Big Big Train Dolby Atmos Event

Venue:

The Gallery at Tileyard

Date: 21/02/2024

A Dolby Atmos listening-event for the upcoming album, The Likes of Us, by Big Big Train? Yes, please.

The limited tickets were drawn from the people who had pre-ordered the album and I was lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Burning Shed to say I had won a pair.

The event was at The Gallery at Tileyard, a small event-space north of Kings Cross Station in London. Several of our friends had also got tickets so it was great to catch up with people who we hadn’t seen since last September’s European/U.K tour.

The stage was set up with a huge central speaker, several satellite-units either side, and then speakers on the walls and in the ceiling. Chairs were set out in rows for the fifty or so guests and at 6.30pm, Alberto Bravin, the band’s Italian singer got up on stage to tell us what we were going to hear.

As the ‘resident Big Big Train reviewer’ on The Afterword, I’d had my review-copy for four weeks and already knew it well. However, nothing had prepared me for the sheer scale of the Atmos mix.
I’ll keep my powder dry in terms of the music until my review can be published on 23rd Feb but the songs sounded amazing in this setting; it was like listening in widescreen. At the end of a song called Between the Masts there was a roar from our left as one listener turned to the band, at the back of the room, and yelled, “Fuck, yeah!” My wife leaned over and whispered, “I was about to say that.”

The hour raced past and I found myself shivering with excitement, holding my breath in anticipation and shedding yet another tear during Love Is the Light, just as I had done during every show, last September when the band performed it.

There was a standing ovation at the end of the playback and the stage was cleared and rearranged for the Q&A with the five members of the band in attendance.

Rikard, Clare, Greg, Alberto and Oskar duly took to the stage to be interviewed by Polly, (I’m sorry but I didn’t get her surname,) who did an excellent job of gleaning nuggets of insight and some background to the writing of Between the Masts. Greg revealed that he had written the beginning and end on a holiday in Rome, with just a twelve-string guitar and his phone to capture what he had. The incredible mid-section had come from Nick, the band’s drummer, and the parts fitted together seamlessly.

When Greg played back what he had, it lasted 17 minutes.

The camaraderie on stage was self-evident, the time on the tourbus, last year, has cemented close friendships, allowed gentle leg-pulling and made this new edition of the band into a real unit.

Questions from the audience revealed more insight, (my wife asked Greg about the masts in Beneath the Masts and, as Greg grew up just a few miles from her, was delighted to find that she knew exactly where they were. I asked Alberto about the story behind Miramare, and how well-known the legend was in Trieste. He revealed that it was something that was always there, especially because of the tower on the sea-front, which features in the song, and the story was known by everyone who grew up in the city.

Clare and Oskar were asked about songwriting and if they thought they might contribute in the future; Oskar said yes, but he wasn’t ready, (he’s just written for a new album by his own band, Dim Gray,) and Clare said that she would love to contribute ‘bits’ but that a full song may not be something she felt able to do.

They all spoke about the emotion of recording the album together in one room, (at Urban Studio in Trieste,) and Greg revealed that they would always do it that way from now on – no more file-sharing. He said that recording the vocals for Beneath the Masts, (a song about going back to his hometown, over a nine-month period, to visit his beloved step-father in a hospice,) had yielded plenty of tears, from all of them.

As the event finished, my wife and I managed to grab a few minutes with Greg and then some time with Oskar, (Janet was wearing her Dim Gray shirt in his honour,) but it was soon time to head back to St. Pancras and home.

The journey home was full of excited chat about what we had heard and how lovely the band are and meeting up with our friends. This album marks a new chapter in the story of Big Big Train and it looks like being an exciting ride; newly signed to a major label, their first dates in America coming up and another U.K/European tour in September.

One of the questions from Polly had concerned the replacement of the late David Longdon and the ‘new members’ in Clare, Oskar and Dave Foster. Greg said that he simply wanted to surround himself with talented people but that they needed to be compatible, (the Italian word, ‘simpatico’ seems to say it best,) and he has certainly found that. To lose a ‘brother’ in David Longdon and then find another writer and singer like Alberto is not just a stroke of luck.

Good things happen to good people.

The audience:

Passengers aplenty.

It made me think..

I love this band so much.

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