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Jon Gomm

Venue: 100 Club
Town: London
Date: 16/5/14
Website: http://jongomm.com

The 100 Club on Oxford Street is a very prestigious venue and the likes of Sir Paul McCartney and many other big names have graced the stage with their presence. However, the 16th May was the turn of an equally exciting musician, Jon Gomm. Gomm is a contemporary acoustic guitarist who came to prominence through YouTube, when a video of him playing an original song, "Passionflower", went viral thanks to a few notable people taking notice of it, (Stephen Fry being one of them). He has since toured the world and has recently released a new album, entitled, "Secrets Nobody Keeps".

Before Jon Gomm came on, Mira Awad played forty-five minute set. Awad is an Israeli singer. She has represented Israel in the Eurovision song contest and has taken part in several workshops in improvisation in Israel and the UK. The set was a mix of original songs, traditional material and covers. Mira Awad and her music has a certain finesse about it yet she manages to convey a huge amount of raw passion in her voice. Her accompanist played a nylon guitar in a style reminiscent of Flamenco, which complimented her singing perfectly. I think everyone found this to be a very enjoyable set indeed and I was sorry that we didn't hear more!

After the interval, the man himself came on. Jon Gomm kicked off his, (roughly) two hour set with an original tune, "Dance of the Last Rhino". People who had never seen Gomm before soon got a glimmer of what they were in for once they started to look and listen to the various percussive techniques, slap harmonics and hammer ons that he was incorporating into his playing. Two of my personal highlights of this gig were the songs, Telepathy and Theres No Need to Be Afraid. Gomm described these two songs as being polar opposites and that he wrote one as the antidote of the other. Again, these two songs employ the use of some impressive extended techniques, such as cascading harmonics.

The use of effects pedals is notable as well as they contribute a lot to Gomm's live sound. Some very clever use of ping pong delay, (ping ponging from one speaker to another, creating a bigger sound). The set was rounded off by the song that started it all off as it were, Passionflower. However, this wasn't enough for people and an encore was demanded.

This came in the form of, Gloria, another original song. For this, Gomm unplugged and played acoustically and managed to silence the whole room, (including the bar!). This made for a very intimate ending to the gig. The evening proved to be a very memorable one and I wouldn't think twice about going to see Jon Gomm again! He is on tour in the UK at the moment but if you can't wait until he comes to your part of the country, buy his album!

Matt Tighe