Customer Reviews

Visionary Position

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This is the first of two magnificant albums done by this UK Band (Wales). The band makes up 4/6ths of the former band Karnataka. As great as Karnataka were, Panic Room have taken a different approach to their music and the two bands are quite distinctively and wonderfully different. The common element is great song writing and great vocals. Anne Marie Helder, the multi-instrumentalist vocalist lead singer, who did background vocals with Karnataka, has a distinctively different voice than Rachel Jones (Now Rachel Cohen from the Reasoning). Anne-Marie tends to sing to the higher octaves and does so with such ease. Along with keyboardest Jonathan Edwards, Anne Marie pens some really great tunes. Gav Griffiths sits behind the drum kit and also plays with Fish, Mostly Autumn and Parade. One of my favourite Brit Drummers at the moment.

Also worth getting into is their second (just released) album CD "Satellite" and its companion EP "Little Satellite" (4 great bonus tracks, no throw aways here). The second Album is a more mature and equally listenable album and a perfect companion to Visionary Position. Both great albums. This band is supposed to be great live, but don't think they have done North America yet. Would be nice if they would do a live DVD as a headliner act some day!

You can also catch Anne Marie doing keyboards, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, flute, etc. as a regular in Mostly Autumn and also doing some vocals for Parade. Anne Marie has also guested vocally with Fish (Communion Live) and with the Icon project by John Wetton and Geoff Downes (ICON - Urban Psalm DVD, plus some CD's). Finally, check out Anne-Marie's "The Contact" EP.

Give Panic Room a Spin on the CD player. Highly recommended.