Rosalie Cunningham / Kavus Torabi - Ramsgate Music Hall, Saturday 15th March 2025
Reviewed by Laura DQ • 19 March 2025
The Ramsgate Music Hall is packed out this evening, which is a bit of a blessing given how cold it is outside. It’s a tiny place, with a capacity of just 125. Rosalie Cunningham reckons it’s her fourth time playing here, testament to the excellent sound and atmosphere that vibrates from this quirky venue. A perfect fit then, for the equally quirky Queen of modern prog. It’s a more challenging fit on stage for the 5-piece band, who are crammed into the space with very little room for manoeuvre. Bassist, flautist, vocalist and all-round talent Claudia Haze still gives it a good go, throwing shapes (and her hair) like her life depends upon it. But I’m getting ahead of myself, because it’s some-time Gong frontman Kavus Torabi who gets the evening underway.
Cutting a striking figure on stage with his flamboyant attire and shock of wild grey hair, Torabi gives a performance unlike any other I’ve seen, stunning some into silence, and others into strange, hypnotic dancing. The unusual drone of a harmonium provides an almost constant backdrop to his curious ruminations that are punctuated by unfamiliar sounds, and, in the case of ‘The Sentinel’, expressive vocal wails. Occasionally reminiscent of Syd Barrett, particularly during “unlikely crowd pleaser” ‘The Skulls We Buried Have Regrown Their Eyes’, there is a real British-ness in his delivery, and his sense of humour, which at one point sees him pulling faces suggestive of shock and alarm as he wrests notes from his guitar.
Rosalie Cunningham and her impressive band significantly lift the energy and the noise levels, opening their set with ‘Ride on my Bike’, perhaps the finest distillation of all that makes this group so wonderful. They look the part too, Rosalie rocking a lace-up purple catsuit, a Gibson SG and shades (apparently necessary on the final night of a tour!). There exists a time when this woman would have been a superstar, but sadly it’s not 2025, when popular opinion suggests that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are the best female artists available to us. Those of us in Ramsgate this evening know better, and are quickly proved right with a dazzling display of musicianship, great songs and flawless vocals.
The set feels largely a celebration of latest album ‘To Shoot Another Day’ with a significant chunk given over to relatively new music. It’s not a problem for this crowd, who lap up the title track (surely the soundtrack to a Bond film that never was?), the Beatles-esque ‘Timothy Martin’s Conditioning School’ and spectacular ‘Heavy Pencil’, a bit of an epic that highlights the vocal harmonies this band do so well. Instrumental ‘The Smut Peddler’ segues nicely into ‘Spook Racket’, a magnificent piece of work that boasts the biggest riff of the evening, the relentless stomp translating perfectly live.
Part of the joy of Rosalie Cunningham’s music is in the diversity; ‘Home’ is a gentle musing on the simple pleasures in life, ‘Tristitia Amnesia’ a prog masterpiece that deceives with its many twists and turns. And for anyone who may have forgotten Rosalie used to front a band called Purson, there’s a reminder in the form of ‘Wool’, a pleasingly heavy delve into ominous psychedelia. Rosalie's band are a joy to watch, effortlessly recreating the likes of ‘Donovan Ellington’ and sequel ‘Return of the Ellington’, but somehow making them even better than their studio counterparts.
Cunningham’s partner and fellow guitar wrangler Rosco Wilson steps up to the mic on ‘Rabbit Foot’, and duets with her on the aptly named, er, ‘Duet’, proving himself a very worthy frontman in his own right. The former is bluesy, grooving, the latter leaning into cabaret with its bouncy, piano-led melody before transitioning into something altogether more psychedelic. The evening concludes with ‘Dethroning of the Party Queen’, and though the band are probably glad it’s over (apparently it's very hot under those lights!), I am less so, but only because this is a band I could happily watch for another hour. Rosalie Cunningham deserves bigger stages than this, but it certainly feels a privilege to see her here.
