Astro Al Live at Sonic Rock Solstice 2022
This is a write up of the live album, Astro Al Live at Sonic Rock Solstice 2022.
Sonic Rock is a long running independent music festival held in England.
We became aware of this festival when we got the Alan Davey's Bedouin Sonic Rock Solstice DVD.
The DVD is a blast. I still watch it and dig it.
Getting to see an independent musical festival in England was a dream.
Getting to play at a music festival in England is a dreamscape within a dream world.
As a teenage music fan I read about all these different festivals staged more for the love of music than the love of profits. They sounded so exotic and I never thought that I would see one with my own eyes.
So many bands that sounded amazing to read about performed at these shows.
At Sonic Rock, I wanted to see the band Krankschaft a lot! They were a band formed by the amazing space poet Robert Calvert and they were on the bill. Also Ozric Tentacles were there! I had seen them play Boston a couple of times in the 90s. Totally crazy shows. Especially the one in Allston.
Getting to meet Steve Pond from Krankschaft was a blast. That guy can tell stories.
Some other highlights of the trip included:
Getting to meet the amazing Roo DJ queen in person! Roo was a friend of ours going all the way
back to Myspace.
Playing with Dr. Hasbeen was a blast!
Meeting the other amazing DJ, Garry lee in person!
Garry shares part of my brain. Thanks for introducing me to the band Smoke.
Pauline Collins Alderdice gave us a crotchet alien that she made.
Her husband John wrote a blog about the festival and rated us one of his favorite bands from that year. It's thrilling to think anyone liked us that much!
Thanks so much for the excellent cover photo Peter Stanley!
It was so much fun to make our first friend from France, Yann. We still chat on the socials a lot. We split rides back to the hotel with him as we were staying at the same place.
We performed two Astro Al sets during the festival.
One on the opening night and one on the last day of the festival.
So many great people were there.
I didn’t have to buy a drink at the festival once.
Everyone was buying us drinks. It was so pleasant.
This live album is culled from soundboard recordings of our two sets at the Sonic Rock Solstice Festival (in Bromsgrove UK) on 6/16/22 & 6/19/22. Since the audio is from the soundboard, the only crowd noises you'll hear are what the mics picked up. We did repeat a few songs across the sets. Rather than include multiple recordings of the same songs, we chose to use only the best ones. We also edited out some pauses, blabbing, and so forth and our crash and burn encore (hey kids, don't try and do an unrehearsed song that you've forgotten how to play!). While some mixing trickery was done to give it more depth, there are no overdubs. Mostly, we tried to make it sound like a single set so that it would be a better listening experience.
Recorded by Pete Wibrew & crew (thank you!!!)
Produced by Astro Al
Copyright 2023 Astro Al
Originally I had a different mixing plan, but I bungled it. I had a Zoom recorder with me and recorded the first set on stage. The idea was I would mix that in with the mix I got from the soundboard so you could get both what the crowd heard and what we heard on stage, but being the idiot that I am, I forgot to turn the zoom recorder on during the second set. So I couldn't use the recording from the first set because it would have made everything from the first set that we used on the album sound vastly different than the material from the second set.
Sigh...
Astro Al is as always:
DNA Girl: vocals, guitar, FX
Count Robot: vocals, Aztec death whistle, samples, sampler, monotron, stylophone, kazoo
Here's a track by track breakdown of the live album Astro Al Live at Sonic Rock Solstice 2022
1. I Dream of Joe Meek 5:39 -What a blast to play this one for people who know who Joe Meek is!
I should have trimmed the front end of this track a bit more.
DNA Girl played one of Martyn Hasbeen's guitars (Martyn thanks for loaning us a guitar!). On this song, I played the stylophone. This was before we finally did a studio version of this song. We tested this one out live a few times before finally getting it recorded on Ghost Dinosaur Trips.
2. A Phone Call from the Master of the Universe 5:54 -So fun to play this one for people who get Nik! Yes, my clothes were really vibrating at one of Nik's show. And yes I still don't know how Nik got my phone number. For those who don't know Nik Turner, he was the sax mad man who leapt out of Hawkwind and kept going. Nik was suppossed to play this festival and it is a real drag that he couldn't make it. It would have been fun to play this one in front of him.
3. Dr. Gumdrop’s Flea Circus Show 5:14 - We were still re-working this one a lot at the time of the show. I managed to plug the band after us, Zub Zub. They were a fun dance band. The ending of this one was a bit more visual. DNA Girl does a throat slashing motion to cut me off. DNA Girl usually plays this one on acoustic guitar, but the electric guitar worked well enough. This eventually became the title track to the album Astro Al Present's Dr. Gumdrop's Flea Circus Show. The kazoo is the most fun instrument to play. I will standby that statement.
4. The Empire of Night 5:51 -A kind of cover of a Spaceseed tune. I used the words that I wrote for Spaceseed and DNA Girl came up with a very different take for the guitar. For my part I went for a more laconic madness style performance not sure if that really worked. I probably should have gone for the more manic ranting style that I've used before. John Pack from Spaceseed is the man! Brian Fowler from Spaceseed rocks!
The words to this one have always been about the self fulfilment of paranoia. No one is watching the narrator until he makes them observe him.
5. Kings of Terror 5:39 -What a thrill to play a song about our favorite horror movie actors in the country where some of them were born and many of their best movies were made. This was taken from the second set. You can tell if you listen closely as we mention it being the first song because it was the lead off song of our second set. I dig DNA Girl's solo here. I think it was mostly improv'd and not the original solo we recorded. Performing a song about classic horror movie actors is a ghoul good time. It's fun to play samples of them from some of their fun flicks. I tried to make the monotron sound like a monster.
6. Big Foot vs the Were Wolf 3:53 - The lights and projections were a blast. The dancing cows were particularly fun. I danced around like a whacked out contortionist during this one. Almost didn't make it back to the mic to sing my back up part. Got the 50's vibe going. This was from the second set. Howling during this number is fun. They projected fun dancing cow videos while we played this one.
7. Anne Frank 5:45 -This one is always a bit heart melting for me to perform. The words for this one were written not long after my first visit to the Anne Frank house. Feeling the weight of that persecution and hope was life changing. There wasn't a dry eye in the house that day.
The truth is I don't even know what to say. With love Anne Frank will live forever.
We thought about putting a studio version of this on Ghost Dinosaur Trips, but decided against it.
8. Cosmic Interlude 7:04 -This was a live somewhat improvised soundscape thing. I think I freaked a few people out with my kneeling and crouching during this number. We usually try to do one piece during each show that's unique to that show. We rehearsed this, but didn't stick to the way we practiced it. I played the monotron and sampler on this one. Remember to drink your mushroom tea. Got some good tones out of the Dr.Boss sampler on this one. The samples here are all synth tracks I recorded.
9. Sharkgator 3:46 -This was from the second set. We accidentally skipped a verse on this one during the first set. So of course we used the recording from the second set. One of our more rocking numbers from the Creature Double Feature album. Would you believe me if I said this is a pro-female song? Sharkgator will swallow his soul. I played the sampler and Aztec death whistle on this one. DNA Girl did the fiery guitar.
10. Come to Me 6:10 - We’re big Van Der Graaf Generator fans (lucky enough to have seen them twice). Fun to play this in front of some VDGG fans. We aimed to have DNA Girl’s vocal part be in a similar style to the vocals on Van Der Graaf’s songs. I’ve written about this particular performance of this song before, but I can never sum up how it made me feel. This was the highlight of both sets for me. It was like falling in love all over again. Every time I looked at DNA Girl during this one I melted. It was realising that everything lead me to that moment.
I played samples of distorted zither recordings that I made.
DNA Girl nailed this one all levels. Her vocals still give me chills. Her guitar playing catches the feelings of fear and violence in the song.
The timing of her dramatic line at the end matched the sample perfect.
Astro Al really hasn’t had a live show since this gig. We will play out again at some point but it's going to be difficult to even get close to this vibe again.
11. Thank you 0:12 - Just felt we needed to depart with our thanks.
Would we go back and play again at Sonic Rock? Sure! Just need the stars to align again...
Yours in gigs in other countries,
Count Robot
