Music Blog

Guardian music hack Alexis Petridis looks at the world of Internet promotion. As expected, he can’t help but fall into hipper-than-thou elitism and lazy clichés.

The Internet has been touted as the future of the music business ever since file-sharing became big news: bands, it was mooted, would cut record companies out of the equation by posting their music on their websites and building up a virtual fanbase. But nothing of the sort happened. Selling music via a website became the province not of hip new bands, but old stagers considered defunct by their labels: Simply Red, Level 42, legions of wizened prog rockers. They were making a living, but the whole business still carried a slight taint, the modern equivalent of flogging your records from a car boot.

Of course, as The Ministry of Information reminds us, he makes no mention of Marillion, who started the whole the whole Internet self-promotion thing off. Except, of course, to sneer at ‘wizened prog rockers’. I would hardly call Mostly Autumn wizened old-stagers. Even if they play a style of music a cloth-eared idiot like Alexis Petridis considered deeply unfashionable.

The real danger to the likes of Alexis Petridis is that Internet promotion bypasses people like himself. It gives the opportunity for genres of music not endorsed by the cynical London-based clique of music journalists to find an audience and thrive. Thanks to the power of the Internet, there will be room for music genres other than the currently fashionable four chord poseurs whose simplistic and banal music is touted as “deeply symbolic of mans struggle against his socio-political environment”. Everything will no longer sound like Coldplay now.

As “wizened prog rocker” Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree said in the song “Four Chords That Made a Million”

You belong there on the cover
You are the Emperor in new clothes
A man who thinks he owns the future
Will sell your vacuum with his prose

Alexis Petridis makes a living selling vacuum with his prose. Anything which reduces the malign influence of the likes of him will be a good thing.

I’m re-reading this book, originally published back in 1996. Paul Stump tries to strip away the official punk-obsessed revisionist history of 70s rock, and tell us how it really was. Starting with a chapter entitled “Duffle Coats from Outer Space” he traces the rise and fall of progressive rock from it’s origins in sixties psychadelica through it’s marginalisation in the face of punk and new wave a decade later, eventually reaching the second generation neo-progressive bands of the 80s and 90s.

Stump tries to establish progressive rock in the context of the era, such as explaining how the tax-exile status of many big bands in the mid 70s was a contributing factor to the genre’s decline as they lost touch with UK audiences. He also suggests that the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the late 70s and early 80s worked against progressive rock in that it competed against it for up and coming musicians. I’m not sure I buy this thesis, since the first of the 80s Neo Prog bands followed swiftly in the wake of NWOBHM, and I remember a big overlap in the fan bases.

The book covers most of the significant artists and albums, not just the megastars like Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis, but the lesser known ones like Hatfield and the North, or Henry Cow. He doesn’t shirk from naming some of the more risible excesses of the late 70s, although he does make a brave attempt to defend Yes’ overambitious failure “Tales from Topographic Oceans”. In contrast, he’s very harsh on ELP, to an extent which will probably not endear him to any remaining fans of the band.

Overall, it’s a good overview of a much maligned genre which is long overdue for critical reassessment. Unfortunately, being published nine years ago, it doesn’t cover the more recent ‘third generation’ of bands who have sprung up in the last few years, playing progressive music with the underground DIY ethos of punk, while the musical heirs of punk and new wave dominate the record companies and airwaves.

Just when a proper rock band were on the verge of a major breakthrough in indie-dominated Britain, this happens. It appears that Finnish symphonic goth-metal band Nightwish have parted company with singer Tarja Turunen. In this Open letter posted on the band’s website, keyboard player and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainens speaks in no uncertain terms

Equally certain is the fact that we cannot go on with you and Marcelo any longer. During the last year something sad happened, which I’ve been going over in my head every single day, morning and night. Your attitude and behavior don`t go with Nightwish anymore. There are characteristics I would never have believed to see in my old dear friend.

People who don’t talk with each other for a year do not belong in the same band.

I’m hoping this doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road for the band. I never got to see them in their UK tour earlier in the year, because it sold out three months in advance. It’s been suggested on their website’s message boards that they’ve already found a replacement singer. Let’s hope this is correct, and Nightwish continue.

What’s been OMS for the past week or so.

Leaves Eyes – Vinland Saga
I picked up this album after seeing them supporting Paradise Lost. It’s an excellent example of symphonic Euro metal, even if Liv Kristine Espenæs Krull’s operatic soprano vocals are possibly an acquired taste. It’s a concept album about Vikings, and the lyrics and music certainly evoke images of longships and horned helmets. There’s an equal mix of power metal and keyboard-driven ballads, including some atmospheric material sung in Norwegian. I can definitely recommend this album.

Octavia Sperati – Winter Enclosure
Norwegian six-piece Octavia were Paradise Lost’s other support band. Unfortunately this album is a bit of a dud. The overall sound is a mix of melodic goth rock and metal, vaguely reminiscent of Poland’s Closterkeller, but it suffers from a serious lack of memorable songs. Silge’s vocals are too often buried in the mix, and the instrumentation rarely rises above the mediocre. If you like this kind of music, there’s a lot of better stuff in this style around.

Paradise Lost – Believe in Nothing
This is not Paradise Lost’s best album, marking the point were it seems they couldn’t make up their mind whether they wanted to be Depeche Mode or Black Sabbath. Suffers from a lack of good songs as well as a lack of direction, and was weaker than it’s predecessors. I’m told their two more recent albums are better, but I have yet to hear them.

Porcupine Tree – In Absentia
This is one of my favourite PT albums, in that it includes just about every element of PT’s diverse sound on one disk. There’s the Led Zeppelin riffs of “Blackest Eyes”, the melodic atmospherics of “Trains” and “The Sound Of Muzak”, and the haunting melancholy of “Heatattack In A Layby”. This is a good place to start if you want to check the band out.

Blackmore’s Night – Shadow of the Moon
A while since I’d spun this disk, and I’d forgotten how good it was; far stronger than later releases. BN’s renaissance/new age/soft rock melange can be cheesy and twee in places, ‘a high Camembert factor’ as HippyDave has said. But on this first album the good material outweighs the bad. Blackmore’s guitar work is a reminder of why I liked his music in the first place.

Uriah Heep – Salisbury
The Mighty Heep’s second album, recorded all of 35 years ago. Naturally the production and some of the arrangements sound a little dated, but the singles Bird of Prey (with the famous ‘Norwegian Fjord vocals’) and the acoustic chant ‘Lady in Black’ still feature in the live set. Highlight has to be the 17 minute neo-classical title track, with Ken Hensley’s Hammond organ duelling with brass and woodwind sections.

What I’ve been listening to over the last couple of days. Unlike the iPod generation with their song-based playlists, I’m a still luddite who listens to albums all the way through

After Crying – De Profundis
Prog-rock sung entirely in Hungarian. There’s as much violin and brass as guitar, resulting in something closer to orchestral chamber music that to rock’n'roll. Hauntingly beautiful in places, and quite unlike anything else in my record collection.

Ayreon – The Human Equation
Multi-instrumentalist Arjen Lucassen’s most recent rock opera concept album, featuring (as usual) a whole host of guest performers. This one has Ken Hensley of Uriah Heep fame, and vocals by Mostly Autumn’s Heather Findlay, Dream Theater’s James Labrie, and Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, among others. Like a lot of Ayreon’s work, it’s a bit patchy, but best bits shine.

Renaissance – Novella
I picked up this album because I’ve heard it said that Mostly Autumn sounded like them. I have no idea whether or not it’s one of their best or not, it was the only album of theirs I could find. I’m afraid I have never really been able to get into this one. I’d be interested to hear from Renaissance fans who might either confirm that Renaissance are not for me, or point me towards other more accessible albums of theirs.

King Crimson – The Power to Believe
KC’s most recent work, a good listen even if parts of it are a something of a retread of parts of Larks Tongues in Aspic and Starless and Bible Black given a modern production job.

Savatage – Dead Winter Dead
Savatage are another band into pomp-metal rock operas. The plot is about a love story during the Bosnian war. The music is pretty good power metal with classical flourishes, especially the multi-part counterpoint harmonies in the middle section of ‘One Child’, something I’ve never heard any other metal band attempt.

Rainbow – Long Live Rock and Roll
Third and (possibly) weakest of the three Rainbow albums with Ronnie Dio. By now Blackmore was moving in the more commercial direction that ultimately let to Dio’s replacement by pop singer Graham Bonnet. This album suffers from a couple of filler tracks, and too much lazy and lacklustre guitar playing. Still, the dark epic Gates of Babylon makes up for it. The medieval style “Rainbow Eyes” gives an early foretaste of what Blackmore would be doing a decade and a half later.

If you live outside London, decent rock gigs are like buses. Nothing for ages, and then a whole load turn up at once. So it’s looking like a truly progtastic late November/early November in Manchester.

I’d already got my ticket for Marillion, but now I’ve got myself tickets for The Mars Volta and Van der Graaf Generator. There’s also Mostly Autumn in Crewe in December. And coming up this week is the goth-metal of Paradise Lost.

I’m wondering about the Asia/Uriah Heep double bill, and also Porcupine Tree, both shows around the same time. But I’ve seen all three bands in the past year, and I’m not sure that I could cope with five gigs in two weeks! (And none of them on Friday or Saturday nights either!)

The Warley model railway exhibition at the NEC falls in the middle of that lot as well.