A short visit to Water Rats to catch what was in effect an album preview gig by Forgotten Pharaohs, who are about to release their debut album ‘”King of Mirrors” and are also the first signing to record label Creation Youth. And if you’re wondering where the youth part comes in, well this new label is a collaboration between former Creation label boss and artist manager Alan McGee and Grammy-winning producer and Killing Joke bassist Martin ‘Youth’ Glover. So that’s that explained.
Forgotten Pharaohs themselves are Christian Pattemore, who provides lead vocals and acoustic guitar and Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson (of Sensational Space Shifters fame) – the duo accompanied by percussionist Leon Harrison James, playing with them for the second time. There’s an array of guitars – Tyson has four, Pattemore just a couple, whilst the percussion is a stripped-down arrangement of a kick-box, bongo, assorted shakers and a couple of small tom-toms, front of stage there is a piano that no-one seems to want to get too near to. The band, on record, are tapping into an early ’70s West Coast feeling, but live on this night they perhaps inevitably focused more on the guitar side of the band, with the vocals more often than not coming through in snatches from the verses or chorus. It has the effect of giving Forgotten Pharaohs a harder-sounding edge, with Tyson in particular displaying a not unwelcome tendency to take his solos spaceward.
They opened the proceedings with ‘Life To Burn‘ with its look at time passing too rapidly which set the tone for much of the set – acoustic strumming that gives way to electric fire. ‘Brynn Yr Hydd‘ is a nod to the Welsh town where many of the songs were written, it has a bit of a melodic Wishbone Ash feel to it whilst at the same time inevitably bringing to mind Led Zepplin’s ‘Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.‘
Liam Tyson’s regular changes of guitar led to the revealing of a quite surprisingly glitter-encrusted electric twelve string – “Green and red,” Pattemore noted, “like the Welsh flag.” The slower ‘Cable Bay’ lent more into the melodic, still punctuated by riffing electric stabs albeit with a janglier feel.
This more melodic side continued into the slower power ballad ‘From The Heart‘ which was followed by Forgotten Pharaoh’s first two singles, the quiet starting ‘Drive’ which switched to higher gear halfway through, and the current focus song ‘Carousel‘ which stomped like Seasick Steve and had guitar solos which fuzzed and burned with a real fire.
The set closed out with the album’s closer ‘Giving the Best Away‘ – with the piano finally making its presence felt with Christian Pattemore switching to it from guitar. It’s a slightly odd choice to finish on – by far the quietest song of the set with an end-of-the-evening slow dance feel to it – grooving with a slow funky feel. Obviously, this was the end of the evening but even so it might have been wiser to go out on a bang.
And, after forty-five minutes the gig concluded – calls for more being declined on the basis that they’d played all the songs they have and they weren’t going to do any covers. Which is reasonable enough, although a little something from the CSN tape that was played before and after the gig probably could have been slipped in to no disadvantage. Or a little Zep, that wouldn’t have felt out of step at all with what Forgotten Pharaohs are aiming for either.
