Sound Of Drums / Gokula / Hurry On Sundown / Into The Deep
Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There / Temple Of Everlasting Light / Infinite Sun
Shower Your Love / 303 / Mountain Lifter
Peter Pan R.I.P./Ophelia/Mystical Machine Gun/108 Battles (Of The Mind)
Tattva / Hush
Hey Dude / Great Hosannah / Govinda
Sound Of Drums
Into the deep
Grateful When You’re Dead / Jerry Was There
Jerry Was There
Infinite Sun
Peter Pan R.I.P
Ophelia
Mystical Machine Gun
Tattva
Tattva / Hush
Great Hosannah / Govinda
3 марта Великобритания и Индия, и так неразрывно связанные историческим процессом, взялись за руку и зашли в московский Yotaspace в лице коллектива Kula Shaker. Эти парни приезжают к нам не в первый раз, но публика неизменно устремляется на свидание с ними, желая отхватить кусочек тепла. А на самом старте российской весны это тем более актуально.
Source: Фотоотчет | Kula Shaker в Москве | Yotaspace | 03.03.2016 – Rock Cult
Sound of Drums
Hurry on Sundown
Into the Deep
Infinite Sun
303
Mountain lifter
Tattva
Hush
Hey Dude
Great Hosannah
Govinda
One of the reasons the 90s was such a memorable period for pop music was not just because it produced celebrated bands like Blur and Oasis, but because it produced eccentric ones like Kula Shaker. Their much-loved 1996 debut album K deservedly went multi-platinum thanks to its bold and heady blend of psychedelic rock, Indian sitars and mystical Sandscrit lyrics.
Two decades and one reunion down the line, the band have just released their fifth album, K 2.0. The clue is in the name: frontman Crispian Mills has described it as a “companion piece” to their debut and it makes liberal use of the same Eastern sounds which separate Kula Shaker from other guitar-led bands of the era.
Solid as this new material is, the expectant crowd of fans who gathered in Glasgow to witness the band begin their European tour had come hoping for the hits. They were not disappointed. Set opener “Sound of Drums” provided the audience-pleasing start to a night which proved that Kula Shaker’s music has, so far, stood the test of time.
K might be 20 years old, but the band has clearly still not got over its love affair with Eastern mysticism, as was made immediately apparent by the light-strewn stage set with its colourful kaleidoscopic animations of Hindu deities and the puffs of sweet smelling incense released shortly before they appeared.
Characteristically ebullient on stage, Mills nevertheless felt the need to explain early on in the night that he was suffering from limited mobility due to an unfortunate (and very middle-aged) accident. “I’ve fractured my rib,” he told the crowd, before quipping: “You should’ve seen the other duck pond.”
Although the 43-year-old frontman said he was wary of seeming “all old and decrepit”, he and the band did not show any signs of tiredness during their 75-minute set, which was filled with rapturous singalongs to hits such as “Grateful When You’re Dead”, “Tattva”, “Shower Your Love” and “303”. The last, which Mills described as a “love song to a road”, concluded with him hurling his guitar into the air.
There were some signs of rustiness, as you might expect from a band which hasn’t produced an album for six years. One of the new numbers had to be restarted, and before launching into K 2.0‘s opening track “Infinite Sun”, Mills admitted he was nervous about playing them in front of a crowd for the first time. The audience, some of whom had never seen the band live, did not seem to care.
For many it was also a chance to lose themselves in 90s nostalgia, which Kula Shaker recognised. “We’re going to play a song we wrote when we were kids. Maybe you remember it from your childhood,” said Mills, before launching into “Hey Dude”, their rocky single which would have made number one in 1996 were it not for the Spice Girls.
The band chose to close on “Govinda”, which remains the only UK top ten hit to be sung entirely in Sanskrit. It provided one of the evening’s most memorable moments when, with Mills’ encouragement, thousands of Glaswegians began chanting: “Govinda Jaya Jaya / Gopala Jaya Jaya / Radha-Ramana Hari.” Weird, but beautiful.
Source: Independent
I’d last seen Kula Shaker with my nephew, Dave, at the University Union in the mid-Noughties incarnation, so I knew how good they could be live. However, initially on Monday night, the signs and portents weren’t overwhelmingly good: Mills is far too good a guitarist to fluff his riffs, exactly, but there were a couple that, shall we say, he caught just in time; ‘Mountain Lifter,’ being played live for the first time, had to be restarted. One of the most pleasing elements of the gig, actually, was that he admitted to being nervous, just before going into the other excellent track from the new album, ‘Infinite Sun.’ Rock star vulnerability: a rare thing.
Part of this was down to your man having a broken rib to contend with: ‘You should’ve seen the other duck pond,’ he joked, before proceeding to disprove all claims of ‘decrepitude’ by giving a 24-carat-gold plated, full on, turned up to 11, performance of guitar heroics throughout that included leaping (it seemed) ten feet in the air mid-solo, chucking the Strat up in the air and catching it, and finishing half the songs flat on his back, blasting the final notes from a perilously prone position. I mean, any of you who’ve never actually strapped on an electric and tried to play it, borrow a friend’s and feel how hefty a block of solid wood the bugger is: it bangs against your ribs at the best of times, so to put on the show for us he did was actually pretty physically brave.
Aside from the two new songs mentioned above, the crowd got the hits they were looking for, with a heavy reliance on ‘K’ (6 songs) and ‘Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts’ (5). There was the inevitable cover of ‘Hush’ to great acclaim (Incidentally, Gavin Allen of the Mirror, Hush was originally written by Joe South for Billy Joe Royal (Wikipedia tells me) and Deep Purple did the most famous cover, when Husker Du were still at the rusks stage. Just saying.) One of your blog’s personal favourites, ‘Shower Your Love,’ got a new treatment, the rolling sus-4 chord intro making me think for a moment there was a cover of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ on the way (next time, Crispy, if I can call you Crispy).
It was one of those gigs that just built and built, from the aforementioned early-tour rustiness. Mills does carry it all on his shoulders – keyboards, drums and bass are there to back his single guitar, and there were times when you wondered if another guitarist playing off him would have lightened the load, at least (consider this my job application, Crispers…). On the other hand, the one time the keyboard player picked up an acoustic, for ‘Ophelia,’ Mills spent half the song gesturing at the sound guy to turn him down, so maybe he’s best just doing it all himself.
As the band unrolled classic after classic, leaving the stage after a climactic ‘Tattva,’ you wondered what they had left in the tank. Any doubting Thomases were soon quietened by a three-number encore of ‘Hey Dude,’ ‘Great Hosanna’ (my personal favourite) and ‘Govinda,’ the crowd participation in the last one so thunderous that a smiling Mills told us we’d ‘just taken the roof off’ at the end.
KULA SHAKER 