Encouraged by how well our performance had gone at the EMMA Festival in 1997, we were keen for Kinetik to perform live again as quickly as possible. For early 1998, we ambitiously attempted to put together a tour of various live performances around the country. It was Andrew who coined the phrase ‘Micro Tour’ while designing some concert poster drafts. The Initial idea was to organise three concerts; one in West Wales near the Kinetik Studio, one in Andrew’s hometown of Bath and one in Derby again where we had made now many new friends and followers of the Kinetik sound.

When it came to actually trying to organise the three concerts within days of each other in different parts of the country, it turned out to be a logistical nightmare ! Time and again, after we thought we had things finally confirmed, another problem would crop up which meant that the whole tour had to be re-scheduled yet again. The much hoped-for Bath gig turned out to be virtually impossible as there were very few venues in Bath who were prepared to put on live bands at all. Those that did, actually expected us to pay them for the privilege of playing there on a tiny stage clearly not suitable for our needs. For the concert in Wales, Declan Connolly of the Queen’s Hall (where Kinetik had played their first ever set at the Burning Issue Concert) did all that he could to help us out and was keen to see how our sound had progressed in the meantime. Eventually we managed to secure a concert there in early April, two days before a performance in Derby at the ‘Electric Café’ - an electronic music club run by Les May of Midas Records.
      
An Interview For The BBC

In March 1998, Kinetik once more relocated to the now very familiar rehearsal surroundings of Max Fairbrother’s barn. This time Max kindly let us set up our equipment and rehearse on the ground floor which meant that on this occasion we didn’t have to concern ourselves with struggling up the precarious stone steps (minus handrail) laden down with very bulky and expensive equipment. Max planned to eventually convert our rehearsal room into an art exhibition studio and on the walls above our equipment was a strange metallic sculpture resembling an airplane propellor.

Not long after we installed ourselves, Andrew’s mother was suddenly taken into Hospital. Naturally, Andrew wanted to be with her and so postponed a planned visit to Wales to prepare for the concerts. He told us that he didn’t want us to cancel the tour, but we should do us much preparation as possible without him until he could make it down.

Andrew, Colin & Ashley Franklin - Radio Derby

In our previous telephone conversations with Ashley, I had suggested that Kinetik provide him with his own personalised jingle for his show on DAT cassette and he seemed delighted with the idea. The jingle consisted of an atmospheric vocoded voice intoning “Soundscapes with Ashley Franklin. This is BBC Radio Derby - Radio Derrr- beeee”. This was premiered on the airwaves immediately before our interview. In the studio, Ashley made us both feel very welcome and this resulted in the interview being very relaxed. We all enjoyed ourselves so much that the Kinetik section of the programme actually over-ran by over half an hour. The full transcript of this interview can be read here. Throughout the show, Ashley played a variety of Kinetik tracks including some live recordings from EMMA and a test mix of the track ‘Generation’. These EMMA recordings were subsequently released in 1999 on the RE-GENERATIONS CD release along with the Radio Derby jingle and various extracts from the interview.
      
A Mysterious Manager

After our interview, Before returning to Wales and since we were in the locality, Andrew and I decided to check out the venue where Kinetik would be performing in one week’s time. This was a short distance from the BBC but a little difficult to get to on Derby’s convoluted traffic system, so we felt the practise would come in useful the following Sunday. When we arrived there, we found the stage a little smaller than we had hoped for, but there were plenty of useful power points. We were a little concerned to discover that among the many posters on the wall promoting various forthcoming live events, nothing at all could be seen mentioning next week’s Kinetik performance.

Back in Wales the following day, Andrew telephoned Les under the guise of ‘somebody representing the band’ to express our concerns over the apparent lack of publicity at the venue and to politely enquire what was being done to promote it elsewhere. Les instantly threw an absolute fit over the phone at Andrew, in our opinion quite unwarranted and immediately afterwards telephoned me (on the same phone that Andrew had just been using) to inform me that as far as he was concerned, the Kinetik gig was cancelled !! Whoever we had representing us as a manager should be instantly fired ! He soon calmed down however, and the situation was salvaged amicably. We assured him that all further discussions would be conducted through ourselves and not our ‘manager’, the invented Richard Head (afterwards, forever to be known affectionately to his Kinetik colleagues as ‘Dick’) !

Shirleyann during MicroTour rehearsals

Later the same day we resumed our rehearsals in Max’s barn. Time was not on our side. We now only had four days to finish constructing our set list and to rehearse. This was a stark contrast to the EMMA rehearsals where we had had the luxury of a whole month to streamline our set and rehearse for any potential technical problems which may have arisen. There was now not enough time available to us to incorporate all of the ideas we had originally had for the concerts. I remember Andrew in particular was very frustrated by this. One idea of his had been that we would perform one piece of music by playing small, hand-held controller keyboards. These would control the two Supernova prototypes I was currently helping to develop for Novation and the whole piece of music was to be constructed by only using sounds generated on these. Although not done for the tour due to lack of time, this idea subsequently evolved into the studio track ‘In-Novation’ which appeared on the RE-GENERATIONS album. We were still very keen to use the Supernovas in some way for our set since this meant that we would actually be the first band worldwide to ever use the instrument ! As well as preparing Kinetik’s music for the tour, I therefore also had to ensure that the Supernova’s current operating system was advanced and reliable enough to be taken on stage. This sometimes meant that I had to temporarily leave rehearsals for short periods of time and return home to correct any Supernova operating system problem which became apparent.

A cassette demo tape of Andrew’s recorded in Bath provided inspiration for a completely re-arranged version of the REFINED track ‘Sounds Of Industry’ complete with a prominent dance beat. This was largely constructed on the Quasimidi Raven with the Supernova prototypes being used for the very first time. Again, this arrangement eventually surfaced on the RE-GENERATIONS album under the title of ‘Industry Of Sound’. The atmospheric introduction to the song was actually recorded in-situ at Max’s barn during the Micro Tour rehearsal sessions. The version of the song performed on the Micro Tour differed from the final recorded version by having sung vocals rather than the synthetic vocals we eventually used.

To complete the set, we were keen to continue Kinetik’s tradition of performing at least one new piece of previously unheard music at the concerts, so inspired by the name of Les May’s music club, we decided to include a Kinetik arrangement of the classic Kraftwerk track ‘Electric Café’ into the set list. Up to date, this has been the only song played by Kinetik which has not been written by the band. For the arrangement, we added some beefy synthetic drum sounds provided by the Supernovas.

On stage at the EMMA Festival, I had announced that our performance of Andrew’s old song ‘Trans Continental’ would be the only time the piece would be played by Kinetik. However, we hadn’t reckoned on the positive response the song would generate. Due to demand, we also included this song into the Micro Tour set list along with most of the other REFINED material previously played at EMMA. The exception was ‘Father Of Invention / Sounds Of Industry’ (replaced by ‘Industry Of Sound’) and the addition of the track ‘Pipeline’, slightly re-arranged from the live version last performed at The Burning Issue. Some of our older material would be introduced by short synthetic speeches prepared by Andrew at his home studio.

Declan had managed to locate a video projector for our Queen’s Hall performance, so for the Welsh concert, our old colleague Allen Hardy had agreed to operate computer graphics again for us (the Derby concert was to be without visuals - a video projector was not available there and the stage would not have been large enough in any case !). I was hoping to use some specially shot camcorder footage of Supernovas to accompany ‘Industry Of Sound’, but it soon transpired that Allen had typically butchered his own camcorder while attempting to modify it to run on PP3 batteries. Instead, Dave England had loaned us a camcorder to shoot the required footage, but to my eternal regret and shame, somehow it managed to get its cassette door broken soon after which prevented the camera ever being used again (Sorry Dave !).

In the meantime, the rehearsals were not going quite as glitch-free as I’d hoped. Although we’d done our best with what limited time was available to us, balancing the sound mix during rehearsals had proved frustrating with so many instruments being used live and I felt there was still too much scope for potential technical problems to arise on stage….
    
The Queen’s Hall Concert

After a last-minute rehearsal in the morning, we arrived at the venue in our hired van at around 3pm. Everything seemed very familiar and unchanged since Kinetik’s last performance there in 1995. There was even a Burning Issue banner still attatched to the ceiling. About an hour before we were due to take to the stage, I collected Paul Wilkinson from a nearby railway station. Paul had travelled down from Blackpool to follow the Micro Tour and we had arranged for him to travel up to Derby with us in the van for the next concert. Once the doors opened, it was encouraging to see some familiar faces turning up to support us, even though the overall size of the audience was not as large as we would have liked.

As was now our custom, we all shook hands and wished each other well before we took to the stage with Allen Hardy. He was located to the rear, adjacent to the operator of the video projector. As the curtains opened, we launched into ‘Dance Machine’, frantically adjusting our equipment while attempting to achieve the best sound mix possible. The concert as a whole went reasonably well, but as expected, there were a few technical hitches resulting in the odd false start to the occasional song. ‘Pipeline’ fared worst in this respect and we had to busk our way through this song minus the music data normally supplied by one of the sequencers. Most strange and not at all enjoyable ! We had had to restart this song at the Burning Issue Concert and we were starting to feel that perhaps ‘Pipeline’ might be a little unlucky for us.

Setting up - Narberth

The newly up tempo arrangement of ‘Sounds Of Industry’ - ‘Industry Of Sound’ was very well received by the audience. Seeing anyone in the audience actually dancing to our music while we play always makes me feel a little strange. Not sure why. During the end section of the song, much to Andrew’s amusement, on impulse I started striking on the MIDI drum pads, playing a totally improvised collection of sounds normally used for the live version of the song ‘Refined’. This worked so well that when we came to record the arrangement for the RE-GENERATIONS CD, we attempted to recreate the essence of what I had played on the drum pads during the concert. Those in the audience familiar with Kraftwerk material also appreciated our cover version of ‘Electric Café’, with its pounding synthetic Supernova beats. In common with previous Kinetik performances, we concluded our set with an extended version of ‘Refined’, each of us in turn playing an improvised solo before leaving the stage.

After the show, I found myself becoming a little disheartened by various aspects of how the performance had gone. Certainly, it hadn’t been a disaster by any means, though I felt things could have gone a lot better. For the concert, our equipment set up had been more complex than before and this in turn had made various technical problems more likely to occur. We had also been relying on the sound engineers far too much, expecting them to do their best with the large number of audio inputs we had provided them with. Instead, they had almost completely ignored us. Visually, the back projection throughout the concert was not at all what we had intended. Instead of using the video signals provided by Allen on our synchronised computer video system, the Projectionist had decided for his own reasons to manipulate our images and mix them with all sorts of bizarre footage such as extracts from the Oprah Winfrey show, Japanese monster movies and car crashes. This had led to some truly surreal and unsuitable imagery being displayed behind us while we had played. I made a mental note to try and obtain our own video projector sometime in the future….

It later transpired that the audio recording of our performance which Allen Hardy had attempted to make on a DCC (digital compact cassette) deck had for some reason not come out. This meant that the only record we had of the entire performance was some poor quality camcorder footage shot in the audience by Paul Wilkinson, the recording punctuated at various points by various members of the audience commentating to Paul on how good they thought we were !

We took our time carefully packing up our equipment as we wanted to make sure that everything could be easily found for the Derby performance two days later. We also wanted to avoid inadvertently leaving behind a case of kit as had happened the previous year at EMMA. By the time we had finished packing it was around 1:30am. We then deposited Andrew at the railway station in the nearby village of Whitland. Andrew had not been able to take the Saturday off work so had decided to take the overnight newspaper train back to Bath, put in a day’s work and then rendezvous with us in Hereford later on the same day ! A despondent Andrew had to wait for about an hour on the completely deserted platform before his train arrived, without access to the station’s locked waiting room. Whitland is a depressing place at the best of times. Even more so during the small hours of the morning ! As we said our farewells and drove away, we could not help but feel very sorry for him as it started to rain.

Andrew & Shirleyann backstage at the Queens Hall

The following day, Shirleyann, Paul and I drove the van from Wales to David England’s house in Herefordshire. Although Dave was unusually not attending either of the Micro Tour performances with us, he had kindly let us use his home as a stop-over point on the way up to Derby and back.

Late in the afternoon, Dave and I drove into into Hereford to meet a very tired Andrew at the train station. His train had been delayed by an hour (Dave and I had visited a nearby pub !) and when we eventually met him, he looked absolutely shattered. He told us a nightmare story of his overnight train journey to Bath and how he had spent most of his day at work practically falling asleep at his desk. Once we arrived at Dave’s house, I insisted that he went straight to bed as soon as he had had something to eat.

After a good night’s sleep, we waved goodbye to Dave’s family and set off along the now familiar route to Derby, arriving at the venue around mid afternoon. The small size of the stage had previously given us food for thought and we had pondered on how exactly we would arrange ourselves on it. Just prior to the Micro Tour, Andrew had purchased some compact, black plastic shelving units for us to arrange equipment on during live performance. This had certainly made life easier than it would otherwise have been, cutting down on the amount of bulky (and by now fragile) wooden stands we needed to transport with us. In the end, we arranged ourselves in a somewhat claustrophobic configuration with myself at the rear of the stage with Andrew and Shirleyann partly obscuring me on either side.

Shirleyann & Colin setting up before the Derby gig

Kinetik soundcheck at the Flowerpot

Finally, it was time for us to start and we clambered onto the stage to find our places amongst the stacks of equipment, following a brief introduction by the club’s patron Ashley Franklin. Once we started our set, it became apparent that the concert was in many ways, a complete contrast to the first leg of the Micro Tour. Unlike the Queen’s Hall concert, here the audience were mostly seated on chairs and appeared to appreciate the more traditional electronic elements of our music over the dance arrangements which had gone down so well in Wales. To some extent, we had anticipated this which is why we had omitted ‘Haven’s Lament’ from the Wales set list. I remember 'Haven's Lament’ being especially well received at the Derby concert.

However, a few technical problems had still occurred which meant we had had to re-start the occasional song. Sometimes this was sheer bad luck, sometimes it was human error - we were all certainly feeling the strain of the past few days. As had happened in Wales, we had had to restart ‘Pipeline’ and Andrew was still having problems controlling the vocoder while playing. To avoid microphone feedback, we found it was sometimes necessary to make the vocoder less clear. In Derby, I’m sure the acoustics of the small venue in Derby must have contributed towards this. To compensate for the glitches, we injected some extra effort into our playing which meant that afterwards, I felt we had actually played better during this performance than in Wales.

We had sold more copies of the recently re-pressed REFINED in Derby than I had expected. It was also noticable at Derby how much people had been listening and appreciating what we had done, many of them taking the time to talk to us after we had finished. Several people commented that they had never seen so much electronic equipment crammed upon that tiny stage before ! One member of the audience (you know who you are !) actually had a letter later published in the UK magazine, Future Music enthusing about the sounds we had managed to coax out of our Supernova prototypes (as the Supernova had not yet been officially launched and was behind on its release schedule, the magazine had sarcastically asked anyone who happened to spot one to write in).

At the Flowerpot, Derby

After The Event

As we packed up our equipment for our journey back to Dave England’s, I reflected on how I felt about how the whole experience of organising the Micro Tour had gone. From the very start, nothing had gone as smoothly as we’d all hoped and I couldn’t help feeling that our performances had suffered as a result. Instead of enjoying the experience, I was now just overwhelmingly relieved it was all over. Not only had we organised the tour and rehearsed, we had had to drive hundreds of miles, set up the equipment, soundcheck, perform, pack the equipment away and then drive hundreds of miles back. Was it all worth it ? As Paul Wilkinson struggled with a box of equipment past the impatiently waiting cleaners, I remarked to him that I thought it was very likely that he had just witnessed Kinetik’s last ever live performance.

On our way back, we deposited Paul at the same Hotel in Derby where we had all stayed the previous year. It was more convenient for him to travel back to Blackpool from there than to return with us to Dave’s. At around 2:30am, I was becoming dangerously tired driving back on the motorway, so we stopped at a services and over a strong coffee, reflected on how things had gone over the long weekend. I realised that we had been too ambitious in what we had tried to achieve both with tour as a whole and with the multitude of disconnected pieces of complex equipment we were now using on stage. If we were ever to do anything like this again, we must find some way of making life a lot easier for ourselves and to drastically reduce the chances of any more catastrophic technical failures occurring. Next time we would be more professional….
       
In Part six of The Kinetik Story, Kinetik record and release the RE-GENERATIONS double CD set, begin work on the MODEM TIMES album and at last perform a concert in Andrew’s home town…..