To a wonderful 2017, and to forget 2016

Well…. 2016 wasn’t exactly the most fun I’ve seen in the past almost 44 years. A year to forget in many respects – personal, relational and musical. It also had an ending I’d rather have not seen.

However, there’s a bright star I found in 2016 that I intend to follow in 2017. And that will make 2017 a much better year than 2016. So, I’ll be brief and just wish you all the best for the coming year, and see you all on what will be a wonderful trip.

Tja…. 2016 was niet het mooiste van de afgelopen bijna 44 jaar voor mij. Een jaar om te vergeten in veel opzichten, persoonlijk, relationeel en muzikaal. Het had ook een einde dat ik liever niet had gezien.

Maar, ik heb in 2016 ook een ster gevonden om te volgen in 2017. Die gaat van 2017 een mooier jaar maken dan 2016. Dus ik hou het kort en wens jullie allemaal het allerbeste voor het komende jaar, en tot ziens op deze mooie reis.2017

Achala

When life is full of darkness and the sun is hard to find

the stars become invisible, your dreams pitch black at night.

Buried in this darkness, with tears that cloud your eyes,

it’s hard to see a future and the ones who reach their hand.

Yet even without seeing, can the helping hands be felt,

the spirits make you suffer, but always with a cause.

From darkness stretch your arms, and you will find support,

a heart to help you find the bright blue sky again.

Let the slayer of illusions kill your nightmares

And the angel be your dawn…

achala

Aisles, Profuna Ocean and Little Eye at Extase, Tilburg 27-10-2016

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Last Thursday I finally got a chance to see my friends from Chilean band Aisles perform live. It was their first European tour, and the crowd was small, but they didn’t worry about that – the band played as if they had never done anything else in their lives. The energy, skill and enthousiasm were a wonderful experience.

Their support acts Little Eye (more rock than prog, but a very good live act with a great and expressive vocalist) and Profuna Ocean (prog/prog metal, with wonderful bass work) added to the atmosphere and warmed up the small audience quite well. Although I must add it’s always a pity if people coming to a gig as friends of a support act don’t have the decency to also stay around for the main act. Slightly disrespectful, but let’s not blame bands for the behaviour of their fans.

Below, a set of nice pictures I took at the gig.

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Nth Ascension – In Fine Initium

About a year ago I was introduced to the magical world of Clanaan, where the chords needed to create music are lost. And they’ve been lost for a while – I think at least two years by now….  Luckily, I know where they are. The missing rider is a man called Darrel Treece-Birch, and he’s using the chords to create beautiful music on any keyboard he can find, together with his friends Alan ‘Spud’ Taylor (vocals), Craig Walker (drums), Gavin Walker (bass) and Martin Walker (guitar). Come to think of it, looking at the names, maybe the next album should be titled The Rider, the Bard and the three Walkers…ifi-new-album-poster

Where The Ascension of Kings was certainly to my liking, I recall challenging the band into taking it another step up on the next one. Time to find out if they did.[acfw id=2]

The opening track Kingdom Keys already shows that if they haven’t picked up that challenge, at least they tried – and succeeded. The track starts rather loud, with big drums, but builds up into a more theatrical piece, with emotional vocals over layers of keyboards – to end in a wonderful, almost bluesy, classic rock guitar lead. And yes, Spud’s voice may be an acquired taste, but I like it more every time. It stands out among other vocalists, as in not being cliché, and he manages to put a lot of emotion into his singing.

He can also do other things – even if he doesn’t have the range of Bruce Dickinson, it’s mainly due to the vocals, and Darrel’s keys that I get reflections of late 80’s Iron Maiden (Alexander the Great, anyone?) on End of Days. It’s not metal, and far more keyboard oriented than, but I do get that image for some reason. The mix of piano and guitar halfway, and the bass in a quiet part add to the score.

Like Vision on the previous album, The Cage seems to tell a story – about war, but also in a way about how our leaders treat their people I think. With a driving drum and bass pattern underneath one of Darrel’s keyboard walls the track has a certain momentum, only interrupted by a slow bass, keyboard and spoken vocals half way, and a dramatic ending. And ending that lyrically makes me think of how we are currently selecting our ‘leaders’, and the way that gets criticised and opposed more and more. Hopeful, yet dramatic:

The World has changed forever, nothing will ever be the same
As the trumpets sound across the earth to warn and to proclaim
Confetti propaganda, falls like autumn dying leaves
And the rhetoric you all believed in the dirt now disappears

And did I skip over So, That was the Apocalypse here? Yes, but only because I was focusing on the tracks that match each other so well on this album. This track stands out among them, because it is completely different. On a radio show chat, it was discussed whether it could be an ode to John Lord. Lots of keys and organ, a biting guitar and a bass that propels everything forward – if not an ode to John, then to his band Deep Purple.

At the end of the album we find the next three pieces of Clanaan, a story that started on the previous album, and that continues here. On In Search for the Rider, the keys (a lot of it piano) lead the way for Spud’s vocal, over a slow, tight rhythm section. Some short melodic patterns, often hardly a second long recur in a recognisable way in between the intricate layers of the keys and guitar, providing a nice coherence to the track. That idea continues in a lesser extend in the instrumental Forever, before the the slow, sad When the Rain Falls leaves the listener longing for the continuation of the story on the next album.

So, is it perfect? No, because nothing is, but Nth Ascension got yet again a bit closer. This music is complex, melodic, emotional and definitely a nice mix of classic rock and symphonic. The Dutch talk about symphonic rock when keyboards rule, avoiding (useless, to my mind) discussions about whether or not it’s prog, and Nth Ascension fits that term very well. Highly recommended.

 

Fractal Mirror – Slow Burn 1

I am not sure whether it was the dark mood of this album, or the amount of work on my plate (“There’s too much on your plate”, Leo Koperdraat sings on the track Miracle as I write this), but it took me almost 6 months and countless listens to get around to reviewing this album. Does that mean it’s a bad album? On the contrary, this is a set of 11 thought out tracks, in the style that we know from Fractal Mirror’s previous album Garden of Ghostsscreen-shot-2016-10-07-at-23-10-07

However, compared to the previous album, there are quite a few differences.  Partly because of the lyrics, which deal with the way technology is disrupting our lives – from the internet and smartphones all the way to our large telescopes that makes us learn about the universe. The deep, slow voice of Leo Koperdraat, which has not lost any of it’s Steve Kilby likeness, tells what this all does to our minds and our lives, accompanied by his guitar and the ever so well executed drumming of Frank Urbaniak and Ed van Haagen’s deep bass and floating keyboard work – and a nice list of guest musicians, including bass players Leopold Blu-Sky and Kenny Bisset Sr, and guitarits/producer Brett Kull (Echolyn).[acfw id=2]

Playing this album during my evening walks in the dark makes me change moods frequently, in line with the music. From melancholy (Miracle, Embers) to wonder (V838), via sadness (Fading, Embers – where Leo sings “We slowly burn…”) back to melancholy on Universal. What makes me happy underneath is the skill with which the compositions are formed. The mix of rock, indie and progressive rock the band claims to create does work well with the lyrics, and the eminent darkness of the lyrics is complemented by wonderful, fitting melodies.

The band has been worrying, also in public, about the low sales, and I can see why – this is not the most complex album to get into musically, but the moodiness may keep people away from it. A shame really, because after these 6 months this is an album I’d like to recommend, for an evening of contemplation every once in a while.

Colin Tench Project – Hair in a G-string

Classically trained (but not in guitar) guitarist Colin Tench is about 132 years old now. He was there when George Martin was conceived, errm, conceived The Beatles… Having learned to play the instrument at 22, after a 110 years he can barely be distinguished from the ones who started at age 5.

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This is the point where I could say ‘All jokes aside’ and continue, but with this album I’m afraid that’s very hard, as there is a lot to laugh about, in between 80 minutes of seriously good and well performed music. Good music, in the form of an epic title piece, that is divided into separate 4 parts, and runs about 30 minutes in total. The piece has a recurring musical theme, that is played in so many different ways it takes a proper listen to spot it, and which invisible makes it into a coherent piece. Makes coherent indeed, because this is not music for casual listeners. They will hear loose bits and pieces, that only connect when you sit down for it. It starts in Part 1 with an acoustic guitar and some synths, changes to electric guitar and piano, but just as easily goes Santana style lating in the second half of Part 2. In Part 3, avant garde and Zappa-esque things happen (also lyrically), while in Part 4 we are treated to a great progressive rock piece, with a comedy parade performed by vocalists Peter Jones and Phil Naro. [acfw id=2]

Having the theme, and Colin’s way of composing make that this works. He doesn’t just lay down a chord pattern. He thinks (and talks) in melodies and every note has to be at the right spot and of the right length – like the way classical composers did. I know first hand – having contributed a whopping 2.30 minutes of fretless bass to this piece. I have some bass notes left over that were rejected for being in the wrong place. I think the same applies to Petri Lindström (Corvus Stone) who contributed most of the other bass parts on the album, and Stephen Speelman (Unified Past) who makes a short but stunning appearance right in the middle of Part 2.

In between the four parts, 8 other tracks are placed, all of which are delicately crafted compositions, and as varied as the main suite.

Can’t see It Any Other Way, is almost a prog rocker, with sufficient ‘funny noises’ and percussion to make it into something that attracts attention. The big star here is singer Phil Naro (Unified Past). La Palo Desperado and The Mad Yeti show Colin Tench’s skills on acoustic guitar, and so does Dnieper Summer Day.

On The Sad Brazilian, a horror movie like keyboard riff opens, after which the track develops into a nice mix of melodic electric guitar rock and orchestra.

That orchestra, which lives in Gordo Bennett’s (GorMusik)basement also happens on Lisa Waltzes back in with no G-string, which is a ‘redesign’ of the last bit of Corvus Stone’s Moaning Lisa. In that piece, originally German Vergara sings ‘mi chitarra canta’, on this version Colin let’s his guitar sing for real. He does it again, acoustically on Lisa’s Entrance Unplugged, a redo of the same tracks intro minutes, with additional beautiful flute work by Ian Beabout. Oh, and there’s the bonus track of course, a full orchestra rendition by Gordo Bennett of the yet another part of Moaning Lisa.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed Something Screwed was always one of my favourite demos of CTP, and now it’s been remixed and slightly changed. Colin’s ode to the old prog bands, by musically making it exactly what the title suggests.

The love it or hate it track on the album is likely A Beautiful Feeling. A bit of an odd beast, being a proper rock ballad, but with a feeling to it that made me nick name it ‘The love boat’. It does have that feeling, just listen and you’ll understand. At the same time, it has something very appealing, maybe once again because of Phil Naro’s great vocals.

And of course, like all Colin Tench’s works, the artwork on this album (digital release available September 30th, CD in november 2016) is done by the brilliant ‘pintora’ Sonia Mota (Chipmunk). To honour her (we think, but he won’t admit it) Peter Jones contributed the 23 second Part 4b Redux to the album, which has the Chipmunks singing.

That same Peter Jones provided the vocals for my forever favourite track on this album And So, Today. Not favourite because it’s the most complex or most progressive, but because it is a very fitting and well executed tribute to all the musicians who left earthly life in the year before this album was released. Every time I hear the line “Our wild eyed boy is stardust…” I get goosebumps and the hair on my arms stands upright.

Overall, this is an album I find hard to describe. The music on this one was all mainly composed by Colin Tench himself, although the contributing musicians got a lot of freedom to fill their parts. This makes it different from Colin’s main project, Corvus Stone, which has tracks composed based on ideas by different band members. Some may find it more coherent because of this. Either way, like Zappa liked doing new things, as did Yes and Genesis in the early 70s, and The Beatles in the 60s, Colin aimed at doing something not done by other bands. And I think he succeeded. Music that sounds loose and playful, yet every note was perfectly planned. As Peter Jones sings in part 3, it’s Gooditygooditygood. Highly recommended!