by Angelo Hulshout | Dec 6, 2015 | Uncategorized
Composer, singer, drummer and midi player, that is the description John Crispino’s name has on the album II, the second release of his personal project Seconds before Landing. On the album he gets the assistance of Steve Schuffert on guitars, JD Garrison on bass, Jamie Peck on piano, saxophone and flute, and Maurice Witkowski on acoustic guitar.
With a line up like that, there is a hint that this could be a jazz rock influenced release, which was also the indication the first track Big Train gives. However, besides the opening track, the only one that confirmed my expectations was Silent Bird, while the rest of the album has a more electronic and midi ring to it. That is not necessarily bad, but also not entirely my cup of tea – I prefer interplay between instruments over midi sounds.
However, there is still a lot to be found on this album for people who have a different taste than mine, and quite a few of those exist. The track Hey Dad for example is clearly influenced by Pink Floyd, think of tracks like Hey You or One of My Turns. Interesting detail in this respect is that the engineer who joined Pink Floyd at the release of The Wall, Andy Jackson, also took care of production for this album.
Two other highlights are The Great Deceiver and My Perfect Girl. The former is a rocky track, with a pulsing bass and a frantic guitar, with vocals that contain a slight hint of Alice Cooper in the vocals. The latter is darker and more industrial, reminding me of Transport Aerian.
Other tracks are more electronic, even ambient, and as said, not really my thing. This type of music has the habit of becoming slightly repetitive and makes me get distracted from it. However, this style does have its fans, so with a ‘try before you buy’ stamp on it, I’m sure this will still reach many satisfied listeners.
Also published on my blog http://www.angelosrockorphanage.com
by Angelo Hulshout | Oct 30, 2015 | Uncategorized
Copied from my blog: Murky Red – No Pocus without Hocus
Sometimes, it’s hard to get into an album – as a listener, or as a reviewer. And in other cases, it just happens naturally. The latter is the case with Murky Red‘s new album No Pocus without Hocus, and album that I could listen to since 4 weeks before the official release.
Album cover – click for hi-res image
With this album, it is clear that Murky Red have grown since their debut – or maybe they just stopped being shy and are no longer holding back on what they have been wanting to play all the time. Of course, they still mix rock and blues, more elements have been added now. Heavy guitar riffs, mixed with melodic guitar solos, a well educated organ, and some nicely mixed in percussion are used to build rock walls, which are interleaved with psychedelic sound trips (no, not soundscapes), surrounding the hypnotising voice of Stef Flaming.
All of that is immediately part of the opening track Pixelated Friends, a slow, dragging piece that only speeds up briefly in the end. The topic of the track is clear from the single line “I smoked all my hashtags with some pixelated friends“, which is also a good indication of the looseness and humour the band puts in their lyrics.
This is no different in Stoned And Horny, which talks of similar experiences, but musically is almost a tribute to The Doors, Gong and maybe even some Deep Purple. After a rather rocking, shining opening (the horny part), it moves to the slow, spacey stoned part before exploding again – as if the Unknown Soldier was mixed with The End, after adding bits of Mule. Served in a tea cup… and followed by the indeed hypnotising, Sweet Dark Hypnosis.
It’s not all humour though, Murky Red does have a serious side, which shows in the care taken to compose their music, but also in the lyrics of She’s Crying Diamondsand Collateral Damage.
The first talks of a woman who seems to have lost a life of luxury, ending in the gutter, where ‘the people in the street no longer care‘. This is accompanied by a piano, dark guitar riffs and percussion that was described by a listener on my ISCK Rock Radio show as if ‘cannibals are playing the drums while making dinner’. With an instrumental midsection that features alternating guitar and keyboard leads around that same rhythm pattern, this is best described as a sad song transformed to psychedelic rock.
The second of these two, Collateral Damage, is an 6.5 minute musical description of the madness of war. Starting out rather melodically, with some guitar parts played by guest musician and producer Colin Tench, it builds up a darker and gloomier mood, with varying guitar parts, war sounds in the background, and a short eight line verse that was written already in in 1993, and that perfectly summarises the madness this is track about:
“Hear the soldiers sing
Songs of hope
And songs of suffering
Hear the children cry
See the widow’s tears
Fill her near-dead eyes
This is the pain of a nation
In times of war”
The rockier, more straight forward side of Murky Red shows on tracks like Nothing Can Go Wrong, the story of Delilah, which is centered around a heavy, fuzzed guitar mixed with an organ. The instrumental part contains a funny, jumpy bass line that made me skip back a few times. This continues into A Wooden Groove, which is 70s space rock transferred to the 21st century. The lyrics of this one are written by one who smoked too many pine needles, first singing of a tree, then explaining that the remainder of the song (a good 3 minutes) are indeed instrumental.
The last third of the album consists of four quite different tracks, starting with Bad Wolf of the Pack, which opens with a slow Gilmouresque guitar – returning to the old Murky Red adagium that they mix Pink Floyd and blues. Slow vocals, a clean guitar and simple but very fitting percussion (bongos) do the trick here. Not a complicated song at first listen, but I bet every cover band would get it wrong.
Wild Flower has vocals that are carried by keys, drums and bass – and almost no guitar – while the instrumentals feature once again some Flodyian guitar sounds. Over time the track moves away from that sound, without loosing coherence and power. This track was the first single from the album, about 6 months ago, and made a promise that came true now.
Then with Mermaids, the band takes us to the movies, with a piano opening that seems to announce the exciting opening scene of a motion picture that has no Disney label on it. The structure of this song is build around guitar riffs, with the keys playing counter melodies and the bass seems to sing its own melody underneath. I wrote in my review notes that this is music a group of hippies could play on the beach – provided there was power available to plug in their amps. There is no beach in the town of Helecine, where the band comes from, but there is a corn field, so I guess this was recorded there instead.
To close off the album, Elena is nothing short of an ode to Focus, with a guitar and organ driven beginning and end, soldered together by a slow, instrumental mid section where an acoustic guitar plays a melody resembling vaguely Für Elise, before the organ joins in to build a psychedelic sound trip. A sound trip to the ancient city of Troy, that burns for Elena’s love. A fitting end to a nice musical journey.
This album is a worthy successor to 2012’s Time Doesn’t Matter, and it shows a more out-of-the-trodden-path Murky Red. Brilliant guitar work, great organ and bass work, non standard drumming and percussion and a nice mix of humorous and serious lyrics make for a nice musical journey. The production by Colin Tench is on par with that of his own band’s Corvus Stone Unscrewed, to complete the picture. No lack of dynamics here (overall Dynamic Range of 12). To top it off, the beautiful, fitting art work by Stef Flaming himself makes the main character Maurice LeMurk into the new band mascotte.
This is not a new master piece, and it wasn’t intended to be. Like any human product, it has its flaws, and most of these I expect to be subjective to the listener. I enjoyed it, the past few weeks and will enjoy it more I’m sure. A big step forward for the band, and a big step away from the more straight forward rock on their debut album. Highly recommended.
by Angelo Hulshout | Jun 6, 2015 | Uncategorized
I’ve been a rock and metal fan for years, starting somewhere in my teens, so the early 1980s. Over time, I went from being a NWOBHM fan, to more progressive rock and metal, like Rush, Marillion, and then Dream Theater, Shadow Gallery and Ayreon. After a hiatus of 10 years (listening mainly to mainstream radio), I rediscovered progressive music around 2006, when I joined ProgArchives – where I became an admin a year after.
On ProgArchives, I learned two things. First I discovered a lot more bands from the 70s that I had heard of but never sampled (Gong, Caravan, Van Der Graaf Generator, Gentle Giant, early Genesis even). Then I set up some activities to support what we called ‘unsigned bands’ – a forum section and a MySpace page. Through that, I got to know (and introduce) a hoard of new, young bands that played great music. Due to a busy work life, I had to let go of this, reluctantly. However, in a period of my life where I’m finding a new balance, I picked up on reviewing albums again – and supporting new and lesser know acts by publishing reviews on their albums and sharing news about them on social media. This way, I got in touch with Corvus Stone, Progeland, Murky Red, Unreal City, Fractal Mirror, Silhouette, This Raging Silence, Elephants of Scotland and many more – in only a six month period.
Inspired by this, and encouraged by graphic artist Sonia Mota of Corvus Stone (who created the beautiful logo for my site and t-shirts as well), I initiated what I call Angelo’s Rock Orphanage – a place where the new, and unknown bands operating in the shadows get more attention. I have no idea where it will go, and how it will grow, but I’ll be around for a while now – music has once again become an important part of my life.
I’ll be posting small updates here every now and then – while checking the news on all artists who are members here. The main posts and reviews however will be published on my own site:
http://www.hulshout.nl/rfm – also accessible through http://www.angelosrockorphanage.com
See you there!!!
