“The Life of The Honey Bee, And Other Moments of Clarity“ is the eagerly and long-awaited new album from Scottish prog maestros Abel Ganz. A concept album comprising of six thematically linked pieces exploring our relationship with memory and loss. The liminal space between a fading ‘what was’ and an anticipated ‘what is to come’.
The album recalls the hazy technicolour of long remembered summers and the sepia of a love forgotten. A place where we blur the boundaries of returning and renewal. The lyrics chart the course through recollection to premonition. These words are both deeply personal and universal, hope for what is next and a lament for what we have lost.
The new album has taken six years to realise and follows on from the self-titled 2014 opus Abel Ganz which was both critically acclaimed [topping several ‘best of’ lists for that year], and universally acknowledged as the band’s best, most mature album to date.
The influences on the new album continue in a similar vein – further developing their eclectic mix of folk, rock, metal and Celtic styles. The album’s trajectory shifts between crunching guitars, subtle acoustic instruments, strings, soaring Hammond and emotive grand piano all connected by lyrical storytelling and timeless vocals and harmonies.
Produced by Denis Smith, mixed by the legendary Simon Vinestock [Texas, Blur, Robert Plant, Simple Minds] and mastered by Jacob Holm-Lupo [White Willow / Opium Cartel] the album also includes a beautiful guest performance from multi-award-winning, former ‘Scots Singer of the Year’, and acclaimed solo artist Emily Smith.
NB! Since the global outrbreak of coronovirus, we have been struggling with the dilemma over what to do. Should we press ahead with our pre-sale – or shelve the whole thing for a couple of months? As you can no doubt appreciate, we have been working incredibly hard on this project [literally for years!] and we are itching to get it out – but we do recognize that we are living through an uncertain period and that, for some, right now might not be an ideal time for us to ask for help with a fundraiser / pre-sale.
As I say – we have been struggling with this a great deal and after much deliberation and soul searching, we have finally made the decision to press ahead!
However, given there is a question mark at the moment when manufacturers and suppliers will be able to take [and process] any orders from us we have decided to push back the actual release date [we had been planning an early May release] of the album to June 15th and make this a very, very long pre-sale indeed! We hope that by then the situation will allow deliveries to be made safely.
The Life of the Honeybee and other Moments of Clarity Davie Mitchell: Electric guitar, Nashville acoustic guitars, Lead guitar, Jack Webb: Piano, Hammond B3, Electric piano Mick Macfarlane: Vocals, Electric guitars, Bouzouki David King: Acoustic guitar, Electric guitars, Additional keyboards Stephen Donnelly: Bass guitars, Denis Smith: Drums Alan Hearton: Minimoog Fiona Cuthill: Fiddles, Recorders Alex Paclin: Harmonica Snake Davis: Saxophone
One Small Soul Jack Webb: Pianos, Hammond B3 Mick Macfarlane: Vocals, Acoustic guitars, Emily Smith: Vocals David King: Electric guitars, Lead guitar, Stephen Donnelly: Double bass Denis Smith: Drums
Arran Shores David King: Acoustic guitar
Summerlong Jack Webb: Yamaha C3 grand piano, Hammond B3 Mick Macfarlane: Vocals Stephen Donnelly: Bass gtr Denis Smith: Drums All strings arranged and performed by Frank van Essen*
Sepia and White Davie Mitchell: Electric gtr Jack Webb: Piano, Hammond B3, Electric piano, Synth keyboards Alan Hearton: Moog synthesizer, Vibraphone, Additional keyboards Mick Macfarlane: Vocals, Electric guitars, David King: Electric guitars, Lead guitar, Stephen Donnelly: Electric bass guitar, Acoustic double bass guitar Denis Smith: Drums
The Light Shines Out David King: Keyboards, Drum Programming, Guitars Alan Hearton: Grand piano, Minimoog, String synthesizer Denis Smith: Vocals Stevie Lawrence: Low whistles Signy Jakobsdottir: Congas, Percussion French horns arranged and performed by Marc Papaghin*
Recorded at: Ganz Mansions, Gorbals Sound Studios, Maybank Studios, Toy Town Studios. Engineers: Denis Smith, David King, Matt Harvey, Gordon McNeil Mixed by Simon Vinestock at Mixfarm Studio Mastered by Jacob Holm-Lupo at Dude Ranch Studio Art direction and design by Stephen Donnelly, front cover painting by Vvildr, internal illustrations by Katy Levin. Produced by Denis Smith
Grand Tour Music are delighted to announce that the new album “Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk)” is available for pre-order NOW!
“Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk)” will be released on Monday 4th February. To purchase now, just go to grandtourmusic.org and visit the shop page where you can place your order. You can even get the album signed by the band – this is ONLY available with pre-orders!
The band also have both previous Grand Tour albums available as a package (signed option available here too) at a special pre-order price.
Check it out now – you can also listen to samples from every track on the album, as well as from the other albums we have for sale. So – be the first one on your patch to have the new Grand Tour album by ordering it NOW!
Clocks That Tick (But Never Talk)
Don’t Cry Now
Back in the Zone
The Panic
Shadow Walking
Game Over
Slumber Sweetly
Line-up: Hew Montgomery (Abel Ganz): keyboards Joe Cairney (Comedy of Errors): vocals Bruce Levick (Comedy of Errors): drums Mark Spalding (Comedy of Errors): guitar Chris Radford: bass
Abel Ganz return with annual ‘Prog Before Christmas’ event in 2018!
Last year’s event raised the fantastic sum of almost £2500 on behalf of cancer support charity https://www.maggiescentres.org/
This year – things are being run just a little differently. A five-band bill with two bands in the afternoon, then a break, then three bands in the evening. Our line up looks like this:
Afternoon
Glen Brielle – Hugh Carter’s solo project.
Joined by several close friends in a full band line up, Hugh will debut selections from forthcoming solo release ‘Still’ – a very personal album including epic track The Journey: a musical record of the voyage of discovery that Hugh and his wife Maria set off on after his diagnosis.
Halo Tora – Recently featured in Prog magazine this young and vital band from Glasgow are rightly drawing a great deal of attention. With a fresh and exciting sound, they really do have the the potential to go very far and we are, frankly, fortunate to have them join the bill while it’s still possible to see them up close and personal! The band has just released new album‘Man of Stone: First Chapter’.
Break
Evening
Grand Tour – Hew Montgomery solo project.
Joined by Joe Cairney from Comedy of Errors on lead vocals, and with full band line up, we are absolutely thrilled that this year’s event will feature the first live performances of Hew’s solo material. Playing selections from debut album ‘On the Beach’, and tracks from new, forthcoming album ‘Clocks that tick – but never talk’ this is sure to be a highlight of this year’s event.
Abel Ganz – Organizers / hosts will showcase new material from forthcoming album ‘The Life of The Honey Bee – and other moments of clarity’ as well as some favourites from back catalogue.
Galahad – Headline act.
With a long and illustrious history, Galahad have in recent years released one great album after another! Their 2018 release ‘Seas Of Change’, the follow up to the 2017 ‘Quiet Storms’ album consists of just one massive, hugely ambitious ‘Magnum Opus’ track exceeding 42- minutes of imaginative and dramatic modern Progressive Rock. Nominated for the 2018 UK PROG awards in the ‘UK Band/Artist of the year’ category, Galahad have, astonishingly, never before played in Scotland!
We are so very pleased to welcome all our guest to The Prog Before Xmas 2018 and we hope you will agree that this is sure to be another night to remember! Please also remember– as ever, the aim is to raise as much money for the Maggie’s charity as we possibly can.
Abel Ganz is very pleased to once again stage our ‘Prog Before Christmas’ event in 2018!
As some of you may know – last year’s event, thanks to the generosity of all the bands and audience members, managed to smash our previous total and we raised the fantastic sum of almost £2500 on behalf of cancer care charity https://www.maggiescentres.org/
We are sure you will all by now be aware, we decided to donate all proceeds from our event to this great cause as it has been such an important source of support to our dear friend [and founding member of Abel Ganz] Hugh Carter – who has become something of a champion for this charity. We are very happy indeed to say that this continues to be the case and so we will again be running this year’s show on the same basis.
As has become customary we are delighted to have some very specially invited guests who have agreed to come along to help make this what is sure to be another exceptional event.
This year – we are running things just a little differently. We noticed last year that not everyone could stay on till the end of the night [as the event ran on till 1am]. Some of the feedback we got back was that, for some, a slightly earlier finish would mean people could enjoy all the music and atmosphere of the event and still make it in time for last trains and buses home. We have taken that on board and so this year we will start earlier and finish just a little earlier.
Indeed, by adding one more band to the bill our event now becomes almost a ‘mini’ one day Prog Fest. A five band bill with two bands in the afternoon, then a break, then three bands in the evening. Our line up looks like this:
Afternoon
Glen Brielle– Hugh Carter’s solo project. Joined by several close friends in a full band line up, Hugh will debut selections from forthcoming solo release ‘Still‘ – a very personal album including epic track The Journey: a musical record of the voyage of discovery that Hugh and his wife Maria set off on after his diagnosis.
Halo Tora– Recently featured in Prog magazine this young and vital band from Glasgow are rightly drawing a great deal of attention at the moment. With a fresh and exciting sound, they really do have the potential to go very far and we are, frankly, fortunate to have them join the bill while it’s still possible to see them up close and personal! The band has just released new album ‘Man of Stone: First Chapter’.
Break
Evening
Grand Tour – Hew Montgomery solo project. Joined by Joe Cairney from Comedy of Errors on lead vocals, and with full band line up, we are absolutely thrilled that this year’s event will feature the first live performances of Hew’s solo material. Playing selections from debut album ‘On the Beach’, and tracks from new, forthcoming album ‘Clocks that tick – but never talk’ this is sure to be a highlight of this year’s event.
Abel Ganz – Organizers / hosts will showcase new material from forthcoming album ‘The Life of The Honey Bee – and other moments of clarity’ as well as some favourites from back catalogue.
Galahad– Headline act. With a long and illustrious history, Galahad have in recent years released one great album after another! Their 2018 release ‘Seas Of Change’, the follow up to the 2017 ‘QuietStorms‘ album consists of just one massive, hugely ambitious ‘Magnum Opus’ track exceeding 42-minutes of imaginative and dramatic modern Progressive Rock. Nominated for the 2018 UK PROG awards in the ‘UK Band/Artist of the year’ category, Galahad have, astonishingly, never before played in Scotland! We are so very pleased to welcome them to The Prog before Xmas and have them remedy that fact!
We hope you will agree that this is sure to be another night to remember and we would remind you all – as before, the aim is to raise as much money for the Maggie’s charity as we possibly can!!
The event will be held on Saturday December 15th in the Drygate Brewery in Glasgow and we expect to have tickets on sale from Sat 25th August. Please come along and enjoy a great night and support the event if you can.
After a very successful show last year Abel Ganz will once again stage their ‘Prog Before Christmas’ event in Glasgow which this year will be held on Saturday December 17th.
Drummer Denis Smith said “last year’s event was such a success with both Tiger Moth Tales, and We Are Kin making the night so special that we started discussing among ourselves whether it might be a worthwhile idea to try and make it a regular, annual event, with special guests invited along each year”. Very soon after we began talking about it we got the news that our dear friend and one of the original founding members of AG – Hugh Carter has been diagnosed cancer. So – this kind of made our minds up for us and we are now organizing The Prog Before Xmas 2016 as a charity fund raising event with all the proceeds going to https://www.maggiescentres.org/
Like last year Abel Ganz will be joined by two other Prog acts to round out the bill. John Young from Lifesigns – who will perform a solo spot. https://www.facebook.com/Signslife/and Big Hogg from Glasgow https://www.facebook.com/bighoggband/
Denis says “we are absolutely thrilled that both these acts have agreed to join us to help make this what we hope will be a memorable night and hopefully together we will also raise lots of money for a very worthy cause. We recently became aware of newcomers [and fellow Glaswegian band] Big Hogg and have all quickly become great fans of their style. Really interesting, great tunes, and definitely a band to watch.
We are all also huge fans of Lifesigns so of course we are all delighted that John has so kindly agreed to come and play for us.
This year, the Abel Ganz set promises to be quite different and a bit of a ‘one off’ performance. Denis explains – “it so happens that before we learned that Hugh Carter was ill both he and the other original founding member of AG, Hew Montgomery, have over the last six months or so been preparing a reissue of the very 1st AG album Gratuitous Flash from way back in 1984. This got me thinking – since I knew this reissue was coming up wouldn’t it be a great idea to try and reunite the original line up of Abe lGanz to play a couple of tunes from Gratuitous Flash at the 2016 Prog Before Xmas event. I knew that this would be something that would be a real thrill for Hugh and when I talked to him about it he was delighted!”
So – this is something I have been working away at the last couple of months and it has proven to be quite a challenge as at least one of the original line up of the band had not been seen or heard from in over twenty years and the rest of the guys have not played together in decades. However, I am happy to say that I have now tracked down every single one of them and once they learned of Hugh’s illness they have all agreed to play at this year’s Prog Before Xmas!!!
So – please spread the news far and wide. This will be the ONLY gig that Abel Ganz will do this year.
Thanks very much and really hope to see as many of you there as possible. Love to all – Abel Ganz
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
