Karnataka  - Requiem for a Night, Live in Zoetermeer (2xCD and Blu-ray)

My history with the British band with the wonderful name Karnataka  (a region in India but also meaning elevated land) goes back a long way because I once saw them live at the Northern Prog festival, then with singer Rachel Jones (Ian Jones' sister) and was impressed by the combination of her beautiful voice and the guitar work that was also good and present. I have several CDs of them and the live album Strange Behaviour in particular was my favourite at the time. Still, somehow I lost interest in this band somewhere along the line and that was mainly due to the combination of appealing, read proggy, tracks and the more straight forward rock tracks that got the upper hand. I have this problem with more bands, like Mostly Autumn, and given the large range of music in our beloved genre, these bands became a bit snowed under. I understand the desire to bring variation but I can't stand too big contrasts in the choice of genre. Narrowminded? Absolutely, but that's just my deviation. Just like wanting to reason for myself why I like certain bands or albums, or not of course, instead of just feeling whether I like something.

Why this somewhat extensive introduction? After reading a number of positive reviews ( and a very negative one which I don’t understand at all), I bought their latest Blu-ray called Requiem for a Night Live in Zoetermeer and thought oh well, nice to have Karnataka on the menu again. You can already feel it coming, I am really impressed by this release. It doesn't surprise me that the images and sound are quite good, John Vis and his team are so experienced that I didn't expect anything else. No, it is the music and the performance that make me feel so very positive. Singer Sertari is a beautiful, striking appearance with a truly beautiful, flawless voice. So good that I wonder if there has been a lot of tinkering with the recordings, but I give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she is really that good. Her voice simply resonates with me more than those of her predecessors, Hayley Griffiths and Lisa Fury. I also like the choice of many long, proggy tracks and the number of less interesting ones is very limited. And then, master guitarist Luke Machin, he plays the stars from heaven, as we say here in Holland, and shakes a number of masterful solos out of his (torn) sleeve (Dutch again). What an added value he is and what strikes me most is the fact that he plays considerably less jazzy than in the past and really conveys emotion. The anchor of the band is of course bassist/keyboardist and composer Ian Jones who in this case only plays bass guitar and leaves the keyboard work to Rob Wilsher and he fills it in beautifully with layered, atmospheric sounds and only the occasional solo. On drums we have Jack Summerfield , a young guy with a really groovy style which suits the music very well.

Logically, the latest album Requiem for a Dream is central and fortunately they have chosen the most beautiful songs from this album with the highlight (although) the almost twenty-five minutes long title track. To be honest, there is another highlight for me (you lucky bastard), and that is the first encore Forsaken with an absolute starring role for Machin who combines technique and feeling perfectly in a minute-long solo. After the obligatory opener Karnataka we get the first long track All around the World which is a statement about climate change  but also a very diverse and interesting one musically. Road to Cairo, from the gathering Light, is a good and pacy piece and should get the audience going. Sure, a song like Sacrifice will appeal less to real progheads and is an example of the more middle of the road tracks I spoke about in the beginning. But all in all, the band puts on a really good show and Sertari does a great job as visual centre point and vocalist. Since I was not there, I cannot judge whether the atmosphere in the room was as resigned as we find on the images, but that would not be justified. Of course I know that the people who come to "our" concerts are no longer the most lively and often so seasoned that they don't jump on the couches with enthusiasm that quick and it is only towards the end that I do see the deserved appreciation.

The sometimes present Celtic influences come from tape and are skilfully mixed in the performances, giving us a really beautiful overall sound. In short, in terms of image and sound, it is all fine with occasionally less sharpness due to the chosen venue lighting. Funny to compare with is the recently purchased Blu-ray of the Polish Millenium entitled Universum, review here.