, “Love” from “Colour Haze” and “Ewige Blumenraft” album with the awesome “House of Rushammon“.
The light show during their live was really melting with the sound, that made the show terrific ! As you can see on the photos, we had psychedelic projections changing song by song.
Thanks again to everyone there and I really hope to be in Portugal soon again, maybe see you in Sonicblast Moledo !
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