Angelo’s Rock Orphanage on ISKC Rock Radio – every week!

Although I started carefully, by offering to do this once a month, I quickly changed my mind. From this week onward, I will provide a weekly playlist to ISKC Rock Radio, which will be played on Wednesday evening between 9PM and 11PM.

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The playlists will sometimes deviate from the ISKC standard, in the sense that I record interviews with artists every once in a while, and these will be aired as part of the playlist sequence as well when appropriate. Keep an eye out for those, if all goes well we’ll be featuring a Silhouette interview next week and one with Kristoffer Gildenlöw the week after.

My playlist for this week, Wednesday September 2nd on ISKC Rock & Webradio is included below.

02/09: Canada Québec 3 pm / US: PT noon, MT 1 pm, CT 2 pm, ET 3 pm / Chile Santiago, Brazil Rio de Janeiro 4 pm / UK 8 pm / Mozambique 9 pm / Estonia, Latvia, Lebanon & Ukraine 10 pm
03/09: India New Delhi 0.30 am / Japan 4 am / Australia Melbourne 5 am

Listening Link: http://www.iskc.nl/rock.m3u
Website: http://www.iskc.rocks/
Radio APP – http://iskc.nl/iskc_radio_app.htm
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ISKCWebradio
Chatroom: http://stinto.net/en/chat.htm?refId=azc43
Email us at: rock@iskc.nl
Time conversion: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html
Playlist:

Savatage – Welcome to the Show
The Minstrel’s Ghost – The Son
Kalle Vilpuu – Industrial No4
ANURYZM – Full Agonist
Marco Ragni – Sea of Vibes
Gekko Projekt – progressive rock band – Frienda
Transport Aerian – Full Body Access
Abel Ganz- Heartland
Odin of London (ft. Colin Tench) – Catherine
Beardfish – Ode to the Rock ’n Roller
United Progressive Fraternity – UPF- Don’t look back – Turn lef
Fractal Mirror – Stars
Coalition – Across the sea
Dave Kerzner – Ocean of Stars
Kinetic Element Official Site- Travelog
Unreal City – La Meccanica dell’ombra
Dave Brons – Father

Now Angelo’s Rock Orphanage is complete – ready for action

I finally got around to doing something that needed doing a while ago – get my site at the right location, http://www.angelosrockorphanage.com. Old blog links as posted on Facebook, Twitter and ProgArchives will be redirected automatically.

In cooperation with WordPress, sharing statistics will be transferred from the old to the new site on short notice.

And most important, Sonia Mota, known for the artwork of Corvus Stone, Progeland and Oceans 5 provided me with the perfect new site banner. Thank you very much, Sonia, I owe you.

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Nth Ascenscion – Ascension of Kings

When a title like Ascenscion of Kings comes by, it is tempting to associate it with Lord of the Rings. Which would be fine, if we hadn’t been swamped in LotR for seven years. And luckily, the album of this title, by British Nth Ascenscion has nothing to do with it. Instead, there seem to be two stories about kings mixed in with the other tracks – one of them (Clanaan Pt1 – Pt3) in the form of a longer story that will continue on future albums.

The opening track Fourth Kingdom may give a wrong impression on first listen. It opens with a hard rock guitar and growling bass, suggesting that this is a heavy rock album. [acfw id=2]

Ascension-Cover3kHowever, once the melodic keyboards come in things change and become more symphonic – but the heavy touch stays and continues into the second track, Return of the King. A more complex track musically, with a great guitar and keyboard crecsendo at the end.

From there, the sound of the album is defined – well performed, layered keyboard melodies, good guitar work and an ever present pulsing of drum and bass – with frantic pieces of double bass drumming thrown in. However, the band does make sure that it is not just that: in Realm with a soul (Clanaan Pt2) there is room for an acoustic guitar and Weight of the World gradually builds up from a piano piece to a full blown rock track in a span of almost 7 minutes. Lots of room for variation there!

A separate note on the closing track Vision, which tells about the exit of the Jews from Egypt. For some reason, when listening and taking notes, I wrote down a few times that this could’ve been part of an Ayreon album – a great track.

All in all, a very enjoyable album, although the sound of the band is not completely unique amongst UK bands. The musicianship and the specific voice of Alan Taylor do give Nth Ascensions their own signature though.

Production wise the album made a good impression as well – no compression overdose, melody layers that were not even near becoming muddy and well recognisable individual instruments.

A great effort, with room for a bit more – I’d like to challenge the band into putting another step up on the next album.

 

Interview: The Royal Spuds

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Sometimes it is interesting to take a little side track. This site is mainly about progressive music, as I state on the about page – and that leads quite quickly to progressive rock. However, sometimes it’s good to refresh your mind and venture outside the regular. So, today I publish an interview that I did with a band called The Royal Spuds, a punk/folk band from Leiden in The Netherlands. And surprisingly, there still was a progressive link there. The band consists of members with different backgrounds, leading to influences from folk, punk and metal in their music – the lead guitarist turns out to be an actual Porcupine Tree fan…

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So, on a Wednesday evening, we sat together in the Muziekhuis (music house) in Leiden, and talked about the history of The Royal Spuds, the background of the band members, the pending tour in Ireland – with a short side track into Irish food and banjo players here and there. As usual, we also touch upon production and composition, to make sure the balance between history, humour and music is correct.

Enjoy!!!

Angelo’s Rock Orphanage on ISKC Rock Radio

As of August 5th, I’ll be running a monthly playlist on ISKC Rock Radio – every first Wednesday of the month, at 21:00 CET.

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Here I will mix the bands found on this web site with my personal all time prog favourites.

Website – http://iskc.rocks/
Listening – http://www.iskc.nl/rock.m3u – http://iskc.rocks/RRPlayer.htm
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/ISKCWebradio

The playlist for this event:

Rush – YYZ
Nice Beaver – Timeline
Jartse Tuominen – Sledgehammer
Corvus Stone – Scary Movie Too
Drifting Sun – Lady Night
Murky Red – Wild Flower – Wild Flower
Light Damage – The Supper of Cyprianus
Echolyn – Warjazz
Franck Carducci – Close to Irreversible
HMFC – Everything Can Change
Karibow – F8 Al Ba6
The Tangent – A Spark in the Aether
Yuka & Chronoship – Dance with Dinosaurs
Tiger Moth Tales – Beauty Falls
Umphries McGee – Bad Friday
Seconds Before Landing – Big Train
Silhouette – In Solitary
Nth Ascension – Return of the King
Solstice Coil – Forget You Ever Saw Us
Pain of Salvation – People Passing By