As we all had quietly expected, the gig at Liepaja's Fontaine Palace last Friday, August 20, proved to be a wonderful experience. It was good to be back and equally good to see that the town has every reason to call itself 'the rock capital of Latvia'. Want to know why? Though I can't speak for the rest of the band, but I do suspect that most of the other guys will join me on this: Louie Fontaine and his crew have done an immensely terrific job to turn the embankment area into something any other Latvian town can only dream about. A club, probably the best in the whole country, a hotel with another live music facility called Fire Bar, a travel agency, a 24h fast food mall, restaurants and plenty of other attractions. Definitely worth checking out!

We arrived at the venue at around 9:00 pm and did a brief sound-check. An hour later we started wondering whether we would be the only live act as there were no signs of the Russian band Infront who were supposed to be the night's main attraction. Shortly before midnight it was clear they wouldn't show up, which was a shame, really. All the entertainment was now entirely up to us and the friendly DJ Marcus! After a quick word with him, mostly related to the number of songs after which we'd be ready to kick off, we found ourselves on this large stage and dived into the opener, 'The Lingering Dream'. As we'd promised before, our live set included a few new tunes besides the older ones. Thus, the enthusiastic Fontaine Palace crowd deserved a premiere of 'I in the Sky', the most recent instrumental addition to our live set which also included, apart from the two aforementioned tracks, 'Whoever Designed this Game', 'Beneath the Skin 1 & 2', 'The Meeting of the Majorminors', 'Eternal Winterland', 'The End - Headturn's Release', 'Trouble Vision', 'Amazing Race' and 'Makhtartam & the Low Brotherhood' (encore).

The gear at Fontaine Palace was absolutely fabulous, the sound was crisp and clear, so it's easy to see why most artists recommend this venue to others. It's a shame we don't have any video footage from Fontaine Palace to share with you, but we did have a photo camera to capture a few moments both on and off the stage (see the page list entry on the right or click on the pic below).

Stay tuned for more news from the HL headquarters!