25 November 2024

20-04-2011 Blackfield

Supports: North Atlantic Oscillation; Venue: Alpheus, Rome (Italy)
By: Lara Cappelli

Blackfield is an English/Israeli rock band. After the release of their latest album “Welcome To My DNA”, they are now touring Europe and have reached Italy for three dates. Tonight they were playing in Rome for the very first time.

The audience had to wait quite some time to see someone enter the stage. After a long wait, it was finally time for North Atlantic Oscillation. This Scottish band delivers an interesting progressive rock and has released two albums so far. Overall, the band did a high impact exhibition, both technically and visually thanks to some great lights they used. Still, it didn’t get to the whole venue, where people were forming contrasting opinion about them. After about half an hour a part of the audience was having enough of waiting for Blackfield and didn’t really pay attention to the show anymore, while some others still wanted more. The band played for about an hour, which was probably too much even for those who were actually showing some interest in them. Indeed, it’s pretty hard for their rather complex music to get to convince such an impatient audience. Nevertheless, the guys seemed pretty satisfied with their exhibition which, in spite of everything, turned out to be pretty pleasant.

One could refer to Blackfield as the combination between Porcupine Tree’s singer and guitarist Steven Wilson’s and Israeli musician Aviv Geffen’s musical creativity and skills. Still, once brought on stage their music shows how reductive this definition can be. As many saw it coming, the interest in this band and in their latest album “Welcome To My DNA” brought many people to the venue, which was quite overstuffed. Blackfield music and live shows are very much about the atmosphere and tonight it was made up by several elements. There’s a great synch going on between Steven and Aviv who, despite having different musical backgrounds and being very different on stage, do have something in common: the great professionalism and passion in the music they play and in the way they play it. Every detail is thoroughly cured still leaving space to the spontaneity of a live exhibition. Already from the first two songs “Blood” and “Blackfield”, the band held the audience in their grasps. The interest of them was often focused on Steven’s and Aviv’s personalities which are of course the most outstanding and known of the band. Yet, the two of them never try to steal the scene to their band mates, who are actually treated with great respect and get themselves noticed too after a while. This finally gives Blackfield the character of an actual band, which they probably didn’t keep in their characteristics pattern when starting this project. Now, after having crafted a great album, they have the passion, the syntony and the loyalty of quite a fan base. Make sure to check them out on their tour in Europe and the States, you won’t regret it at all.

Links:
North Atlantic Oscillation MySpace
North Atlantic Oscillation Facebook
Blackfield Facebook
Blackfield Official