The support act for this show were Scanners, a band hailing from from London. In recent review the band have been described as indie  but live they come across a bit rockier than that description may suggest, giving that genre a kind of punky edge. Singer and bass player Sarah was alternately plaintive or  raw, the other girl in the band Amina (there are no surnames on their website by the way) delivered some scorching lead guitar and strange Moog sounds whilst drummer Tom pounded away like he was auditioning for Motorhead. As a live act Scanners are very good, so much so that after their set was over a long queue formed by the merchandise stall as newly recruited fans waited patiently to buy their CD. Hopefully they rock as much in the studio.

It may be a bit ironic that, with a name like Vast, my first chance to see the band was in a 250 capacity club but at least it was sold out. The band are really a project run by front man Jon Crosby and, after releasing a couple of excellent gothic rock albums on a major label, he became disillusioned with the music business so now only releases his music independently which perhaps explains the size of the venue. What this means is that most of the crowd are true devotees of the band, rather than the few merely interested souls

There was no showbiz glitz here, Vast just ambled on to the stage and started playing. The line up was slightly unusual with Crosby himself on acoustic guitar and vocals backed by electric guitar, bass, drums and violin. It was disappointing that, from where this reviewer was standing, the violin was almost always totally inaudible in the mix, the rest of the band though sounded great creating an intimate sound but one that could grow and soar into a huge noise when required. Style wise most of the songs were introspective with almost no stops between each song and hardly anything said to the audience. The epic bombast of the earlier material was replicated well enough but that’s not their current direction. Crosby obviously takes all this very seriously, and the sober, stripped down vibe works very well. It was funny though that, toward the end of the set when a small section of the crowd implored him to give them a smile, he couldn’t stop himself responding. It even put him off his stride for a few seconds...

With a set lasting only seventy five minutes, and that included a three song encore, the fact that the music came along almost non-stop Vast actually played more music than many bands do in a set twice as long. The partisan audience thoroughly enjoyed and, as someone who doesn’t really know Vast's material intimately they impressed this reviewer immensely. Definitely worth checking out live or on CD if you have eclectic tastes.

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