Hampshire Jam 3

Went to Hampshire Jam 3 last Saturday. The Hampshire Jam is an electronic music festival held in the small Hampshire town of Liphook. This year I felt I somehow contributed in a small way to it's success as I designed the website http://www.hampshirejam.co.uk

FSP were probably the most retro-sounding but in the best possible way and got the event off to the best start possible. It was good to see them having such a good time. Their encore piece was particularly good.

This was my first Airsculpture gig and after a slightly shaky start they built up into an extremely powerful groove with some classic sequencing and great leads. This was some of the most complex multi-layered sequencing I've heard them produce and the sounds they were getting out of their Nord modulars was excellent.

I must mention at this point that the lighting at this gig was extremely effective and complemented Airsculpture's powerful performance. I think they had the best lights of the event.

Schonwalder, Keller and Broekhuis started the evenig session off all dressed up to go in matching white shirts. I'd not heard any of there stuff before and found their music to ba quite a modern take on the Berlin School, at times quite reminiscent of Schulze. One criticism would be that a couple of pieces went on a bit without much variation, but apart from that it was very enjoyable, especially Mario's enthusiasm and interaction with the audience.

Finally, in only there 2nd ever performance and their UK debut ARC produced a set of sublimely beautiful layered EM. Mark's sequencing was less strident than with Redshift at E-Live and Ian was on evidently enjoying himself, bopping away to the sequences, adding his synth percussion, strange textures and ambient bridging sections. Their set was over far too soon and ended extremely climactically with an e-piano piece from Ian and some huge chords from Mark.

Steve Jenkins did his big round of thank yous whilst ARC were setting up for their encore, which was the highlight of their set. Amazing to think they'd only got together the previous Tuesday and it was all new material.

I had a great time at my first Hampshire Jam, let's hope the organiser Steve Jenkins feels the urge to do another as it was well worth the effort. As Phil Booth, the guy sat next to me, said all 4 bands were excellent and I would find it very hard to decide between them as each had their own slant on sequencer driven EM.

Will post photos on fotki in due course