Breathing Space, Lowdham, 7-Feb-2009

Another weekend, more long-distance gigging. This time I found myself making a three hour train journey across the snow-covered east midlands countryside to see York’s Breathing Space play in the Nottinghamshire town of Lowdham, for what turned out to be the first sold-out gig I’ve been to for more than a year. I’d booked a room at the B&B attached to the village pub, where I found many of the usual suspects in the bar. Yes, it was going to be one of those evenings

The Village Hall in Lowdham isn’t your typical rock venue. In fact, it was probably one strangest venues I’ve been to. I’ve known other gigs that have been seated with tables, but never with an pre-arranged seating plan. In this case the organisers put everyone with non-local postcodes down the front, on the basis that we were the hardcore fans who had travelled a long way. The village hall lacks a licenced bar, although they were providing coffee and biscuits. However, they did have a rather splendid arrangement with the pub over the road with excellent selection of real ales, whereby you could bring your pint into the venue provided.

With a venue that’s not associated with rock bands I wondered what the sound would be like. I needn’t have worried, the acoustics of the hall were excellent, and the sound engineer, perhaps because he’s more used to folk acts, resisted the temptation to turn the PA up to heavy metal volumes. Breathing Space always sound their best when mixed for clarity rather than volume, especially given the power of Olivia Sparnenn’s voice. Those big soaring ballads don’t work so well when turned up to eleven.

Breathing Space delivered a superb set, as good as I’ve seen them play. They had to rearrange a few songs following the recent departure of sax and wind synth player John Hart, mostly with Mark Rowan filling the gaps on guitar. There seemed to be a few other subtle changes; I thought Iain Jennings used a lot more Hammond organ sounds that at previous gigs. The setlist was much the same as last year, but included a couple of new songs which will appear on the third album due in the middle of the year. The slightly proggy ‘Butterflies and White Feathers’, which they first played towards the end of last year gets better and better each time I hear it, and the newer ‘Below the Radar’, which I’d not heard live before, is a powerful hard rocker. They closed, as usual, with a powerful version of the old Mostly Autumn classic, ‘The Gap Is Too Wide’, which always brings out the goosebumps.

All this was enthusiastically received by an audience that wasn’t made up of existing fans, wasn’t a ‘prog’ audience, and quite possibly wasn’t really even a rock audience. Which all goes to prove there’s an audience out their for Breathings Space’s brand of progressive-tinged classic rock if people are aware of their existence.