I’ve reviewed Mostly Autumn’s “The Ghost Moon Orchestra” over at Trebuchet Magazine.
Here’s a taster, “Wild Eyed Skies”, one of the songs co-written by Olivia Sparnenn, both showcasing her remarkable voice, and a great example of how the band have integrated more modern influences into their classic sound.
Since the band haven’t made any official promos for the album, this is an unofficial fan upload. I do have permission from a representative of the band to use it.
Jon Lord, best-known as the keyboard player for Deep Purple, has passed away at the age of 71.
Deep Purple have always been a major part of my musical life – One of the first albums I ever bought was the live double “Made in Japan”, and I loved the way he incorporated classical motifs into heavy rock and turned the organ into a lead instrument. He had a healthy respect for classical, jazz and rock’n'roll and frequently managed to fuse all of them into something that could often be more than the sum of the parts. I still like his “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”, composed in 1969, all-too-often condemned as a pretentious folly, as well as other rock and orchestral crossovers such as 1976′s excellent “Sarabande”.
After retiring from touring with Deep Purple a decade ago, he spent his final years as a classical composer, with works such as the acclaimed Durham Concerto.
I saw Jon Lord live three times, once with Whitesnake at the 1980 Reading Festival, and twice with Deep Purple; the infamous 1985 Knebworth mudbath, and again and most memorably at Manchester Apollo in 2002, on his very last tour with Deep Purple.
At that Reading Festival, when he started his lengthy classically-derived keyboard solo, I remember a guy next to me saying “Oh no, twenty minutes of boredom”. Even as a teenager I remember thinking “That guy just does not get it”.
Here he is towards the end of his time with Deep Purple, in Moscow in 1996, when Steve Morse had replaced Ritchie Blackmore on guitar.
RIP Jon. You were one of the greats.
A new song “Power”, a taster for the forthcoming album “Sounds That Cannot Be Made”. I think it’s an impressive-sounding song, but listen for yourself and see what you think.
From the Prog Magazine blog:
Mr So & So, have just launched an ambitious fundraising campaign on the Pledge Music platform. The band are seeking to raise £20,000 to fund their fifth studio album Truths, Lies & Half Lies, as well as a live DVD and a short European tour.
The band have already written nine tracks for the successor to 2009’s self-released Sugarstealer album, including Apophis and You’re Coming Home, both of which have been aired at recent live shows. “This will be a much darker album and a lot weightier than Sugarstealer. The reason that we are trying to raise so much money is so we can at last have a production that really shows off what we can do,†explained guitarist and band co-founder Dave Foster.
Interesting that they’re going down this road rather than the pre-order model that’s now well-established in the progressive rock scene ever since Marillion’s fan-funded “Anoraknophobia” a decade ago (And whenever a more fashionable band does the same thing, always remind them Marillion did it first!). Although it’s a variation on an established theme, it probably goes to show that there’s no longer a one-size-fits all business model for all bands any more.
The amount of money they’re aiming for says far more about the economics of the music business than the frequently inflated numbers you’ll hear from the major labels. I think we can guarantee none of that twenty grand is going to be spent on “flowers and chocolates”.
As for the album title, it’s a very appropriate one for those corporate sock-puppets who are still trying to insist that you can’t record a decent-sounding record without a six-figure advance from a major label, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
As for Mr So & So, they’ll be playing at the Cambridge Rock Festival at the beginning of August, sharing the Sunday bill with Mostly Autumn, Touchstone and Don Airey, on a weekend that also includes Heather Findlay, Panic Room, Chantel McGregor, Halo Blind, Stolen Earth, Caravan, It Bites and Kyrbgrinder. If you love real music played by real musicians rather than over-hyped corporate music, you really ought to be there.
Panic Room returned to the famous Bilston Robin 2 for the second date of their short album launch tour. They’d got off to a slightly wobbly start at Fibbers in York the previous night, with a show plagued by technical and sound problems. Anne-Marie Helder’s superb voice certainly didn’t need to be swamped in reverb like that; she really doesn’t need it. The fact that it was still a very good gig demonstrated the band’s ability to triumph over adversity. The Robin, scene of many of their most memorable gigs in the past, promised to be a far better experience, and it didn’t disappoint.
The show began with a moody post-rock sounding intro featuring Anne-Marie Helder playing guitar with a violin bow, before the band exploded into the twin-guitar prog-metal of “Song for Tomorrow”, the opening number of the newly-released third album “SKIN”. They followed with a couple of older numbers, “Freedom to Breathe” and “5th Amendment”, both dynamic guitar-driven rockers, getting the show off to a very powerful start. The very enthusiastic crowd made for an electric atmosphere.
From then on the set drew heavily from the new album interspersed with a very well-chosen selection of earlier songs, and it soon became apparent just how well the new material comes over live, whether it’s the jazzy “Chameleon”, the semi-acoustic “Freefalling” or the multi-layered “Promises”, the last of which has changed significantly from the early live versions premièred last year. The emotionally powerful performance of the title track was a particular highlight. My sole quibble was the occasional use of backing tapes for some of the string quartet parts on the record. I’d love to see them perform live with a string section, even if it’s only a one-off.
Older songs included a welcome return of the environmentalist epic “Yasuni“, which the band only played once or twice last year, and a monstrous version of “Apocalypstick”, a song from their first album not played live for more than two years. They’ve kept their swamp-blues cover of “Bitches Crystal”, which in my biased opinion is vastly superior to ELP’s original.
An intense performance of the slow-burning “Tightrope Walker” with Anne-Marie playing additional eastern-style percussion bought the main set to a close, before encoring with two more new songs, the hard rock of “Hiding the World”, and the epic album closer “Nocturnal”. And if that wasn’t enough, they returned again for a final encore of “Sandstorms”.
It’s nights like this that underline what live music is all about, a band who have been getting better and better over the past four years, feeding off the energy from the audience. They’ve gone up a gear, yet again. They’ve got that rare combination of tightness and high energy you get from the very best, and now they’ve got a far greater emotional depth too, perhaps a consequence of the more personal nature of many of the new songs.
People tell me there was an important football match on that night. But when you have the opportunity to see a band this good, who really cares about football?
Does banking fraud on such a massive scale it can crash whole economies do far more harm to our prosperity and well-being than any act of terrorism?
How much money do you have to steal before it’s closer to an act of war than a common crime?
Is a corrupt banking system now a greater threat to our way of life than Al-Queda?
Does this mean we should start blowing them to bits with flying killer robots?
It’s been a long time coming, but the song co-written by Heather Findlay with the incognito experimental electronica collaboration going by the name Maidu is finally released as a download EP.
It’s labelled as “Dubstep/Grime”, but rock fans shouldn’t let that put them off. True, there aren’t any rock guitars in sight; instrumentally it’s all multi-layered atmospheric soundscapes, fluttering electronic effects and eastern-style percussion, with the addition of some upright bass and a little acoustic guitar. Heather’s fans certainly shouldn’t be disappointed by her contribution; a beautiful ethereal vocal with a seductive melody that gets stuck in your head after no more than a couple of listens. The chilled-out vibe is very different from her own 2011 guitar-based EP “The Phoenix Suite”, but arguably this is the more progressive record in the original sense of the word. It certainly shows a different side of her vocals and songwriting.
The full 6-track EP contains two additional mixes of the song by Tzfat and J Sparrow, plus three instrumental mixes. It’s all probably intended to be played on shuffle mixed in with other music rather than played all the way through in one sitting like a conventional album.
Heather has certainly suggested doing more electronica-based work in the future. If there’s any more to come in this vein, I’m looking forward to hearing it.
Denizens of the corporate music industry bubble don’t half get aggressive when you dare to question the amount they claim it costs to record an album.
If you’re Nightwish, you have got a quarter of a million to spend, and want choirs and a full orchestra on your album, fine. In their case, the end results were well worth it. But if you don’t have a six-figure major label advance you can still record a great-sounding record for a fraction of that. I’ve heard records this year by bands who, given the size of their audience, are most unlikely to have anything remotely like a quarter of a million to spend. Yet some of those records still sound superb.
I’m getting sick of the way the corporate astroturfers love to rubbish the cottage industry sector. It’s not just lo-fi bedroom electronica, but can produce ambitious full-blown rock albums. Perhaps they recognise this as a threat?
This is a real pet hate of mine. Bands who clearly have progressive rock as a significant element in their musical palette of influences, but try to deny they have anything to do with “prog”.
Of course, it’s up to them how they choose to market themselves, but it does artists no favours to get precious about what genre labels fans or reviewers use to describe their music. As one well-known magazine editor once said “If you don’t want to be labelled Prog, stop making music that sounds Prog”. If a sizeable proportion of a band’s audience are big fans of a specific genre, exactly what does aggressively denying being a part of that genre achieve? It’s only going to alienate a proportion of the fanbase. At worst, it gives fans who don’t care for that genre a licence to behave badly towards fellow-fans, and even to actively try to drive people away on the grounds their presence somehow “taints” the artist. I’ve seen that happen.
In this day and age any band with a diverse mixture of influences ought to be able to keep feet in multiple camps rather than restrict themselves to one self-imposed ghetto. To take a non-random example, there is no reason why sharing a bill with a prog band should prevent you playing something like a blues festival.
Denial of any connection with “prog” was something quite common from bands who formed in the mid-90s when there was still a stigma associated with the genre. Even Marillion tried to pretend they weren’t prog around that time. But in 2012, if you’re making technically complex and grown-up music, anyone who’s still in thrall to the punk-era style music journalism almost certainly isn’t part of your potential audience anyway. So you have little or nothing to lose by not pandering to them. This penny has dropped for many of those artists. Steve Wilson for example has now fully embraced the Prog. But there are still a few who have yet to get the memo.
Surely if people are arguing over whether your music is “prog” or not, then it means you’re actually doing something right? It probably means you’re doing something interesting enough to attract the attention of those who like their music more sophisticated and challenging than typical three-chord chart fodder, but neither are you making formulaic prog-by-numbers.
Stolen Earth formed early in 2011 from the ashes of the much-loved York progressive rock band Breathing Space, who had split at the beginning of the year. They include no fewer than four members of Breathing Space’s short-lived final incarnation, including recently joined vocalist Heidi Widdop and guitarist Adam Dawson. Only the rock-solid rhythm section of Paul Teasdale and Barry Cassells remain from the linuep of Breathing Space’s final albums.
They quickly established a reputation as a powerful live act, with a strong set of songs including a couple performed during the last days of Breathing Space, which fuelled high expectations for their first album. That album, “A Far Cry From Home” is now out.
The band have successfully captured the big wide-screen sound of their live shows on record. The album gets off to a strong start with the opening driving rocker “Unnatural Disaster”, with more than a hint of Uriah Heep about it. John Sykes’ keyboards focus on atmosphere and texture rather than solos, with a lot of Hammond organ, leaving Adam Dawson’s guitar as the main lead instrument, and Heidi’s raw bluesy vocal style is a big contrast with most other bands in the scene.
Heidi’s semi-acoustic “Soul in a Jar” shows the bands’ softer side, featuring some very evocative low whistle. Other highlights include Adam’s “Mirror Mirror”, with some fantastic slide guitar. “Bitterness Fades” again has a Uriah Heep vibe, this time evoking their late-70s “Fallen Angel” era.
Adam Dawson sings lead on a couple of songs, with Heidi adding harmonies, one of them being the atmospheric “Silver Skies”, another album highlight, and one of the songs first performed live back in Breathing Space days. The album ends with the epic “Perfect Wave”, ending in extended guitar work-out.
Stolen Earth do a great line in epic wall-of-sound rock ballads with lengthy guitar solos, with many songs clocking in at seven, eight or even nine minutes in length. One or two shorter, punchier songs might have added some variety, but you can’t escape the fact the band do what they do well.
There’s a lot of Mostly Autumn’s Liam Davison in Adam Dawson’s guitar playing; indeed many of the instrumental passages have a similar vibe to parts of Davison’s 2011 solo album “A Treasure of Well-Set Jewels”. The combination of low whistle and Floydian atmospherics is also always going to evoke early Mostly Autumn, although Heidi Widdop’s has a very different vocal style, which is ironic when Heidi was actually a member of a very early lineup of that band.
One concern is that the similarity to early Mostly Autumn could be something of a double-edged sword. On the plus side, this album ought to appeal strongly to fans of Mostly Autumn’s early days, especially as that band have long since have moved on, adopting a harder-edged and more contemporary sound. But I’ve always felt that one reason for Breathing Space’s relative lack of success was that they never quite managed to establish a clear identity of their own. Hopefully Stolen Earth will manage to avoid falling into the same trap.
A couple of caveats aside, “A Far Cry From Home” is still a very good record. If you love well-crafted grown-up music performed by real singers and musicians putting their heart and soul into what they’re doing, I can strongly recommend this album.
The album is available from the Stolen Earth website.