Matt Walker & Shane Reilly with Velvet Moth Create a Fantastic Soundscaping at Space Theatre – Adelaide Guitar Festival Review

Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, Sun 14 Aug The Adelaide Guitar Festival segment 15 Minutes Of Fame moved onto the stage at the Space Theatre, with the winner, 11-year-old Noah – complete with white Strat almost as large as he was, playing a lead guitar set along with Cal Williams Jr strumming the blues. Pretty impressive stuff for a young lad, likely in front of the largest audience of his life! Then the heart of Melbourne band The Lost Ragas, Matt Walker and Shane Reilly took to the stage in duo mode, with some reflective alt-country and pop. Some larger than life choruses, coloured in with Matt’s acoustic guitar and plenty of distortion, as well as Shane’s pedal steel (and a collection of distortion pedals) to provide ambience and soundscaping generally, but more than able to cut through with riffs, tremolo, wah and twang whenever required. The sounds Shane gets out of his rig can create a wall of ambience that lifts Matt’s songs to an alternate universe! Besides the musicality, there is a great understanding between these two, clearly born of both respect as musicians and time, spent on the road together, rehearsing, recording and performing. From the blues (with young Noah), to soaring and drifting alt country pop, we’re then taken on yet another divergent path; that of psychedelic rock with local outfit Velvet Moth playing a CD launch gig for Velvet Moth II. Two distorted guitars, bass and kit and sounds from the ‘60s onwards with a bunch of musos that have a great understanding between them and, while they take what they are doing seriously, there’s never any doubt that they are having lots of fun. After a few tracks some of the more extroverted audience had found enough space for some dancing – it was that kind of music, physically engaging. There were also some very ‘groovy’ visuals to this set via a couple of overhead projectors with the light passing through trays containing coloured inks. I’m not sure that they had this particular effect available in the ‘60s, but the swirls were sci-fi mixed with paisley – providing a great back-drop. Clayton Werner Facebook: @adelaideguitarfestivalTwitter: @guitar_festivalInstagram @adelaidefescent#AGF16