Jon Gomm / Michael Berk / Amrit Sond

When Leeds own guitar virtuoso is putting on a night featuring some of his favourite guitarists, you know there will be some extremely good talent on show. Naming it Leeds guitar night, all three musicians have the use of an acoustic guitar to produce jaw-dropping music, in front of a relaxed and candle-lit crowd.

2005 Grammy Award winner Amrit Sond can produce many sounds from his guitar, and now and again scratches it to add a weird bit to the set. He utilises every space on the guitar body to produce melodies, so there is no need to add any lyrics.



Many of his songs give you an impression of the different seasons and are like soundtracks to a natural environment (like a park on an Autumn day). Using an ebow (a device that vibrates the guitar strings) he can produce varying levels of a tune, and then slam into the melody using his hand on the guitar body to scratch and tap a rhythm.

Songs like ‘Vertical Time’ and ‘Reaching Out (for gravity)’ show that his highly - anticipated debut album ‘Circular Motion’ will be a good seller. He even tells us a story about getting his one long (finger picking) nail sharpened before a gig (“A child at the nail stand staring at me (with long hair) said “Mummy, that woman’s got a beard!”).

Michael Berk is another guy who does not need vocals to create a unique set. Quite shy; he belts out songs like ‘Bells’ (called that “because it sounds like bells”) with ease, whilst all around him are puzzled and intrigued as to the foundations of the songs. Obviously living in Spain for a while has let Berk hone in on his classical and flamenco styles, allowing him to build up the finger-picking speed we see here.



Still only a young lad, it’s good to here a little bit of heavy metal in there, and where as Rodrigo Y Gabriela have a total of four hands to play their Metallica covers, Berk plays “Bo Rap”, a cover of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, creating the bass line, guitar fills and vocals alone and all from his one acoustic guitar. “You can notice the mistakes here, as you all know the tune!” he jokes, before adding “If you don’t make twenty mistakes in a show then you’re not challenging yourself”. The mistakes tonight must have been quick as I didn’t hear any, let alone twenty of them. Berk’s choice of cover songs are “Not too guitaristic”, increasing the challenge for himself.

Even the tune called ‘F*ck All Reviewers’, as a reply to some misguided writers, didn’t put this reviewer off. I say if you can’t do it yourself you can’t judge too harshly...

Organiser of the night and local guitar hero Jon Gomm hits the stage at a rather late 10.45pm. It’s straight into ‘Waterfall’, ‘Afterglow’, ‘Temporary’ and ‘Gloria’, but still Gomm also adds in a few jokes. About ‘Gloria’; “We were eighteen at the time. I was what you would call an emo, and Gloria was a chav!”. Many of the audience have seen Gomm before, but a few chins can be heard stretching to the floor.

All of Gomm’s songs include a bit of everything; finger picking, using the body as a piece of percussion, de-tuning the guitar mid song; all this and singing using a voice with a good range of octaves. ‘Stupid Blues’ is a brilliant example of Gomm’s techniques, combining all of these techniques to produce a mental instrumental.



The only effects Gomm uses are on his vocals, adding echo and delay, especially on ‘Hey Child’, to give a Jimi Hendrix style distortion to the overall sound. He also records parts of the guitar by tapping it to use as background layers for the aforementioned track.

After thanking the sound engineer Trevor (“who makes us sound better than we really are”) it’s time for one request. This usually ends up being Radiohead’s ‘High And Dry’ or a mash up of familiar tunes, but tonight as a favour for a mate it’s Bob Marley’s ‘Waiting In Vain’; a beautiful cover that allows Gomm to bring his metal history into the vocals during the chorus and still wow us with intricate finger pickings and percussion tappings.

A successful night; and it reminds you that you do not need a bunch of people or a lot of noise to make engaging music. Though judging by tonight’s talent it may take a long time to get up to their standards!

FUTURE GIGS