John Koviak – live at Bar Sinister 2.6.2001
It’s been a while since John H. Koviak last graced the stages of Hollywood with the now defunct and more gothic long-standing project Sub Version. Koviak had promised that his new songs featured far more guitar than his previous project and so it was that Mr. Koviak and synth player/guitarist Rob took to the stage to the more laid back and very beautiful new song "Me and Your Shadow." Featuring John on guitar for some very melodic and heartfelt guitar playing along with Koviak’s trademark deep, rich vocals delivered splendidly to a very clear backing track. As with Sub Version many of Koviak’s are rather lengthy but have many interesting breaks and guitar solos that sounded not so technical as emotionally charged, for Koviak is surely a writer of melancholic songs that do not veer off into too much wanton self-pitying goth music, but still remains dark.
Tonight John played (to my knowledge) just the one Sub Version track being "The Sound"--this song sounding reworked for his new project being far less sparse and featuring more arpeggiated style guitar playing to fill out the track. I must admit that I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the song titles but I do remember a really beautiful breathtaking song called "Heaven," with John Koviak’s vocals sounding just as beautiful as they did on the studio version of the song “You Live In My Dreams” with Sub Version.
From what my girlfriend had to say on the performance it appears that John Koviak’s live performance has greatly improved with time, with Koviak seeming more fluid and mature than back in Sub Version. Personally I was quite enthralled with tonight’s performance with just about every song played offering quite some variety between more electronic based, and mellow guitars that gave me more of a feel of Pink Floyd at times. By the time John Koviak left the stage I’m pretty sure there were plenty of entertained crowd members who certainly weren’t disappointed with Mr. K.’s performance tonight, and will definitely be looking forward to hearing from John’s debut solo release sometime this year (I hope!!).
Review by Davi Lovatt
