Latest album, ‘The Optimist’, has been very favourably received by press and fans alike, winning “Album of the Year” at the 2017 Progressive Music Awards.
With a stunning performance at Be Prog 2017 from the Poble Espanyol in Barcelona on 1 July gathering rave reviews, they are currently promoting the album on tour in North America, with UK and European dates coming up. Life would appear to be very good for the band at the moment in an apparent period of blooming productivity.
Not content with this, founding member Danny Cavanagh is to release solo album ‘Monochrome’ in October 2017, which he says “has a late night, candlelit feeling, evoking the light of dusk as the summer sun sinks below the horizon, setting the scene for thoughts and meditations that many people will relate to.”
It features guest appearances from Anna Phoebe and Anneke van Giersbergen, with Cavanagh playing almost everything else himself. The result he describes as “a deeply reflective and personal offering, inspired by internal feelings of love and loss.”
So what to expect from an acclaimed musician on his individual foray, cut loose from the pack?
In all honesty, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, which is hardly surprising as Danny is heavily involved in writing the Anathema songs, but the material is more personal and introspective.
A video of first track The Exorcist has already been released, of which Danny says the band thought was so good that they wanted it as a central track on which to build another Anathema album. Danny resisted, wanting to include it on his solo release and whilst it was a difficult decision, says he is pleased he did. It’s a fabulous track with which to open the album full of emotion and trademark layers of looping guitars and solos, carving a comfy position in the emotional heart of the album. A yearning for trust, the heartache of separation and a gratitude for salvation. For me it is every bit as impressive as stated and I can see why the band wanted it as a pivotal track on a new recording. Unreservedly the best track on this release, in my humble opinion.
So herein lies the problem for me initially, it is such a strong song that the others take time to absorb as I keep returning to this track.
A breathy rising introduction to This Music finds Danny in reflective mood, sharing the vocal duties with Anneke Van Giersbergen. Fine guitar soloing slides in and out of this fairly short track that drifts along nicely with delicious melodies but fades all too soon for me.
We are left to wander around Soho, with the gentle piano/vocals from Danny (this lad can sing, why does he not do more with the band) and joined once more by the elegantly gilded vocals of the lovely Anneke in this second duet. It builds from a pulse to a full production of Anathema proportions, receding delicately to piano key tinkling like rain drops. Leading you along orange lit, rain glistening pavements, passing gaudy neon signs above smoke filled entrances as a gentle breeze ruffles the notes into the dark night.
Classical style piano unites with yearning violin strings from Anna Phoebe to take off on The Silent Flight Of The Raven Winged Hours, across cloud ridden, dampened skies, holding back the sunrise. Click tempo rises as bass and drums wheel around the air above, encouraging a clapping accompaniment I would imagine, if ever played live. They settle on warming thermals of synthesised sounds and murmured chants that lift and fall to a lone piano searching out faint strings of birdcall, then suddenly bursting into anguished torment like a slow wailing at a funeral cortege for the dying strands of the night, until we are left with only birdsong to herald…
Dawn. Danny breaks out looping acoustic chords and violin swoops in to herald the sun’s ascendancy into the glory of a new day, on this short instrumental glittering with a touch of Irish folk.
The penultimate track, finds Danny sailing lyrically across Oceans Of Time, with his trusty piano on board penning love letters to a distant soul , harmonies of separation lamented with Anneke at his outpourings. Emotions rise in the familiar guitar sounds we have come to recognise and love from Mr Cavanagh and the soloing tears at your heartstrings once more as we are washed upon a familiar shore, where…
Some Dreams Come True. The looping waves of guitar lap gently on the sand with horse spray tails of a beautiful violin solo from Anna Phoebe cast delicately toward the end of this instrumental piece, splashing at the feet of a child, causing unbound joyous laughter, as gulls circle overhead, on what could easily have been a prelude track to The Optimist.
I have listened to this album at various times of the day and in different situations, at night in the peace of my own home, in the car whilst driving, in the background at work and on the train whilst watching the scenery outside flow past. This produced varying aural experiences and revealed further nuances with each listen.
It is a lovely album filled with Danny’s impassioned musings on a fine solo outing from this accomplished artist assisted by a couple of very talented ladies, adorning the tracks they are on with loving care.
The perfect accompaniment for a glass of wine in the warmth of your lounge shut away from the cold winter’s evening, or just as readily a companion for your walk in the country with the sun on the back of your neck and the wind in your hair.
As a jazz fan who primarily hangs out with rockers and prog fans I often get the dreaded jazz question: “So, I’m kind of interested in jazz, where should I start?” It’s dreaded because how do you suggest a starting position for an umbrella genre of music with nearly 100 years of recordings to choose from?
My method has usually been to recommend jazz recordings that closely mirror the instrumental sounds they’re already familiar with from the rock world. So, it’s usually late-60s/early-70s jazz-rock and fusion; the guitars, electric keyboards and forceful rock rhythms providing a comfort zone for the novice listener. But as the decades keep rolling by it gets depressing when you realize that you’re primarily recommending music that came out a half century ago. So, I’ve changed my usual method; now I pick a modern act that fits the same basic sonic criteria but is more connected to the here-and-now. I believe it’s vitally important for any genre of music that younger artists get their fair share of attention and that they connect with the novice listeners just starting to get excited about the possibilities of what the music can offer. Connect people with good music being recorded today and appreciation of the classics will come naturally later down the road.
Today’s suggestion is the eponymous debut from Möbius Strip, a young jazz/rock band from Italy that has the requisite sound and whose music is accessible enough to appeal to the novice listener. Lorenzo Cellupica (composer/keyboards), Nico Fabrizi (saxophone/flute), Eros Capoccitti (bass) and David Rufo (drums) are obviously well-versed in mainstream jazz recordings from the late 60s thru the early 80s and it’s enjoyable listening to these twenty-somethings apply their youthful energy to the music from that era.
Opening cut Bloodrops us squarely in the Chick Corea/Herbie Hancock ballpark. Built off a bright jazz groove with a vaguely Latin feel and featuring a lithe saxophone melody it’s a sunny start to a primarily upbeat and joyful album. At the midpoint, the song morphs into a funky rock groove with a great bass solo from Capoccitti before returning to the head arrangement.
One of my favorite tracks is the bouncy First Impressions. While the title alludes to the Coltrane piece, sonically it reminds me more of what a hypothetical collaboration between Wayne Shorter and the Dave Brubeck Quartet might have sounded like. This piece is a showcase for Fabrizi’s alto saxophone which he puts to excellent use during his melodic solo section. The most obvious homage in this piece is the Take Five-inspired drum solo.
I was most impressed by Andalusia, a lovely, driving Latin-based vamp which inspires some of the best solos on the album. Of particular note is the soulful and gritty tenor sax workout which creates some significant heat, it’s a “let the hair down” moment on a primarily tightly reigned-in album.
And therein lies my primary caveat with this album; it’s incredibly polite. However, depending on the audience that could also work in its favor. As a “foot-in-the-door” album it fits the criteria nicely; keeping things upbeat, melodic and accessible. But I think for the hardcore jazz fan (and more adventurous prog rockers) it does tend to stay frustratingly between the lines. I kept hoping they were going to notch the intensity up but it never really happened.
Möbius Strip shows definite promise on this album and it’s a very engaging listen, I just hope they push the boat out a little farther on their next voyage.
Named as the ‘Event of the Year’ at this year’s Progressive Music Awards, Barcelona based festival Be Prog! My Friend recently announced that Sons of Apollo and Pain of Salvation will play in 2018. Today they have now revealed that Australian virtuoso Plini will join the line-up for next year. The festival organisers comment:
‘Plini the Australian guitar master, is coming to Be Prog! after a recent successful headline tour to promote his album ‘Handmade Cities’. Despite his youth, Plini is now recognized as one Australia’s most important acts within the progressive scene. Albums like ‘The End of Everything’ and ‘Sweet Nothings’ are fine examples of what this talented young musician is able to do and his fresh and dynamic stage show will dazzle the audience at next year’s festival’
Plini himself adds, ‘Barcelona is one of my favourite cities in the world to visit, let alone perform in, so it’s going to be an absolute treat to get to play in such a beautiful setting as a part of what will surely be an epic lineup. Can’t wait!’
Be Prog! My Friend which has played host to the likes of Opeth, Steven Wilson, Anathema, Devin Townsend, TesseracT, The Pineapple Thief, Magma, Agent Fresco, Camel, Meshuggah, Katatonia, Riverside, Ulver, Animals as Leaders, Ihsahn, Alcest, Jethro Tull and Marillion will take place on 29th and 30th June next year.
‘And so Prog finds itself in love with Barcelona, the delightful weather and everything that Be Prog! My Friend has to offer’– Prog Magazine
‘The leading festival for progressive music in Spain, showcased avant-garde music in a magnificent location’ – The Independent
‘Set in the hazy sunlit square of Barcelona’s historic and quite stunning Poble Espanyol, it certainly beats the sodden mud of the British festival season’ – Total Guitar Magazine
‘If nothing else, it proves that prog is alive and kicking. Especially in Catalonia’ – Classic Rock Magazine
Be Prog! My Friend takes place in the heart of Barcelona and with an airport only 12km away, regular, cheap flights make it an easy festival to get and from the UK. Bands will start playing from mid/late afternoon each day which will also mean visitors have plenty of time to explore the stunning city of Barcelona while they are there.
I once stole some coconut shampoo, I don’t know why, I didn’t have a coconut, however Bruce Soord has been getting away with Pineapple Thievery for over 18 years, and despite the gig being on a Sunday night, I was glad to finally see them on their latest musical jaunt, a worldwide tour de force promoting the latest long player ‘Your Wilderness’. In fact these dates were added later, as it seemed very odd when the tour was first announced that they bypassed the West Country entirely, and we can’t all afford to ship off over to that London for a gig
In fact this was the last gig of the tour, and practically a local one, as Bruce doesn’t live a million miles away, so it was almost a homecoming for him.
It’s always strange to go to a venue that is so intimate to see bands that you think should be playing such bigger venues, particularly when the venue is the Bierkeller, which is an odd little place. A cross between a traditional rock club and a German drinking haus, managing to not quite be one thing or t’other, and it’s also funny to go to the merch stand and see the latest release by the band being an audio/visual document of the show that you’re about to watch. (Where we Stood).
(Godsticks)
Support was by Welsh boys and K-Scope label mates Godsticks, whose set was made up of a majority of new material from their forthcoming album ‘Filled with Rage’, I had never heard of them before, and as I have probably said elsewhere one of my criteria for what makes a great gig is how good the support band are.
Godsticks are good, very good indeed, they have a wonderfully chunky sound, big riffs and big beats, and have that knack of turning up the amps but not losing the melody, whilst the set was bias towards the new record, ‘Faced with Rage’, which is out on October 13th, the older material from ‘Emergence’ fitted in superbly.
As a rock band go Godsticks are entertaining, musically adept and according to someone who was with me in the audience who had seem them before, they have come on leaps and bounds. All I know is they were a superb start to the show, and got the audience warmed up before the main event.
Last time I saw Bruce and the boys was on the ‘Magnolia‘ tour, back in The Fleece in Bristol in 2014, and then I thought they should be playing somewhere far bigger.
Now, with the addition of the busiest man of the night Godsticks guitarist and vocalist Darran Charles, who joined ThePineapple Thief live line-up, the amazing Gavin Harrison on drums, the Thief’s live sound is suddenly enhanced, and those simple tweaks helps take the burden of Bruce, so he can be the frontman he was always destined to be, and with Gavin on board this group of excellent musicians suddenly have raised their game even more.
There is a reason why the tickets say ThePineapple Thief with Gavin Harrison, and that is because Gavin is the contemporary musical equivalent to Bill Bruford, and is mesmerising to watch and hear as a drummer, astonishingly despite being a massive fan of his work, both solo and with bands like Porcupine Tree or King Crimson, this was the first time I have ever seen him live, and whilst I love The Pineapple Thief, and their latest album, seeing Gavin Harrison in action was something I couldn’t miss.
Being biased towards some of the later albums, and of course ‘Your Wilderness’, the entire album hits the stage at one point or another tonight, and songs like In Exile, Where We Stood and Tear you Up come across with power and intensity, the sound that a band confident in their ability can deliver with panache.
With Darran doing some of the heavy lifting, Bruce is like a man freed, playing to the audience and turning in some fine banter (‘forgetting’ to remember the album title of Godsticks new release being one of many exchanges), whilst material from ‘Magnolia’, including The One you left Behind (the strongest track from that album), absolutely rips the place apart with the power and skills of the band. With long term collaborators Steve Kitch on keys and Jon Sykes on bass, a lot of the focus is of course on the man in the corner of the stage. Every note is timed to perfection, every fill, every beat is on point, and nothing is superfluous, I feel a lot of prog drummers can get a lesson in how to do it from Gavin Harrison. Everything he does added so much to the songs that every so often I would get a great big grin on my face, as the whole sonic template meshed together to create an almighty sound.
I said before when I saw them at The Fleece a few years ago how I couldn’t understand why they aren’t playing bigger venues, and ironically the Bierkeller is slightly smaller than the Fleece, and I wish I could fathom why a band this powerful, with songs this melodic, this intelligent and this epic aren’t selling out and playing to the sort of crowds that bland wallpaper peddlers like Coldplay are doing. There is more musical intelligence in one of Bruce’s riffs or one of Gavin’s fills than there is in Coldplay’s recorded output for the last 5 years, and music this big and this powerful and emotional deserves a bigger platform. I guess that the benefit for us is that we get stadium-sized performances in smaller venues and to hear this music, this close is something we should all be thankful. If, and I say if, Gavin Harrison is still playing with The Pineapple Thief next time they tour then you owe it to yourself to go see them. If not, then we’ll always have ‘Where We Stood’, and the Bristol Bierkeller.
The guitarist from Moth Vellum and, more recently, Perfect Beings comes out with his second solo album ‘Qitara’after 2013’s ‘Tales From Sheepfather’s Grove’ which, if I am honest, I have not yet heard but, after hearing, ‘Qitara’ I shall be it hunting out.
Johannes says this is a collection of music he has created over the last few years and was looking for a way to put it on an album for people to hear. The album is mainly instrumental with one vocal song Sister Six which is not that far from what Perfect Beings produce and has a very slow percussive atmospheric feel to it along with a psychedelic edge from a pseudo Sitar sound on the guitar parts and sweeping sonic landscapes.
The rest is instrumental and is essentially Johannes exploring musical styles, slipping from jazz to rock to avante garde via the progressive greats. Some of it is outright jamming by some amazing musicians, Soliloquistbeing a good example of that musical telepathy that happens when musicians get in sync and let things happen. Faces in Reflection is taken from the same mould and, although it is a George Duke, composition they take it to places that only they can do when in the moment. Both tracks have a deep jazz/rock crossover and are delights to these ears.
TheDoer is classical guitar with a very open beginning which then flows into a track that has Weather Report clashing with Frank Zappa at his jazziest.
Hot Sands has a fat chunky keyboard line with soaring guitar lines channelling a desert journey and the constant drive for thirst and water. Red and Orange, the other cover, is a Jan Hammer piece with tons of edge, drive and virtuosity and yet is neither sterile or cold. Fans of Mahavishnu will find much to like here.
White City & Agni Rahasya have the feel of a homage to Steve Howe and his works with a big chunk of Luley interpreting the style.
This album moves across styles and genres but has jazz rock at its core. If you like Dave Gilmour, Pat Metheny, Frank Zappa, Steve Howe or Steve Vai then it has much to offer. There is a brief reunion with his band mate from Moth Vellum – Ryan Downe – on vocals. The sleeve notes are remarkably comprehensive for the guitar geeks of this world and the way he has constructed the album.
I would say that this is far from a mainstream album and sits in a niche of primarily instrumental guitar music. Having said that, I played Red & Orange on my show last week and it received praise and interest from the listeners. If I have a criticism then I would love to have heard longer pieces and more musical navel gazing and exploration from the album. It feels like he has edited down which makes me want to hear the stuff on the cutting room floor. But I suppose, as P T Barnum said, “Always leave them wanting more!”
This year legendary British prog-metal stalwarts Threshold released their 11th album ‘Legends Of The Shires’ on the 8th September.
I interviewed founding member, songwriter and guitarist Karl Groom about the new release and a few other interesting questions came about…
Progradar – I think ‘Legends of the Shires’ is your best album yet but, as you wrote it, what are your thoughts?
Karl – All musicians think that their latest album is their greatest but, for me, it does have a real completeness in terms of both music and lyrics. It’s a concept album, not just lyrically (which is often the case) but musically and we tied the whole thing together. For me, that’s very satisfying, when you can listen from the first track on the album, The Shire 1, and got through to the last, Swallowed, and feel the music has the right dynamics to follow from one song to the other.
You just feel that there’s a completeness to that arrangement, and that, for me, is very satisfying. The only other album that came close to that was ‘Subsurface’. I can always find a good song or two that I really think are stand out songs on most albums but I want the whole thing to seem like a complete album, and that’s what stands out on this one.
P – I agree definitely. I’m 50 this year, ready for the pipe and slippers and it’s time to be a grumpy old man. What I think is a problem with a lot of the mainstream music nowadays is that it’s based around singles, they’re just picking one song. I want the album to be a journey.
K – Exactly, that’s the thing, it’s come back a little bit like it was back in the 80’s. Bands would front-load their album and say which are the best songs and just put them in that order. By the time you’re getting to the end of the album you’re thinking ‘oh my god!’ Even if they are all good songs, it sounds a bit jumbled and uncoordinated, you need that coordination and the album needs to be as important as the individual songs on it.
P – When you first started out, young and wide-eyed, in 1988 did you envisage releasing your 11th album over 20 years later?
K – We didn’t even set out to get signed to be honest. My wife was listening to some of the demos we made before we got signed and she wondered how the hell we managed to get signed! It was absolute tosh, it was dreadful. We were a covers band when we made those, learning to play guitar and so on, sort of bumming our way through a few Van Halen songs and Ratt and Whitesnake, whoever was in at the time. We made our way playing those and didn’t think about it at all, we just wrote a few songs, I think it was three, which were sort of within what we would call Threshold now.
Basically, because two of us loved metal and one love prog music, we accommodated everyone with that. A king of prog-metal as a meeting of the two musical styles rather than what you’d see as Prog-Metal now, which is a genre in its own right. We just mixed what our influences were and started writing songs. The guy from SI Music in Holland heard them and thought they were really good, he put one out on his compilation album through the magazine that he published at the time and said he was going to sign us the following year and we’d release an album. In the meantime, someone else heard it, which was Thomas Waber from InsideOut, he had another label in the UK called GEP and said we’ll sign you to that label.
So we signed to Giant Electric Pea and they didn’t expect us to sell any more than 500-1000 albums, so even at that stage we weren’t thinking about whether we’d made it or not. Within a month or so that first album had sold 15,000 so I think it was, at that stage, that we realised that things had taken off a bit more than we thought. We started thinking maybe we are a serious band and we’d better sort ourselves out and learn how to play live. We never, ever chased a deal, we naturally moved to InsideOut from GEP and when that contract came to an end Nuclear Blast approached us and said they’d like to offer us something. To be honest, we’re happy to stay there now and have signed the new contract to stay at Nuclear Blast for another three albums.
P – What do you put your longevity down to? Is it just luck or…
K – We were interested in playing music but we’re typical Brits who are very self-critical and don’t really think of ourselves too seriously. We just wanted to make music and hadn’t thought that someone else would want to hear it. Once that did come true we were thinking it was great, we can write albums and people will actually listen to them and we can release them, it was a gradual realisation. It gradually grew and now, I suppose, it feels normal. My greatest privilege is just to be able to communicate with people through the medium of music, it’s something that I always wanted, you know? If someone can take something from one of our albums or if it means something then it’s a real privilege to be able to do that.
P – The new album is described as ‘A colossal double concept album’, is there a quick way of telling us what the concept behind the album is?
K – It’s about how we find our place in the world, on a political or personal level, and how we relate to each other. To that end it’s really a dual concept album which is what gave us such inspiration to write the lyrics, or Richard anyway. As a political side you could take it as a country or a nation finding its way in the world and all the difficulties that come with that. England’s place in Europe was vaguely an inspiration, I suppose, from all that happened last year.
On a personal level, it’s much the same sort of thing but looking at your thoughts of things you wish you hadn’t done, just a journey through life, someone finding their way in the world. That was able to give us a lot of scope all the way through the album, in terms of finding the concept. You see that demonstrated in the Small Dark Lines video which we’ve done and which partly illustrates what the album’s about, painting the lines on the people with black paint which represented their regrets in this case.
The small dark lines in the song also represent the borders between countries and how those are a little bit blurred these days. Those are many subjects we can touch on and it was really great to be able to demonstrate that in the video and find a way of doing it, to which end we put out an appeal to fans who wanted to be in the video. We got people travelling from as far away as Sweden, it was really successful, there must have been at least nine people in the video.
The only thing I will say is that, originally, we didn’t plan on torturing them, it wasn’t the idea to give them cold showers but there was only cold water available! It was in a warehouse near Manchester, it was freezing cold and raining on that day and their faces tell the story when they get hit by the water!
P – To me, and to other people I’ve spoken to who’ve heard the album, there seems to be more focus on the songs. Was that your intention when you originally got together to write the album?
K – As I’ve mentioned before, ‘Subsurface’ was my favourite album until now and that was because of that complete nature of the composition from beginning to end. Richard and I got together and on the last albums we’d had contributions from other band members, we wanted that, everyone was always welcome to write. For this one, they didn’t really come forward with anything, apart from Steve who wrote On the Edge, so it was a lot easier to control the whole dynamic of the album, the sound of it.
We got together when we were both ready to start writing, we were inspired, and we got to about an hour’s worth of music. I make complete demos of music and send them to Richard who then adds melodies and lyrics. We got to this stage where we’d finished that, around sixty minutes and I’d said that I’ve still got plenty of ideas, I don’t feel like I’m finished. Richard said that was good because he was building this really interesting concept and needed more music for that.
We just let it go naturally until we had about an hour and eighteen minutes. We didn’t have The Shire Part 1 or 3 at the time and developed those later. We ended up with an hour and twenty-three minutes of music which came as a natural situation at which point Richard mentioned that the label had said that if we were going to make an album they wanted to split it onto four sides of vinyl. I said we could probably just do but I’d want the songs to be in the correct order because we’re thinking about a concept.
I don’t want to take what would be okay on a CD and jumble it up to make it fit on four sides of the vinyl because you can only do twenty two minutes per side. Luckily it fitted in the correct order and that was it for us, there was one other thing that happened at the end when we were doing the lyrics that really convinced us that this was 100% right. We discovered that each song begins with L, O, T or S which is an acronym of Legends Of The Shires and we were amazed by that, it’s just a confirmation that this album is falling into place.
I love it when an album is musically, as well as lyrically, a concept, it may be a bit old fashioned and people may have forgotten about concept albums since the 70’s but I really love it when there’s a whole story and your drawn into it and you can turn the lights out and listen to the music late at night. I still do that with my wife sometimes, like teenagers, with some wine or beer out and just concentrating on music instead of having it as this background effect.
That’s the most important thing, there are a couple of Mike Oldfield albums we listen through from beginning to end and think ‘wow, that feels great’ and I wanted that experience. You’re drawn completely into the music, you forget where you are and what you’re doing, it’s all about the music. You’re drawn into the story and the atmosphere, you feel one thing is happening after another and that’s what special about this kind of album for me.
P – I think Legends is much more progressive than your recent releases, harking back to Dead Reackoning, was it a conscious decision when you were writing it to get that more progressive sound & feel, especially as it was going to be a concept album?
K – I think there’s a natural leaning with Threshold, I don’t know if it’s exact, that seems to be that we do a more straight ahead album followed by a more progressive album, it seems to alternate. ‘Dead Reckoning’ was a little more straighter after ‘Subsurface’ and then ‘March of Progress’ was quite involved. The last one (‘Fro The Journey’) was a bit more stark sounding and now ‘Legends’ is very much warm and progressive.
I don’t know if it was intentional but we always just let songs go and build themselves, we don’t say that we need a ten minute song. In fact I think that Richard would tell you that The Man Who Saw Through Time was nowhere near ten minutes when we started with the first idea. It just developed as it went on and that’s always been the case, I do like the progressive elements. It was Nick and I who liked the metal side of music and Jon Jeary (the original bass player) that liked progressive.
He’s the one that got us into that music but, after I found out about it, I really did get to enjoy Genesis albums and, through that, the freedom to express myself in the way of arrangement so you’re not locked into verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus or whatever. They kind of go where the song needs to go and they don’t sit and worry about the details, they let the song lead itself. You don’t think and worry about the arrangement, it happens and if it happens to be a three minute song, that’s fair enough if it works that way and if it’s longer, it’s longer.
I suppose you get used to writing longer songs so you know what it takes but we do like to mix that up and, particularly once we’d got to 60 minutes and we were still writing, there was a feeling from Richard and I that we wanted this to be a more progressive album as we wanted it to be a concept. We did lean towards that, in some ways, without thinking about it too much. We already had The Man Who Saw Through Time and Lost In Translation at that stage, those songs were already there. If you’ve got 22 minutes on two songs then you’re already on your way to something progressive, aren’t you? You can’t avoid it.
P – You’ve still got some shorter, harder rocking tracks like Small Dark Lines on there, you get a really good mix between them all, it all seems to flow really nicely.
K – I think Snowblind is one of my favourites as well, it’s got harder moments and it’s almost like a microcosm of Threshold on this album. It involves the hard, the heavy, the delicate and the emotional sides of the music, all combined into one song and compressed into 7 minutes. It was really interesting to create that sort of thing all into one track, it just sort of came together in the right way. I’m really looking forward to trying to play that one live!
P –Who influenced your career at the start and who’s music would you spend your own money on now?
K – Before we were together, my wife really liked My Dying Bride and I’ve really got into them because of her. I’d never considered listening to it because doom metal’s kind of alright when it’s Candlemass or whatever but it just wasn’t my thing. When I heard them I completely got it the first time I listened to it, I just understood the atmosphere and the music and when I found out where they came from I thought you could feel it in the music. You can envisage the moors and the cold, dank nights and the misery and I loved the way that they painted the picture through their music and the way the sound sort of envelops you.
That’s been something I’ve really been into more recently and love Mike Oldfield because of the electronic side of the music and the way he’s able to build layers. I know it’s a different style of music to Threshold completely but it taught me how you could make music interesting instead of just coming back to a verse again. Why not have something different, maybe an extra layer or something, it’s the way he builds the songs so carefully. It sounds simple but there’s a huge amount involved in it and I learned from that electronic music what was so important about layering music and making it interesting in the arrangement.
From the beginning it was just metal, particularly Testament from the album ‘Low’ and beyond. I suppose if I listened to guitarists it was melodic guitarists, Dave Gilmour and Steve Lukather. I never liked those bands in the 80’s who would write a song where you’d be listening to it and then you’d fall off the edge of the song into a bunch of scales and the solo would have nothing to do with the song. You’d think why did he do that? I know people want to play fast but what’s the point? When I listen to ‘Toto IV’, even though it’s not a favourite Toto album of mine, I noticed that the guitar solos were so melodically driven, so brilliantly worked out and I thought that that’s what I want to do, I want to make a solo that’s got a relation to the song.
To that end I started writing guitar solos by putting the guitar down and taking the music out into the park on headphones and singing it onto a Dictaphone for either a keyboard or a guitar solo, whatever we want. I just start humming it or singing it and that would create the basis for the solo and you wouldn’t fall into the normal pattern where you start playing your guitar and you have certain patterns under your fingers that you always gravitate to, you can’t help it and that means all your solos ended up sounding the same. I now just ignore that and come back and add any technical bits later.
It’s about getting the basics right so someone who’s not a musician can enjoy your work as well. My little girl is only three and she listens to some of these albums we have on and when it comes to the solo she’ll go “advert! advert!” like the song has finished for her, she thinks it’s an advertisement in the middle of the song and then she’s waiting for the chorus to come back. I don’t want to be that, I want to be in a band where bits of the solo relate to the melody in the verses or the chorus and it’s a melody in its own right which keeps people interested, not some excuse for someone to go a bit crazy and play their fastest scales. That’s where that developed from, to keep that as a coherent part of the song and then you don’t feel like you’ve wasted maybe 10% of the album.
P – Just touching on progressive rock again, Steven Wilson has come out and said that being labelled ‘Prog’ has probably held his career back, do you think the ‘Prog-Metal’ label has affected Threshold in a negative way?
K – I don’t think that were so big that we could be held back by anything! How many times do you hear people talking about the revival of prog? Sometimes it’s a positive, sometimes it’s a negative. There are so many people willing to put down the prog fans and categorise them as anoraks that are in their 50’s or 60’s and have no interest in life. Why would you do that? I think they’re an incredibly loyal fanbase that are well-educated, which means you can actually write lyrics that mean something and they will understand them!
It’s a real bonus in my book to find those people and they tend to be there all the way through your career. You can have a pop band that will be gone in a year or two, I love having a fanbase that we can go to and they’re waiting to hear your next album. It’s a privilege, it shouldn’t be something you put down at all and I don’t think it’s held us back in any way.
P – That’s probably why you are onto your 11th album…
K – Threshold are good at what we do, if we tried to become commercial or try and follow some trend, we’re not going to as good as the other bands that do it. You’ve got to forge your own way, be creative and have your own sound, not somebody else’s. I think it’s great if someone hears the track Small Dark Lines on the radio and knows it’s Threshold, to me that’s a good thing. It’s like when I hear a Pink Floyd song and I know it’s them, it should be your own identifying stamp. I think it’s a brilliant thing and that’s what happens within prog.
P – Glynn Morgan has returned and replaced Damian Wilson on vocals, any particular reason why?
K – I can tell you what happened, we never wanted to make a statement because we’re not in the business of trying to put Damian down or anything, he’s a really valued member of the band and he did a fantastically good job. However, in October, after we’d played Prog Power Europe I was giving him a lift home to Oxford and he said to me “what sort of singer do you think would replace me?”, I didn’t really pay much attention and he gave me a few names and we left it at that and I said good night.
A couple of weeks later he turned up when I was working on something in the studio and said that he’d decided to leave the band and it was then that I realised that I’d missed that, I’d missed him telling me that he was leaving the band completely! He gave me names of these people that he thought might replace him and I never want to be in the position of chasing people to be in the band. As I’ve said, I feel privileged to be able to play music to the people who want to listen to it and I wouldn’t want to put him in a position where we’re chasing him.
Threshold is something that’s special to me and if he’d come to the point where he felt he’d got other things to do or you don’t want to be in the band then that’s great, he’s done a brilliant job and we’ll move on. When I spoke to Richard later, I said to him that Damian had decided he was moving on and I don’t really want to take on one of these people he’s suggested, what do you think if we ask Glynn again?
I know he wanted to rejoin the last time Damian had come back. He’d found out afterwards that Mac had left and he was interested but it was too late then. In 2008/2009 we did some work with him on our ‘Paradox’ singles boxset on a couple of the tracks and it was great. I’d always loved Glynn’s voice and the three singers we’ve had are the singers I’ve wanted so if Damian leaves and, unfortunately, Mac is no longer available, it would be brilliant if Glynn came back.
Richard had been in contact with him not long before that and when we spoke to him he was over the moon and, as he said in his statement, he really wanted to get involved again. I thought that his enthusiasm was something you just can’t turn down. As the story goes, Damian changed his mind a few weeks later and wanted to come back to the band. I never really got a satisfactory answer as to why he wanted to leave or come back, he rang Richard this time and said he wanted to come back.
He actually did come back to start recording the new album but he didn’t finish it and we didn’t have any dates from him to come back. We did a show in Switzerland and the atmosphere in the band was just different, we knew he’d wanted to go and then he sort of came back but didn’t want to do certain dates that we’d tried to book to finish the album, he wasn’t available for those. It just seemed like we were in competition with something else and I said to Richard we would have to find someone who wanted to do what the four of us wanted to do, the rest of the band.
We want to do things, we don’t want to be inactive, we’re not that young that we can be sitting around for years doing nothing. We told Damian we’d have to move on and I don’t know if he wanted to leave or not or whether he didn’t like the idea of looking bad on social media. I’m not sure whether he really wanted to come back or not, I don’t know what it was but it wasn’t really a good fit once he’d decided he wanted to leave and we just thought that, even though we don’t want to fall out with Damian we need to move on.
He still wants to meet up and chat again, we’re not on bad terms. I don’t know if he was expecting it or not but we said, in the light of what had happened, we’re going to move on and we’re going to find someone who wants to be in the band all the time and it worked out, it fits Glynn perfectly, with the extra power he has, on this new album and it works well.
P – Talking about people coming back, Jon (Jeary) makes an appearance on The Shire (Part 3), how did that come about?
K – I’m still in contact with Jon often, we meet as families, with his children and mine, and we’re still great friends. I know he loves Threshold because he bought some of the albums until he told me and I started giving him some, he still likes the music. He didn’t want to be involved in touring back then and I always wondered if I could drag him back in.
We’d demoed every other song on the album with female vocals, we got Richard’s wife to do it as she’s a really good singer and that stops us getting boxed in with any particular vocalist when we’re writing. When we did The Shire (Part 3)she wasn’t available to do the vocals so Richard did it himself and I thought it sounded a bit like Jon. I wondered if I could convince him to sing on it and Richard said good luck with that one so I contacted him and asked him if he’d consider doing this vocal for us and sing it how he feet.
I Think he was flattered as he was the original singer for Threshold when we were a pub band and coming back as a singer was very different to coming back as the bassist. He really enjoyed it, he came after work one night, put the vocals down and it went brilliantly, it was really good to be connected back with Jon. He was such an important formative part of Threshold, he wrote the majority of the lyrics for the first six albums, titled the albums and even came up with the band name.
Even though he didn’t like the touring and what that entailed, he always loved the music. The next step is, if we ever get to playing that track live, to maybe drag him up to London to sing on it, let’s see what he thinks about that one!
P – I really appreciate you talking to me Karl, the last question, what’s next for Threshold and yourself? Are you already thinking of the next album?
K – When I get back from the back of beyond (Serbia) I’ll be getting ready for our tour , planning things for Glynn such as what bits of guitar he might play on the tour in November and December. We’ve started arranging festivals for next year and then we’ll see what comes.
Richard and I have always left writing the music for a new album to the point when we’re actually ready to do it, rather than setting a date for it. It’s hard enough to make an album which works, you never feel fully in control of what’s happening, even with the best of intentions and being fully inspired, it might not go exactly as you want it to.
I always feel you have to be completely 100% ready and you’ve got to put everything into it to make it special otherwise why would you bother? We always wait until it’s a natural process, by the time we’ve finished the touring process for an album we’re ready to start thinking about a new one and you get inspired again.
Darran Charles, Steve Kitch, Jon Sykes, Gavin Harrison and, of course, Bruce Soord are the current touring version of The Pineapple Thief. On the 11th February 2017 they played the Islington Assembly Rooms, touring in support of their ‘Your Wilderness’ album. It was a packed audience and was a much anticipated tour and album.
The set list for the night was:
Tear You Up
The one you left to Die
No Man’s Land
Alone At Sea
That Shore
Reaching Out
In Exile
Take Your Shot
Show a little love
Fend For Yourself
Part Zero
Simple as that
Final Thing on my mind
Encores Snow drops / Nothing at best.
The show was recorded and will be released in various packages on the 6th October as ‘Where We Stood’.
First the limitations. I had no access to the package in itself with the multitude of mixes and vinyl stuff which Kscope have produced as a rather excellent showcase of a live band in full flow in front of a passionate audience. I will review what I have seen which is the concert DVD footage and the documentary footage. After all, this is the actual product they are selling in its many forms.
I am a music fan and believe the arena of the stage and live presentation is often the best judge of what a band is capable of in the purest form. A band can live or die on what it does on stage and putting out a DVD of a stage set is a brave thing to do for any band but it seems to be a common thing to do these days.
The set is mainly drawn from the recent album and shows the music in a new light with an additional dimension to the material. The band is completely together in this and are a very slick and tight outfit putting on a show worthy of a much larger stage and audience.
Visually it is a delight and it is also of a very high quality sound (which is available as a standalone live album). It comes as close to letting you be there during the actual performance as any DVD can. The band as individuals get fair shares of shots and it lingers on key musical moments like solos, licks or breaks. High points for me are, obviously, Snow Drops and Take Your Shot but Exilesand the opening tracks Tear You Up and The One You left To Die also deserve special mention. The set flows like water and is a fine surrogate for those who missed the tour and also as a souvenir for those who have seen this line up recently.
Bravely the new album fills the set list but has a different tone and quality to the studio version. Gavin brings a new feel to the older songs and adds to the live versions. Bruce is a great front man and connects to the audience well. This brings me to a couple of frustrations which I hope can be resolved with the DVD menu manipulations. The show is interspersed with interviews with the guys which ruins the flow of the concert. They could as easily been dropped into the additional 15 minute documentary of the back stage, pre and post show scenes. Instead I would have let the whole gig play and get the interactions of the band with the audience. I want to feel like I am at the gig and that gets broken up. Having said that it is relatively minor gripe for what is a great visual presentation of a great band in full flow.
For fans it is an essential purchase but also if you have even a slight interest in good intelligent music then buy it and see what ‘good’ looks like as well as sounds like.
‘Epiphany’ – now there’s a good word, it brings to mind realization and the awakening of the mind to something new. It can apply in all walks of life and situations but today we are using the word in relation to music and, in particular, the 1970’s legendary English progressive rock band Gentle Giant.
I must admit to being slightly miffed and betrayed by my prog-loving friends who have harped on about the relative merits of Yes, Genesis, King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator (to name a few) with ne’er a mention of Gentle Giant, their educational skills have been found wanting in this case!
It’s not that I’d never heard of the band but that it was almost like rumours and last minute thoughts when the questions were asked about the great early prog bands. It was only when I was sent the promo of the Gentle Giant retrospective ‘Three Piece Suite’ that I really discovered the talents of this quite remarkable group of musicians.
‘Three Piece Suite’ is a specially curated selection of songs and compositions from the band’s first three albums (‘Gentle Giant’, ‘Acquiring The Taste’ and ‘Three Friends’) presented in both 5.1 surround sound and stereo, all remixed by Steven Wilson. The fact that there are only 9 tracks is due to the fact that these are the only songs known to exist as multi-tracks. Also included is a pre-debut track also remixed by Steven Wilson.
The undoubted re-mixing talents of Mr Wilson are put to excellent use on this album, adding extra layers to the tracks and subtleties never heard before. Add in the exhaustive liner notes by the incredibly knowledgeable Anil Prasad and you have a package worthy of long time fans of the band and those that are relatively new to them, like myself.
The first three tracks are all taken form the band’s debut release in 1970, ‘Gentle Giant’. Giant is a mighty bassline driven piece of jazz/prog which could only have come from the 70’s and, the band freely admits, is hugely influenced by Zappa. It is the first part of a creative manifesto for the band and is a bundle of nervous, almost psychedelic energy. With a definitive ‘wide-eyed’ vocal delivery it has an identity far from the likes of Yes and Genesis. Next comes Nothing At All, a nine-minute epic that opens with a delightfully simple acoustic guitar melody before alternating with a Sabbath-esque guitar riff and contains a classic chorus line. The story is that the recording wasn’t going so well until a break for a trip to the pub seemed to focus everyone’s mind on the task at hand and the three-and-a-half-minute drum solo and incandescent guitar would seem to confirm the tale at hand! Again, to my ears, this song is very different to what was originally considered progressive rock in those days and is what is really drawing me to the band. Highly inventive guitarist Gary Green came from a blues background and that is wholly evident on Why Not?, a track where the band are saying ‘Why not try something new as opposed to something commercially successful but that you’re not happy with?’ Edgy and funky with elements of orchestration and a passionate vocal, it is highlighted by the inspired solo and closing 12-bar blues-rock jam which showcase’s Green’s superb playing perfectly and has been on permanent repeat on my stereo.
The next two tracks are from Gentle Giant’s second release, ‘Acquiring The Taste’, released in 1971. A significantly more experimental album than the debut and one where the songs were written for the studio and not performed previously. This, combined with the band’s growing ambition, give a totally different feel to Pantagruel’s Nativity, a pretension and aspiration with its alien sounding Moog introduction, orchestration and subtle trumpet in the back ground give it a freshness and a truly progressive touch. The excellent distorted guitars and vocal harmonies also work so well that, when asked to describe what the band were all about in their early days, Multi-instrumentalist Kerry Minnear will always point people in the direction of this track. To my ears another heavily blues influenced track, ‘The House The Street, The Room’ is another vivid and vibrant piece of music and emerged from a fairly simple lyrical idea, according to Phil Shulman,
“The songs describes the place you went to score your drugs, that’s the essence of it.”
It is complex and maybe even crazy with some mind-bending guitar playing and uses 32 instruments in total. You almost feel like you’ve been affected by a legal substance while listening to it, it is ordered chaos but utterly captivating and mesmerising in places. I challenge you to listen to this and not have an inane grin creep across your face the further you get into the song. A wonderful piece of music that shows the confidence and self-belief that was growing within the band, the scope of their ambition seems to have no bounds.
1972’s ‘Three Friends’ contributes four tracks to this collection and was the album where the band took over all production duties from Tony Visconti and where new drummer Malcolm Mortimore joined. A more sentimental album which is evident in Schooldays, a song that focuses on the titular characters from thew album and where, as children, their lives care carefree and their hopes and ambitions were the stuff of whimsy. Lush and choral with some excellent orchestration, it is true progressive rock as a storytelling medium and has a whimsical feel as you look back on life with sepia tinged nostalgia. Peel The Paint takes a low key symphonic opening and leads it into hard-edged, heavy riff led, rock. The track is about peeling back the layers to show that even the calmest, most moral people can turn into anger-fueled monsters of hate. The music is dynamic and powerful and the vocals have the requisite fervor and intensity, intelligent progressive rock fused with high energy blues and heavy rock with a hypnotic guitar solo thrown in for good measure. The finale of this collection is Mr Class and Quality which segues into the title track of the band’s third album, Three Friends. The first part is an involving and complex song with a convoluted theme and intricate rhythm, it never seems to sit still with its skittish nature and sci-fi interludes. Yes, to a certain extent, it is classically trained musicians showing off but, when it is done this good, do you really care? The segue brings around a much more choral focused and anthemic track with sumptuous harmonies and an expansive sound driven by an elegant bassline, musical rapture indeed!
Freedom’s Child was a song that was written in the band’s first sessions in 1970 and yet didn’t make it onto the debut album. Originally written with a TV program in mind, the words were changed and a stylish vocal harmony added. To my ears, the use of a violin and this Beach Boys-like harmonies give it a sound non unlike early Kansas, it also has an innocence to it which was never replicated on any recorded work. For completeness, the CD also has a Steven Wilson 7″ edit of Nothing At All which, while a good track in its own way, seems to lose some of the fee of the full length version.
As musical epiphanies go, ‘Three Piece Suite’ has to be up there with the best. A band that really deserve more recognition have been brought to the forefront by Steven Wilson’s remixes but the brilliance and originality of the music was always there. A great package for long-term fans and those new to this wonderfully innovative collection of musicians.
The task set by the wallet emptier was a simple one (which befits me, a simple man)
Write a review of Trojan Horse’s new pile of songs in a week or…
The implied threat of Sundry Sociopathic Pachyderms arriving “For A Quiet Word“ was implied rather than over stated.
So here we go, a live listening party, courtesy of Trojan Horse’s‘Fukishima Surfer Boys’.
And over-stated the opening track, GRAD isn’t: a few choice chords and an aura of menace (not to mention the sound of a drum kit being assaulted in the background!)
Track 2, The Ebb C/W Solotron (no, I don’t know what it means either!) Big minor chords summon us further into the Fukishima Surfer Social Club, the decor is a mix of King Crimson shabby chic contrasting with Leftfield Ambience – some beat friendly keyboard layers during the second track sent little waves of peace and chilled harmony across the room, the full 10-minute tour of the club passes by in a pleasant haze of keyboard driven chilled pleasure with flashes of guitar flavoured by Zappa and Hillage dotted in the mix, alongside keyboard bursts that could come from either ensemble . All this is underpinned by a rhythm section comprised 2 parts Kraftwerk to 1-part Yellow Magic Orchestra and 1-part Dr Avalanche.
This We like.
Track 3, How You Gonna Get By?, is a bright and shiny duet between a pair of Android barkeepers vying for your drink order. Barbot #1 (arbitrary classification for ease of translation) serves up a cocktail of the Human League Synth sounds and New Wave vocals. pithy and punchy. Barbot#2 chips in every now and then with best harmony vocals that add a Sparks/Talking heads flavour to the drinks. Then the ghost of Kate Bush floats over the ice machine and the cocktail is twisted again, before a phone call distracts me from the final pouring of the cocktail.
Track 4, Herbie Hancock, seems to be produced by the drummer, or the rest of the band forgot to start with him, as the first minute of sampled and acoustic drums sets up for some funky instrumental film music piece, very Buck Dharma in tone, just without the squealing guitar or reference to giant lizards destroying Tokyo. Again, a hint of Kraftwerk as it all goes a bit autobahn at the end.
Zappa is the first name that comes to mind with track 5, The Modern Apothecary, imagine an English Zappa fronting a Prog Madness. Scoring a Spaghetti Western shoot- out. In a tricky time-signature. With a Gothic tinged vocal and an Eastern melody hidden by the guitar. The tune twists and winds around itself, with all manner of studio trickery thrown in. at some stage during the track, Madness have been transmuted into King Crimson. Eclectic indeed.
Next up, The Castle Of… starts off with brooding synths and plaintive voice accompanied by acoustic guitar, but the sonic architecture of the track lulls you into a false sense of anticipation. No huge epic, instead the track jumps into the next, I Wanna See My Daddy, which boasts a thumping drum sound, layers of electronica and a sad refrain of the title winding through it all. The voices are mixed low down at the beginning, then come charging in all Beach Boys harmony in the middle.
Pure Reason Revolution popped into my head at this point, and it’s an apt comparison as TH mix it up, bringing esoteric electronic sounds to the fore, UVB-76 coming on all Brian Eno meets Aphex Twin ambient before fading gracefully into the title track. Which has beautiful sinuous bassline, very Karn-esque in execution. The only criticism I can level is that the vocals are thin here, too high pitched for me, this could be the results of a life lived exposed to Tom Waits, David Sylvian and the like.
The track itself bubbles and flows on before segueing into The Wooden Wall, another association pops up in my head here – David Bowie, more specifically, side 2 of Low, those wonderful instrumentals that captivated me and opened my ears to all manner of electronic goodies, from the previously mention Kraftwerk and Y.M.O. to Tangerine Dream, Tim Blake, Future Sound Of London, This Mortal Coil and more.
All of these memories are triggered by this album. It’s a concept album without any lyrical link. The tracks flow and fit together well, leading you deeper into the world of the Trojans. It’s all very “New Wave” rather than “Punk” if you get my drift. Junk 1 certainly sets out this claim, with a guitar sound very reminiscent of Carlos Alomar’s amazing opening to “Station to Station” and big electronic drums that triggered the “Low” reference.
I’m amazed at the inventiveness and daring shown here, these Trojans are certainly not afraid to push envelopes, The Shapes is an exercise in studio trickery, with a narrator being bounced around the speakers whilst it appears that the Tardis is suffering from indigestion behind him. Either that or this is Vogon poetry set to Vogon music, which seems to take reference to early Depeche Mode and Jean Michel Jarre. The hypnotic beat and washes of keyboards take over and the track constantly changes, gathering depth as it goes.
The album closer, Monodaddystarts off in Granddaddy territory, with a reappearance of the “I Wanna See My Daddy” hook, but this time with a big beat and a sweeping musical backing .. glorious overdubbed harmony vocals floating in and out of the mix.
I’ve got to be honest here, I wrote this as I listened for the first time and once again, Bad Elephant Music have pulled the hat out of the Rabbit and have gifted me with an album that reflects my eclectic musical views. If there is a lack of Prog references in my scribbles, then that is how I related to the songs on offer here.If any of the bands mentioned in this review trigger a memory from you too, then you too should give this a listen or two.
Once again, the Curse Of Bad Elephant strikes as I’m going to end up buying this, then checking out their back catalogue.
Memo to self – negotiate a discount with the Boss Elephant!
We move into the autumn and the new releases are starting to roll in for the new season after a fairly quiet summer. The Naughty Pachyderm is no exception to this seasonal pattern. I expect a whole raft of new and exciting music from all corners in the coming weeks.
The first on my list for autumn is this new album from Whitewater – ‘Universal Medium’. Whitewater is the brainchild of singer and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Stephens and percussionist and programmer Paul Powell. I am going to be honest and say until this landed in my inbox I knew nothing of the guys and what they did but this their second album after the debut ‘Obscured By The Sun’ in March 2015. In many ways this is a good thing as I had zero expectations of the music or the sound they were aiming for when making their music.
My initial thoughts on first listening were that of a fine use of melody and sound to construct a soundscape from the keyboard which is very atmospheric, building layer by layer to the core of the pieces. This is very obvious in the first tack Light of Day evoking a sunrise drawing in an insistent bass line that drives into the vocals. Everything is understated on the track which brings a level of intensity inversely proportionate to the music. It has a tension to it which tells the story of the song, of the way we hide ourselves behind layers of emotions.
Seconds Fade Away is in two parts, again an atmospheric short keyboard driven piece accompanied by acoustic guitar. It is an apparently simple introduction but has a strength in its simplicity going straight into part two which is the meat of the song, an unhurried examination of the race of life as each second of our lives fades away. The irony of the unhurried approach offsetting the speed of life could be the hidden message to savour life as we wander though the days, weeks and years blindly. You cannot fault the skill and writing of the construction the music but personally I would like to have the guitar higher in the mix when the solo hits at the end.
Onto a very electronic music based Filtered Images which reminds me of the late 70s Tangerine Dream both in tone and quality but it also collides with mid period Porcupine Tree about halfway through. Call it a collision of 70s and 90s in a 21st century setting. At 9:33 minutes I would love to see it longer with greater exploration of the themes but it keeps the attention throughout the instrumental track with variations in atmosphere and tone.
Fallenhas a guest vocal on it in the form of Mike Kershaw, a fellow Pachyderm artist. The addition of Mike introduces a sinister layer to the track’ the theme of failure and the impact of failure on the Fallen of the song. The guitar has a huge part to play in this track with a superb solo which is both restrained yet exuberant. It has great atmosphere and draws the listener into the music.
Moon Pulls Pt 1 to 4 is an epic piece that runs just short of 14 minutes long, again with Mike on guest vocals and is the strongest track on the album from my listening. It is a love song, one using gravity and the orbit of the moon and its affect as a metaphor for the emotional turmoil of that dread emotion. Musically it pulls together the guys as a whole and is as complete a way to show what they can do as a band as any other track. It has the layered keyboards and it is not an insipid traditional song to the woes of love but a sincere exploration of the feelings.
I rarely talk about all the tracks on an album I review but give a flavour of the album and try to leave the buyer a reason to find out about the rest. This release is no exception as all 9 tracks have much to offer any listener who cares to spend their money on this release.
I will say this, ‘Universal Medium’ is album that from play one is instantly familiar but also stands repeated plays as you plummet the depths of the construction of the music and the many layers the guys have put into the album. There is no thrash or pastoral sound to Whitewater, they are measured and careful which is reflected in the intensity of the music, yet it can be played on a superficial level in the background and still break through to the listener. For fans of classic Floyd, Electronica, Porcupine Tree there is much to gain from this album. I am off to find the rest of the back catalogue and check it out.
“Seconds fade Away” is in two parts again an atmospheric short keyboard driven piece accompanied by acoustic guitar it is an apparently simple introduction but has a strength in its simplicity going straight into part two which is the meat of the song which is an unhurried examination of the race of life as each second of our lives fades away. The irony of the unhurried approach offsetting the speed of life could be the hidden message to savour life as we wander though the days, weeks and years blindly. You cannot fault the skill and writing of the construction the music but personally I would like to have the guitar higher in the mix when the solo hits at the end.
