Koichi Matsunaga and Yuki Fuijta were travelling to Hamar, with only one purpose; to get to see and hear Blind Orphans live. The two Japanese have been huge fans of the band and Matsunaga even has his own website of the band. He was one, huge grin after the concert and afterwards he was literally floating within his own atmosphere. He could not praise the band enough, and it was obvious to everyone that he’d had all his expectations fulfilled. “Great, they are very good”, was all he was able to say from a huge smile on his face. Matsunaga and Fujita are both active rockers, and they have their own sites at MySpace. Matunaga uses his own name, while Fujita uses her nickname Orimuh. The two long distance travellers were not alone being satisfied this evening.

After Sonic Debris' support slot, the audience, counting some 200 people, let themselves be impressed by the band. They only had a few rehearsals before this concert, and hired hand on Keyboards, Pal Olav Loftesnes, had only two rehearsals. The band played the songs from their album “Blind Leading the Blind” impressively well, despite a few minor issues of the technical sort during the show.

Prog Rock is quite a demanding exercise, especially for the vocal. Sven Kaare Sunde was high and low on the octaves, and obviously pretty exhausted after the concert. Blind Orphans’ musical expression lies somewhere between “Genesis” and “Saga”, and you hear good examples of this in tunes like; “In the Middle of the Forest”, “Circus of Rock”, “Distant Light” and not least; “Song For a Loser”. You can listen to all these songs on the Blind Orphans page on MySpace. The members of Blind Orphans are all very accomplished musicians; Bass player Bjorn Thomassen has played with just about everyone worth mentioning within the region, guitar player Rune Lamoy has a past within the bands “Jack in the Box” and “Autopulver”, while Sunde along with songwriter and drummer Torbjorn Dybsand plays in the band “Glow”. To fulfil the story, original keyboard player Lars Christian Narum is also very successful these days, along with his siblings in the band “Narum”.

The concert was recorded in its entirety, complete with both sound and footage. There may be a DVD, only time will show. All that remains to be seen, is whether Sunde’s closing words to the audience come true: “See you in another 20 years…”

Translated from Norwegian into English by Torbjorn Dybsand.
Original article in Norwegian by Svein Erik Loberg, Hamar Arbeiderblad, on October 5th, 2009.

Read the original article (in Norwegian) | See more pictures from the gig

Tags: Blind Orphans