Sea Monsters Festival: Sons of Noel and Adrian, Robert Stillman, Heliopause

The second year of the brilliant Sea Monsters Festival showcased the best in Brighton-based musical talent at the Prince Albert for only a fiver per night.

Heliopause opened proceedings perfectly for a Monday evening, delivering a soothing and well-crafted set of indie-plinky music using a laptop for beats along with soaring ethereal vocals and two guitars. Catchy melodies lingered with me long after the set and final song “Get Up” should be a big hit in a Postal Service sort of way.

Robert Stillman was a more demanding listen, with one remarkably talented person using a keyboard, cymbals and drums at once to perform his excellent staccato compositions. There was a wonderful sense of an erratic personality in his music, and this technique was particularly effective when meshed with occasional stabs of melodic resolution.

The highlight of the evening were headliners Sons Of Noel And Adrian, an eight-piece band who were a surprisingly delightful mush of Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Mumford & Sons, that I would describe as prog-folk. Led by a frontman with a voice like a slowed down Bruce Springsteen, the band were technically gifted, using clever guitar lines that built hypnotically into raucous stomping finales including organ, trumpet, clarinet and more. The vocal arrangements were complex and beautiful with the female pair’s vibrato sequence standing out as particularly memorable. The crowd understandably loved them and you should try to catch this unique, startling and intelligent band in an intimate venue while you still can.

Prince Albert, 24 January 2012

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