DESCRIPTION:
My artist of 2008 is the relatively unknown 'Afterspark', being the moniker by which Cate Ferris (ably assited by Adam Staff) has chosen to package a sublime set of hauntingly atmospheric, highly original and moving songs found on their debut release 'A Simple Life' (available via i-tunes and myspace.com/afterspark).

On 2nd January Cate (vocals, acoustic guitars, piano) and Adam (bass, occassional piano) were united in Brighton with members of the LMB All Stars - namely Terry Lewis (guitar), Tom Phelan (keys), Mat Hector (drums) - the sometime 'house band' of young London based musicians best known for their soul/groove credentials (having most notably worked with the likes of Frank McComb, Mamas Gun, Natalie Williams, members of Princes band, AWB etc).

Despite only meeting Cate and Adam a couple of hours before the gig and 'learning' Cate complex tunes - Cates use of odd chord shapes, melodic twists and turns, heavy use of atmospherics and dynamics is more 'prog' than groove!- together they managed to put on a spell binding gig which, even though it happened on the second day of the year, will be hard pushed to be bettered all year!

This is one of several anthemic tunes on the Afterspark record with an interesting, organic live version featuring some particularly effective spacey guitar effects from Terry Lewis.

As ever a lot of the on the night magic is lost this rough 'front of house' bootleg, but still worth checking out regardless