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I cannot imagine music in the years 2000 without Kosheen. I remember watching the video for All in My Head and wondering how in God’s name did Sian manage to survive that shooting? On Saturday, October 13, 2012, is Bucharest I had the immense pleasure to chat with her backstage, during the instrumental tracks her 2 colleagues were taking care of. Sian confessed that shooting that video was quite difficult as she had to take intensive diving lessons and she had to learn how to smile and keep her eyes open underwater! I don’t know how you feel after reading this, but I was stunned! Just watch the video again, and you will understand:

Some history behind this legendary group: they are a British trip hop, breakbeat and rock group based in Bristol, England. Bristol has given many unique acts to the world: Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, Roni Size, Smith and Mighty, Dr Meaker, AllFlaws to name a few. I will allow our readers to find the common traits for all these acts. The trio consists of producers Markee Substance and Darren Decoder, with singer and song writer Sian Evans. They could not have chosen a better name for their band but Kosheen (Ko = old, sheen = new, Japanese), as their music has been absolutely brilliant from the very beginning to this day. According to Sian Evans, the talented Kosheen vocalist, the name of their band “is phonetic and warm. Actually it is derived from a name for a North American Warrior, Kochese. When we were touring we discovered that the characters for Ko and She had a meaning of Old and New. Our group name was something that we where throwing around and Kosheen just sounded right, we didn’t realize that it had this meaning.”

We witnessed old and new Kosheen on the small stage of the semirefurbished Panic! Club in Bucharest and we enjoyed it immensely. After their gig in Cluj at the chic Boiler Club, Kosheen came straight to Bucharest to perform as part of their tour to promote their latest album, Independence. After listening to the new album I was even more looking forward to seeing them live, as the music was old and new at the same time, the ageless female voice over the beautiful danceable tunes. Independence is a coherent and well produced album that confirms in 2012 the status of premium band Kosheen have gained over the years.

Kosheen performance in Bucharest started with a DJ set that warmed everyone up, but the best was still to come. Without any former introduction Sian appeared on stage and started singing Empty Skies off of their first album, Resist, an amazingly energetic track that highlights the talent of the vocalist and literally forces the audience to start jumping up and down singing along! Kudos to the participants on Saturday night who tirelessly sang along and danced to every tune!

Sian herself pointed out a few times that the Romanian audience knew all the lyrics and she allowed the participants to sing the chorus of Hide U and Catch, without accompanying them. At the very beginning of the fourth song (exactly when the photographers are supposed to leave the photo pit), Sian invited the press to f**k off and allow the audience to dance and have some real fun near the stage. She also added that she could stop worrying about her mascara falling off once the photographers were gone! And we were gone! At a certain point, Sian invited a guy screaming his heart out, dancing and bouncing around on stage to sing with her and he was definitely very happy about that.

It was a great night and everyone enjoyed the well known hits such as: (Slip & Slide) Suicide, Hide U, Hungry (a famous track that made history with me because of the very sexy gothic Sian in the video, not only for the excellent music), Catch and so on. I had the feeling that the concert was not going to end. I remembered loving and being loved, dancing at the disco, playing Kosheen in the morning and getting their songs stuck in my head for weeks on end. Thank you, Kosheen!