By Jase Walker
Walking into Patronaat I have to admit that Coldplay wasn’t on my list of bands I’d hear as interval music for a couple of prog acts but it’s probably not the weirdest I’ve heard I suppose. Anyway, time for my second helping of Intervals this year after getting a taster back in Manchester during RADAR festival, in this instance supported by the lovely lot in The Intersphere so I get to top up my prog fix before hitting Euroblast the coming weekend for another helping.
After a bit of a yap sesh and catching up with friends, it’s time for The Intersphere to get things started and I can feel my hype levels creeping up already!
The strength of their sound is absolutely phenomenal, the low end of the bass and drums literally buffets my jeans with every single hit and yet the clarity of the vocals and guitar work is clear and crisp to the point where you could bite it. The vocal work from all three strings members as they harmonize is fantastic too, all three hitting different notes that create a wonderful layer in addition to the guitar work. There’s use of some backing tracks but generally are fairly minimal that are mainly used for effect, the vast majority of the sound is still very much live, as you’d hope from the.. uh, expansive, pedal boards the guitarists are sporting.
‘The Wanderer’ material sounds bloody great live too; these guys have clearly poured hours and hours of blood, sweat and tears into making sure their live set brings it to life and does justice to it beyond the studio.
This is the sort of live performance that leaves a real impact on you though as it makes seeing a band do it in front of you worthwhile. A band fully exceeding how good their recorded material sounds isn’t exactly as common as I would like because the studio representation is the result of many hours of meticulous work and a live performance relies on everything working the one shot you’ve got at it at the time but The Intersphere are fully killing it tonight.
Also can I just mention how much of a pleasure it is seeing a drummer just going absolutely apeshit? Because my god, hitting a song peak that’s quite literally just a minute and a half of insane drum fills really scratches an itch I rarely satisfy. The guys come off almost as apologetic in their closing statement before the last song of the set as it’s the first show of the tour and generally most of the gremlins tend to appear on these shows but I personally don’t think anything’s really stood out to me throughout the set.
The Intersphere have been nothing short of fantastic and it’s a privilege to have seen them again and hopefully I won’t miss their next headline tour, I just hope it’s not in bloody Tilburg!
Admittedly I’m having a bit of another gig in its own right between the bands because the sound guy decided to put on a massive chunk of The Midnight (who I was seeing the next actually) so naturally I’ve spent the whole time shouting the words out!
Anyway, time for Intervals to melt my face with tasty riffs. A quick “what’s up Haarlem?” and we’re straight into it: it’s party time with big riffs, tasty licks, fat bass and thunderous drumming. Whoever’s doing the sound tonight is definitely making sure we’re getting as much as is legally mandated into our ears but definitely ensuring our desired amount of pounding low end in our guts.
It’s been around six years since the last headline show, 2019! I was still in Manchester at that point and you bet your arse I didn’t miss that show either; I fucking love me some Intervals. These sorts of shows are always a bit nuts because it’s one part gig and one part masterclass. “This song’s got too many notes, like the rest of them”, Aaron quips before hitting the next song, a casual bit of self-deprecation never goes amiss.
Also I thought that the oldest song we’d see after RADAR this year would be ‘Mata Hari’ but how wrong I am: ‘Still Winning’ from the first EP is a deep cut that I absolutely was not expecting! Admittedly I do miss a lot of the extremely techy and djenty earlier material but I respect the process of growing as a musician too. The brief cut aways in sound followed by everything coming back in at once hit me like a haymaker to the jaw every single time, the colossal sound in Patronaat’s second stage is going to leave me vibrating for days! One thing to note though, this isn’t all about Aaron, everyone in this band is absolutely insane, they all get their time to shine and it goes without saying that if they’re fit to play in the same band, they’re every bit as capable.
Keeping in with more deep cuts, jumping back to the ‘In Time’ EP, a double hitter of ‘Mata Hari’ followed by ‘Tapestry’ is a welcome addition to pad out seeing more of the older Intervals material to cover my want for the djenty bits.
It’s clear from the way the guys move on stage while smashing the set out that they’re having fun doing this though; it’s long overdue for a return with a headline show and I can see clearly that they’re happy to be doing this again here finally – although that could just be because it’s the first day of the tour, but I won’t complain. Rounding out the set with a few more numbers from ‘Circadian’, finishing with ‘String Theory’ wraps up a welcome return for Intervals, a triumphant return after such an extended absence. I’ll be catching another helping of the set at Euroblast later in the week, because what’s not to like about seeing more great music?