Multi-instrumentalist Marco Ragni (who here provides vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, and bass) is back with his latest album. Peter Matuchniak (Kinetic Element, Gekko Project, Mach One, etc) returns on lead guitar, as does Dave Newhouse (The Muffins) on woodwind, Jeff Mack (Scarlet Hollow) on five-string fretted and fretless bass plus Chapman Stick along with drummer Maurizio Antonini. They were all involved in Marco’s last album, ‘The Wandering Caravan’, and the core band line-up also now includes JoJo Razor (Gekko Project) on backing vocals. There are also a few guests who make important contributions on a few tracks, namely guitarists Bjørn Riis (Airbag) and Marius Halleland (Wobbler), plus the incredible Charlie Cawood (Knifeworld) who on this release provides sitar on “Voice In The Dark”.
Released deliberately on the Summer Solstice, this album ties in with Marco turning fifty this year which has led to serious contemplation, so the songs, cover and even the lyrics underwent changes during the process. But this isn’t a melancholic or depressing album, but rather one of incredible
variety and dynamics. Some songs are almost folk-based, take “The Wind Blows Anyway” as an example. Plucked acoustic guitar forms the basis of this, along with electric piano and some dated synths which weave a tapestry of sound which the bass and drums manage to find their way into, but there are significant periods where Peter is sat waiting for his moment, as electric guitar is notable by its absence as the fretless bass resounds through whatever room is available. But then when Peter takes the opportunity it is deft, almost Gilmour-like with controlled sustain, which takes the song into new directions, leading into an ending I certainly didn’t expect. This is a very rich album, full of contrasts, dominated by the arrangements which are intricate, delicate, yet incredibly powerful. It is broad, controlled and epic prog, and there are times when one can hear the psychedelic influences which take his music back in time. It feels much more like a classic progressive album than one from the end of the second decade of the 21 st century, and it is one that is both instantly accessible and a grower. This is an album I have thoroughly enjoyed as it moves in so many directions from Floyd through Yes and even elements of Crimson but is very much Marco Ragni. 8/10 by Kev Rowland
;;; In the studio with Martin and Norm., British Columbia, Canada, Isobel Springett
A few years ago, I heard about an album which had been reissued by Gonzo that was creating a lot of interest. I duly searched out the release, thoroughly enjoyed it, and wrote a review and thought little more of it. A few weeks later, Martin had seen the review and tracked me down through one of the sites I work for. Since then it is safe to say we are in communication very frequently indeed, and I have been fortunate enough to hear his other albums, as well as enjoying his wonderful artwork. When it came time for my books to be released, I cheekily asked Martin if he would like to be involved, and he jumped at the opportunity, and has designed the covers for all three, for which I am eternally grateful. He has just finished recording his latest album, ‘Boy On A Bike’, so now seemed to be the right time to have a formal chat.
From a fairly young age you followed a path in both illustration and music, who/what inspires you in both fields?
Some early inspirations as you know, stay with you for life, so let’s start there. ‘What is the point of a book without pictures’? asks Alice in Alice In Wonderland. Well exactly, that was my view in my young years growing up in England, I was only interested in books with pictures and so reading novels came late to me. Certainly, comics were a big influence, in fact, one of my first attempts at the form was a ‘graphic novel’ version of John Carter Of Mars created when I was 13 years old. Alas, this has been lost, but I do recall getting an early insight into how time-intensive this sort of project could be, three weeks of work and I was on page 8 of the novel. I had yet to learn how to use images to create sweeping broad narratives, to go for the heart of it, leaving out unessential details. The Eagle comic was a huge influence as well, I cannot underestimate just much I learned from the various illustrators who worked on this tabloid-sized publication. This comic was an institution in the U K in the ’50s and 60’s. Dan Dare, created by Frank Hampson, was the flagship strip, printed on the front pages, essentially the R A F in space! Arriving every Wednesday morning with the postman it was a highlight of my week. I lived in a pub in Appledore in Kent, my mum and stepfather were the publicans, and my ‘studio’ was a tiny room which housed the hot water tank and the drying laundry! There was a small window that overlooked the village green, and I have many happy memories of being in my own world in that wee room, drawing as the rain pattered against the window; even now when I am working, the sound of rain against the window conjures up that same feeling. I can go to whatever worlds I care to inhabit, all I need is a 2B pencil, a piece of paper and my imagination.
On Remembrance Day, 1962, around noon, I was listening to the BBC on a tiny transistor radio. It was my job to serve the kids that came into the pub, for ice cream, pop, etc. Unusually the beer barrels for this pub, The Victoria Inn, were on the main floor, directly behind the bar. I was drawing in my sketchbook, positioned close to the door that lead from the barrel room to the public bar. Whenever a kid came in, my stepfather would rap on the door, and then I would open the door, and serve the young customer. While waiting for that nock, I listened to the radio. It was tuned to a program called Two Way Family Favourites, a request show for British soldiers stationed in Germany and their families. I wasn’t listening very closely, the pop music of the day didn’t interest me much, although I had discovered American blues recently. Then I heard it, the harmonica intro to Love Me Do! Clearly here was something cool, blues-influenced, yet played by an English band, requested by an army lad stationed in Germany who wanted his family to hear Liverpool favorites, The Beatles. (I know the exact date and time of when I first heard The Beatles because of Mark Lewison’s amazing book, Tune In. Highly recommended).
What fanned out from these major young influences, a comic called The Eagle, a band called The Beatles, essentially altered the course of my life. I was drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil, and I, like millions of other guys and gals, had to have a guitar after hearing The Beatles. So I got my first ratty guitar at 14, a late start really, but I was a quick study and had all the basic chords learned a year later, mainly from Beatle songbooks.
The Beatles, Bach, and the Blues, all in the same year! Overwhelming and wondrous! (The new Gardening Club album, ‘Boy On A Bike’, has a direct connection to this period.) Some years later when Progressive Rock made its first appearance, the combination of the visual and musical storytelling was irresistible. Yes, especially, with Roger Dean’s great expansive covers. I wanted to do both things, create great covers like Dean’s and write songs like Yes. I simply had to do both! A clearly impossible task, as there were sometimes three to four composers per song! I found my own voice of course, after many years of exploration. Those early Yes albums were addictive I have to say, as was Jethro Tull, but I turned away from prog-rock for a while, for one main reason, it was just too arranged. As much as I loved it all, I was enthralled by Jazz musicians who created music in the moment, improvising spiraling lines and rhythms that were so exciting. The Mahavishnu Orchestra opened up that door of course! I have been dealing with that ‘tension’ ever since, writing and arranging the music, fascinated with ‘orchestral’ details and colors, but leaving room for the improvised serendipitous moment! King Crimson has dealt with that tension very well, and still, are!
The recent rise of interest in ‘books with pictures’, that is graphic novels, and the vinyl revival has been very inspirational for me. The art for ‘Boy On A Bike’, is centered around panels, or portals, echoing the layout for a comics page. The art for this project allowed me to return to some early artistic influences. I used the gateway metaphor for a life journey, so I created gates that echoed my favorite comic book artists, Moebius and Jim Woodring as well as, Picasso, Klimt, Dali and others who have had an impact on my artistic life.
My career in children’s books was long and fruitful, not only in all the art I created for a great many books and book covers, but in my travels all across Canada as a presenter to students in schools and libraries. I would go through all the nuts and bolts of how to create an illustrated book, using a slide show, drawing on the spot and ending every presentation I gave with a short performance on the guitar. Even though these were, you might say, the ‘quiet years’ as in no one was listening to the recordings that I constantly made, the presentations I gave year after year in the schools kept my guitar performance chops up quite well.
You made the decision to emigrate to Canada, but then returned to Europe to tour and play music, what are your favorite memories of this period?
Playing a tour in Germany and Austria, opening for Soft Machine was a highlight as I got to see Allan Holdsworth play every night for two weeks! I was in a band at that time called Gateway Driver. We were based in a little village just outside Hannover, two Brits and two German lads. So, I had my ‘German experience’, like a lot of British bands did! Later on, I lived in London and worked for CBS, now Sony, records creating L P covers. I did Ian Hunter’s first solo L P cover, still available amazingly, interior illustrations for an Argent record, and a Stravinsky L P, The Three Great Ballets. This won Best Classical Cover Of The Year award. I also recorded some demos with a hopeful band I was in at the time at Morgan Studios, famous for many a prog rock recording, including Tales From Topographic Oceans.
1983’s ‘The Gardening Club’ was your first released album, by which time you were already a well-known fantasy illustrator for both books and records. How did the album come about, who else was involved, and how would you describe it to someone who has yet to hear it?
The Gardening Club was a culmination of many, many things. I had first walked into a professional recording studio in Vancouver in 1969 to record an album of Tolkien’s poems that I had set to music from The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. It was never released; Christopher Tolkien would not give his permission to allow the LP to come out. At that time, I met a young recording engineer named Don Geppert who worked at Studio 3 where I recorded all the Tolkien material. He had moved to Toronto in 1976, and when I later moved to the city as well, I got in touch. I met Don in the studio where he worked, he told me to bring my guitar along, so I could play a few new songs for him. I did so, and after listening he said, “Well we must do something.” So, the adventure began! It was recorded over a three-year period, which was rather frustrating for me at the time, but I could only get into the studio when it was not in use. Don generously donated his time and long experience in the studio, so I essentially had free studio time but paid all the musicians who played on the record. The arrangements came about organically as we rehearsed in the studio, usually the rhythm section first. The drummer, Penner MacKay added so much rhythmic fuel to this music; that’s one of the reasons I think it has stood the test of time, I cannot overestimate how important Penner is to the musical success of the album. The bass players Paul Daiter and Paul Blaney were perfect additions to the ‘engine room’, and those initial sessions discovering the rhythmic possibilities of each song are some of my favorite memories of that time.
I had very clear ideas about all the details I wanted to hear on top, and my good pal Russ Walker (Heads In The Sky) added his wonderful flute sounds to two songs on side two. I recall I sang all the flute melodies to him as we recorded! He had great ideas of his own, of course, but this is how the recording process went, me doing a lot go singing, to sometimes bemused players! Bob Brough, who is still playing in jazz groups here in the city, played a brilliant solo on “The Traveller”. I love jazz and wanted that saxophone sound somewhere on the album for sure, and this 5/4 tune was just the right vehicle for him. My other Vancouver pal, Ann Mortifee added her beautiful voice to “Andromeda”, and to me it makes the song soar, and it makes it work. The perfect sound for the ‘cosmic’ experience I hoped it would be. One thing this album did for me, is that it gave me confidence in my musical choices, choosing the right sounds to echo the emotional and musical intentions of the song.
It is almost impossible for me to describe the music on ‘The Gardening Club’ album, as I know very well that labels are on the one hand restrictive and on the other, can help people connect to music that they don’t know through the association of that which they do know. I never called this music, Progressive Rock. When I made it, it’s just, “An album of songs by Martin Springett.” Yes, I used a twelve-string, but not because of Genesis. I picked up the twelve because of Leadbelly! I was never influenced by them or Camel either. I have never listened to Camel! The thing is, I sound English, I have always sounded like this, it’s in my DNA. Those early influences are still there, but now shaped by my years in Canada, or, North America. So, jazz and blues are in there gliding alongside my melodic English sensibilities, and also my love of classical music. You could say my roots are, Vaughn Williams, The Beatles, Miles Davis, Stravinsky, Debussy, XTC, Weather Report, etc; the usual gumbo! Those who took the time to listen to The Gardening Club for what it was, rather than compare it to Yes, Genesis etc and find it wanting, those reviewers, ‘got’ the music very well.
From then on you released a few albums over the years both solo and with bands, but what was the idea behind the “duo” album of ‘Diving Into Small Pools’?
The impetus for ‘Diving Into Small Pools’ was essentially this – why create music, if no one is listening. Is it ‘delusional’ to think, as Bill Bruford suggests in his otherwise excellent autobiography, that making music when no is interested is the act of a person who has lost touch with reality? What if, you have to do it, no matter what anyone says or thinks. What if you know on some level, that what you are doing, has the potential to engage and interest people even if all the evidence suggests otherwise. So, I decided to create an album that was going to take me back to my earliest listening influences and make it my musical autobiography in the music business, my so called ‘career’. I had had so many disappointments in my time, the Tolkien album, ‘The Gardening Club’ LP going nowhere, and many others while in the U K and Europe, that I could whinge with the best of them. Then it occurred to me that I could use humour to make it much more than a whiny ‘o woe is me’ experience. Certainly, having a sense of humour had saved my sanity on several occasions while negotiating the biz that is music. I brought in my altered ego, Eddie Fielder to help me. I was born, Martin Edward Fielder, changing my name to Springett to placate my stepfather Walter Springett. I always thought I would change it back to Fielder at some point, but it never happened. So Eddie has lots to say throughout the record, he takes on several roles; usually those know it all’s who knew bugger all about music that I had met in my travels, managers with a gun in the briefcase, obnoxious record company dudes who couldn’t wait to put you down, for ‘looking like a boy scout on stage’, etc etc, many weird and wacky individuals, so many that I made the decision a year after I had made ‘The Gardening Club’, to pull out of the music business entirely. I had had enough. Enough of the business, but never the music.
Once I had my theme, a river of songs just started pouring out, it was liberating in every way, clearly, I needed to do this. I remember sitting on the couch one day, I was alone in the house, the family was out and about, writing about six songs in succession, lyrics first, music second. I had just gotten my first iMac, and Garage Band changed my musical life! I could record at home, no longer worried about studio time, and take, my time, to get it right. I had to get over the ‘horror’ of using drum loops, that didn’t take long of course. The songs took shape as I recorded them, I did a lot of improvising, taking bits and pieces from here and there, it was all way too much fun, except, it was all me all the time. I wasn’t used to that. I loved hearing other players on my songs, it always improved them immeasurably. Gradually I brought in some wonderful Toronto musicians to add their sounds, Allyssa Wright on cello on “Wired For Sound”; Tim Hammel on trumpet for “Miles To Go”; Chris Church on violin on “Thieves and Poets Part 2”; Kevin Laliberte on flamenco guitar, “Thieves and Poets, parts 2 and 3”; Wayne Kozak on “Caves and Cathedrals”! Now it started to sound good. I had so many songs that I ended up with a 2 CD set. Like a lot of song writers though, I needed a second pair of ears to help me evaluate the music, and Don Geppert agreed to take my not so technically great recordings and mix and master them. What a difference that made. I was very happy to work with Don again. A couple of years after I had completed the two discs though, I began to see and hear that the concept had lost its focus spread over so many songs. So, I edited out those that were the weakest, and made it into a single volume set. I redesigned the package and it’s now a single CD experience and much the better for it. I did do some tweaking on some songs, discreet stuff, but enough of an improvement that I can listen to it now and enjoy this very eccentric and eclectic musical journey.
During this period did you just see music as a hobby?
Music was never a hobby, it was something I had to do, every day, always. It kept me sane, can’t live without it. Whether it was playing for the kids in my school presentations, the very occasional solo gig, or recording at home, it was always part of my everyday life. My family was very supportive, and both my daughters, Rebecca and Miriam, played flutes and we recorded together several times. They play on the ‘Bright Weaving’ CD, my musical homage to fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay.
Gonzo Media reissued ‘The Gardening Club’ in 2016, and it now received critical acclaim. How did the reissue come about and were you surprised at the rekindled interest?
To say I was surprised at the interest shown in ‘The Gardening Club’ after all this time, would be putting it mildly. The thing is, it wasn’t rekindled interest really, because there never was any interest to begin with, anywhere. Two separate things occurred around the same time. Ed Kanerva of Spacewreck Records got in touch, to see whether I would like to rerelease the album, as an LP. I was somewhat behind the proverbial eight ball in realizing that vinyl had made a significant comeback. Someone had put up all the tracks from ‘The Gardening Club’ on YouTube, and Ed loved the art as well as the music, and got in touch. Ed works for a comic/graphic novel publishing house, so he has his fingers on the pulse of the zeitgeist all right! His mission was to promote ‘cosmic Canadiana’, especially if it had been overlooked, and I was a classic example of that. Ed was amazed to find I still had 300 copies of the L P in the basement, the original pressing, unopened, catnip for the uber vinyl collector. So, Ed put a package together, with a second LP, ‘Songs From The Greenhouse’, that was made up of songs that I recorded around the time ‘The Gardening Club’ was originally released. All those songs were archived on cassette tape, that most dreaded of musical formats, but Don Geppert came to the rescue again and digitized and remastered all the songs.
The second thing was Rob Ayling of Gonzo Multimedia, based in the U K, got in touch to ask about the rights situation, re ‘The Gardening Club’ album. I had signed a deal with Spacewreck Records just a few weeks before, and wasn’t sure whether I was free to sign up with Rob as well, but as Gonzo wanted to do a CD version, not an LP, and would be selling mainly in the U K and Europe, Ed gave his blessings to a new deal with Gonzo Multimedia. Once again, I got in touch with original producer Don Geppert, and Don agreed to digitize all the songs from the vinyl LP and remaster them. Rob wanted to add most of the songs from the ‘Songs From The Greenhouse’ LP as well to ‘The Gardening Club’ CD. I had fun creating a 24-page illustrated lyric booklet to accompany the music, although I had to go into my archive to find a lot of the images as time was short. The most surprising thing then in the long run, was all the positive reviews, 32 years later!
This then inspired you to form a band and start recording again, so how did The Gardening Club get together and how did you decide on the line-up?
Six months after my heart operation, I played a concert in Victoria BC at a vinyl record store called Vinyl Envy. The lads in the store loved the ‘Gardening Club’ story, and as I had a 2 LP vinyl package for sale, they were very keen to have me in to play a concert. With me was Norm Macpherson on guitar, and Wayne Kozak on saxophone with Neil Golden on percussion. The concert went very well, and Norm right away wanted to record “Blues For Richard” in his home studio. As we got talking, we both realized that we had something special in the music we had played that night at Vinyl Envy. We had to capture it. Norm had had a studio for many years in Windsor, Ontario, and was a very experienced recording engineer. A few months later we started recording what would become ‘The Riddle’. The main idea at that point was for me to finally record as many of the songs that I had of our friend Cyril McColgans poetry. I had been setting Cyril’s poems to music for many years but had never collected them into one place; here finally was the ideal way to do that. Wayne Kozak recommended Sean Drabitt on fretless bass, and he was the perfect choice for these songs. His deep rich sound filled out the harmonic movements beautifully, plus he is an amazing improviser. The drums initially were a problem, as we used loops just to get going, but then Norm’s son James heard the “Riddle Overture” and wanted to be a part of it all, and began programming drum tracks that once again lifted the music up and were a perfect fit. James is a big fan of bands like Dream Theater and Devin Townsend, so he brought in the drama that we needed. I have known saxophonist Wayne Kozak for many years, and I always want his sound on any project I do. Years of stage and studio experience shine through in his playing, a consummate improviser! Norm Macpherson is a brilliant guitarist, arranger, and producer, and his slide playing is an unusual addition to what could be called a prog-rock album, always intense and musically and emotionally involving. I am extremely lucky to have all these players who respond so well to my musical musings!
Although my good friend Terry Findlay did not play on the album, he was an integral part of its success, as he was the one who initially had the idea that Norm would sound great on my songs. This really was the first important step, so I can’t thank him enough.
Please can you provide a track by track breakdown of the resulting album, ‘The Riddle’.
The Riddle Overture –
I loved the idea of starting off the album with a rock cliché, if you like, to see whether we could pull it off, but this tune become in a way much more than that. I had recorded the basic guitar tracks and temp melodies and we had added Norm on bass, and a drum loop, just to get going. I called Norm the following morning, how does it sound I asked him, in ‘the cold light of day?’. He responded in typical Norm fashion, ‘I added some shit last night.’ I have since learned that when Norm says this, be prepared! When I heard it later that day, I was amazed, he had added a searing slide guitar line and string orchestration, it took the whole thing to a different realm. That one tune opened up all the possibilities for Norm and myself, it set the tone. When James added his drums and a superb synth solo, that’s when it seemed to me that here was a band, trading ideas and influences and coming up with something unique. A rather more than cool beginning! The doors were now open!
Whirled Away
This was written in the studio, sort of between takes on another song, it was one of the few Cyril lyrics that I had not set to music. I was bubbling over with ideas, just having so much fun. I should add that Norm’s studio is surrounded by forest, deep in the countryside, it is the most inspiring space I have ever recorded in. (Yes, many gifts have come my way recently. I am forever grateful.) My connection to Cyril’s words is visceral, I just know when it works, when the melody marries the words, and the emotion is distilled in a purely musical way. When Norm said, is that a Cyril song and I said yes, he said let’s record it right away, while it’s hot out of the oven.
Seven-Year-Old Poet
“A dog on fire / pursued by a dog on fire”. Yes, dark stuff, written by a young guy in search of himself. Essentially, the blues, the human condition, and a song I have had for maybe ten years or so, rattling away asking to be recorded. Norms solo on this song, as far as I am concerned is as good as it gets, digging deep into the changes and the emotional darkness, but what a great release of tension!
Blues For Richard
When I was recovering from my heart operation, I heard that our good pal, Richard Moore, had died from a brain tumour. Richard was important to both Norm and I in our youthful musical days, growing up in Victoria. Norm and Richard were in a band called Blues By Five, and then Richard joined me in The Iliad when BB5 broke up. Later Richard and I had some crazy musical experiences around the same time in the U K in the 70’s. Richard joined the Troggs; need I say more! Richard later moved to California, where he became a real estate agent, but was always playing in a band somewhere.
The slow 5/4 section in this tune was the first thing I played upon hearing that Richard had died. It just came out fully formed. I knew it was for him, but I realized I wanted to go into this homage to Richard with a full-on band riff that he would have enjoyed, with the sadness held back until the end.
Leaving Home
Just before we did our concert in Victoria, that set the ball rolling on this new Gardening Club adventure, being in an excitable state, I wanted to write something brand new for the gig, and this song was the result. I have quite a few different versions of this lyric but none that really clicked with me. For quite a while after my surgery, I could not hit all the high notes I used to, so for the first time ever, I used a capo to change the key of a particular song, but not the chord shapes. The guitar does sound different when you put a capo over the strings, no doubt, and I was quite taken with the timbre of the raised string sound. I just started playing a particular chord sequence that I had always liked but had never sung over. (For those with an interest in this sort of thing, it’s actually the first four chords of the sequence I use on the tune, Eddie’s Theme on Diving Into Small Pools. I’m allowed to steal from myself.) With the words in front of me the song just took off, one minute it wasn’t there, the next it was. I would say it took as long to write the song as it took to play it. This never happens.
Pauline
Of all the surprises on’ The Riddle’, this may be the most surprising, because Norm plays the bassoon! He has been a symphony musician since he was a teenager, straddling both the popular music world and the orchestral world. This is why he is so adept at arranging, a deep knowledge of orchestration. It wasn’t clear to us what instrument should play the melody here, we tried guitar, mandolin, voices. As soon as Norm played it on the bassoon it seemed the perfect fit. The most ‘English’ sounding tune on the album.
The story behind this tune is that at one time I was asked to create illustrations for a novella by JRR Tolkien called ‘Farmer Giles Of Ham’. I went to England to talk to the publisher, and while in the office I asked if Pauline Baynes the original illustrator of the book was still alive. Very much so, came the reply, and I asked for her phone number. I called her, and my brother-in-law and I visited her in her magical cottage deep in the Surrey countryside. And so began a lovely friendship, whose memory I cherish. Pauline heard my setting of Tolkien’s words and loved the music, you can imagine how much this meant to me as Pauline and Ronald, as she called him, were very good pals. Often, she and her husband Fritz went on holiday with Tolkien and his wife.
In this tune I tried to capture the feeling I had when visiting Pauline, and the magical worlds she helped to create in Tolkien’s books, and in the Narnia books by CS Lewis, for which she is justly famous around the world, wherever children read books!
Notes On The Affair
There is no doubt that Cyril’s lyrics are often dark and intriguing, and maybe that’s why I like them, nothing is spelled out clearly, there is a mystery at the heart of it all. Here, the chorus, “the light in her life / will be the light in my own / and I will not know the difference …” is perhaps his most positive statement, and I couldn’t resist going into a major key for this one, which is unusual for me. The jazzier verse sequence came about as I was exploring a new Taylor guitar, sometimes a new instrument will inspire new sounds, no doubt! Once again Norm shows his amazing fluency on the gut string guitar, an improvised solo here that he arranged for marimba and other instruments, so that it sounds like a written-out passage. Perfect for the song. The ending is mysterious, why go to India at that point? Because it felt exactly right to do so; perhaps that is the end of the affair, or, the place it takes our couple.
The Original Sleep
This poem is by Robert Priest, a quite brilliant Toronto poet who I have known for many years. I always found this poem so intriguing, and as usual I kept coming up with ideas that I felt did not go where the poem took me. As I live in Toronto and Norm lives in Metchosin near Victoria on Vancouver Island, our recording sessions happen when I visit every two or three months. In the time when I am at home here in T O I work on new music or the art that will accompany the music on its release. Obviously, we are both aware of file sharing, but something special happens when we are in the same room together, a musical chemistry that is unique, so we prefer to create in real time when we are in Garry Oak Studio, Metchosin.
When I started working on this song, I realized I was now in a position to write for a band, or a sound, so that influenced all my writing from then on. The song was originally much longer than the recorded version, I had a whole other section that vanished after Norm wielded his musical scalpel, saying the immortal words, ‘I think we can lose the last five minutes’. And he was right! It is now a very focused piece of music, conjuring the up the deep green evening of an African forest, “the countries are so vast there / and the love so true.” Once again Norm’s slide guitar amplifies and sustains the mysterious atmosphere of the lyric.
Tears At The Matinee
This is the oldest tune on the record. I must have set this at least twenty years ago, but as much as I liked it, it didn’t really fit any other project I worked on. The original title was Tears At the Matinee 1971, so it’s the only poem in Cyril’s book, ‘The Upside Down Blackbird’, with a specific date. This is very much a portrait of our young years, and I always loved the words and was thrilled to have found just the right setting for it.
Having Wayne Kozak and Sean Drabitt on the song was a gift worth waiting for. Their combined harmonic knowledge and musical story telling are a perfect fit.
Waltz
When Norm and I met again after many years, we had a lunch and a listen to my new songs at his place, just to see whether we could connect musically. I had been working on this song and played it for him, it was indeed the first Cyril song of mine that Norm heard. One could call it the ‘lightest’ song on the album, but the lyrics belie that I think. The delightful surprise here for me was James MacPherson’s perfect synth solo.
The Riddle
The tune is from some years ago, the lyrics written as we recorded. This was not meant to be on the album, it was just an exploration to see whether it worked, just a bunch of chords and me trying to sing! I was still having problems hitting high notes that I used to reach fairly easily. However, I was determined to meet this challenge, but it would have been foolish to push my voice if it sounded strained, so we left this one on the back burner. We worked on all the other songs then came back to this, and by that time, just by having done all that singing, I was now comfortable with the melody. After I came up with the words, I realized that it tied all sorts of threads together; you don’t always know what you are up to until it’s finished. You take the journey, but the destination is often hazy.
Entracte
Just a little echo of my love for composers like Eric Satie.
The Riddle Overture Reprise
I wanted to write something where everyone in the band gets a solo, and we tie a musical ribbon around the whole thing. I think we go out here in a celebratory mood. We felt so good that what started as a tentative idea to see if we could do anything ‘interesting’ turned into ‘The Riddle’, a complete and sustained musical journey, with important musical and emotional touchstones for all of us. Truly a band effort, everyone contributing their best work, and enjoying it all so much.
One word on the order of the songs. As I was designing the CD package, I realized that I had to make that decision, as I was determined to have a lyric booklet, this was essential as Cyril’s words were so important in the genesis of the album and its outcome. I was working on the back cover of the CD package. I placed the image I had decided to use, one of ‘The Three Riddles’, that I had created after coming home from the hospital. The album did not even have a name. I looked at the list of songs. It seemed to me that ‘The Riddle’, short and to the point, even if the point was a mystery seemed to be the perfect title. Also, it lined up with the art. I had always assumed it would be a Cyril song as the title, not one of mine. Obviously, the Overture would come first, then the opening lines of Whirled Away “About to laugh / about to be let in on a secret…” Seemed to set the tone for what was coming up. After that I simply went with my instinct about what would naturally follow, contrasting tempos and sounds, like a suite.
Have you surprised yourself with your enthusiasm for getting back into the studio?
All of this has been a surprise on so many levels, I let go of this musical dream many years ago when ‘The Gardening Club’ album “died”. To have it all resurrected in this way has been completely life affirming and inspiring!
You have already been back in the studio working on a follow-up album, ‘Boy On A Bike’. Is this in a similar vein? When do you expect this to be available?
‘Boy On A Bike’ is you might say a continuation of our musical explorations, the difference being the lyrics apart from two songs are all mine, so the emotional themes are quite different, plus James wrote one of the tunes on the album, “WolfGate”. I wrote most of the music on the heels of finishing The Riddle, I was very inspired and couldn’t wait to get to the next thing! We hope the album will be available in October.
What is next for Martin Springett in both your artistic and musical endeavours?
Right now, I am putting together the lyric book and CD package for ‘Boy On A Bike’. I will actually be glad to park the bike, very soon, it’s been a rather long ride, but I am so happy with this new album, we went to new places and landscapes for sure.
Recently having performed with Syrian violinist Sari Alesh, we are adding his sound to our band, and Norm and I will be performing with Sari as a trio this coming November and recording some new tunes as soon as we can. I have a feeling the next project will be very different. Which is as it should be. We just go where the music and emotions take us. Our lives are wrapped up in all this. That’s the true joy of it all.
I’m a science fiction singer-songwriter. Or maybe a weird-fiction singer-songwriter. I’d say the latter, but the phrase ‘weird fiction’ is a bit less well known so sci-fi seems a better bet. A line I used to use was “I’m what you get if early Genesis started writing songs with Nick Cave after watching too many episodes of Doctor Who”.
Occasionally I’m a live act, both acoustic and in the last year or so as a full band. But I do have a full-time job – I work for a social mobility charity in London – that means gigging is pretty hard to do. I just don’t have the time, and my main mission over the last few years has been to catch-up with my songwriting and get all my best songs recorded and released. Sunday mornings are a great time for recording, far less conducive to gigging. People don’t want to come see you play on a Sunday morning.
I’ve been accused of being a prog rock artist. I like that, but I’m not sure how useful it is because if you listen to my stuff expecting it to sound like 1970’s progressive rock, I think you’ll be disappointed. The main influences for me are David Bowie, Radiohead, Mansun, lots of heavy metal bands, various bits of folk, Meat Loaf, the musical Sweeney Todd and my sort-of-classical composition training. I know that might sound an odd mix, but the two main threads are story telling songs and nerdy clever musician stuff like funny chords and time signatures. I always think I’m trying to write music for two people. One of them likes a singalong chorus that tells a story, the other likes clever-clever musician stuff. And the two don’t necessarily like the same things, so you have to write things so the one who likes singalong choruses doesn’t notice the funny time signatures at the same time as the one who likes the funny time signatures doesn’t care they’re listening to a singalong rock song. And both of them are me.
Does that all make sense? Possibly not. But it is still true.
Who originally inspired you musically to pick up an instrument and who inspires you now?
Mine is a musical family. My mum was a music teacher in local schools, including my primary school (though she took ten years out to raise me and my siblings). My dad and brother play guitar, my sister the bassoon. So, there hasn’t been a time when I didn’t make music. I remember sitting at the piano pre-school age learning the basics. I played violin for a few years in primary school, which I think might have been the tail-end of free individual instrumental lessons in my neck of the woods before they were cut. I then took up guitar at about the age of ten. I also sang in my mum’s choir at primary school.
In my teens I got into rock music, heavy metal and 90s grunge. I wanted to be Eddie Vedder, or maybe Thom Yorke, or maybe James Hetfield. I started writing my own songs and started a band with some mates. It was called Nothing Sacred – awful emo stuff. We did one little TV appearance inappropriately on Nickleodeon – I’m not quite sure why they had us on. We were about fifteen and they asked for acts and our bass player sent them a tape cos he thought it would be funny that they heard this dodgy rock band in amongst the wannabe pop stars: but they said yes and we ended up playing on TV while 70’s disco sensation Leo Sayer rocked out on a beanbag. Looking back, it was a bit odd.
I went off to college, then uni, studied music – mostly composition – and played in a songwriting duo called Comrade Robot. Then in 2010 I started releasing music solo, and by my second album – 2012, so about 16 years into songwriting – I started to find my voice and figure out who I really am as a songwriter.
Who inspires me now? Recent artists that I’ve wanted to steal ideas from include Paul Mosley, Richard Dawson, Matt Blick and there’s always David Bowie and King Crimson, obviously.
To the uninitiated what is Steampunk, how did you discover it and what fascinates you about the scene?
Steampunk is not a kind of music. It’s a genre of science fiction that takes inspiration from Jules Verne style of science fiction but seen through a retro lens – Verne and HG Wells were writing contemporary sci-fi as it were. The name is a play on cyberpunk, which is Blade Runner style gritty near future sci-fi. The ‘punk’ bit in both alludes to the American use of the term as in ‘you dirty punk’ not to punk music directly.
My first few albums told steampunk stories. So, the music itself isn’t steampunk – and despite what a lot of silly people on the internet sometimes say there’s no such thing as a steampunk style of music – but the lyrics are.
I have an ambivalent attitude to the scene. The people are lovely, the events can be fun, but it isn’t a music centred scene. They prefer cabaret style stuff where the audience can get involved, and except on rare occasions I’ve never really felt my music fits with what the audience wants in a live setting. Prog audiences where people are really into their music and want to listen to every note suit my music much better.
At the very end of ‘Fit the Fourth’, my last album, I looped in a little hint of the opening of my first album ‘Spinning the Compass’ as if to say. “that’s finished, the loop is closed, no more steampunk stuff”. All the releases since have not been steampunk at all.
Your first album, ‘Spinning The Compass’ featured just you, and most releases since have been the same. Is it that you don’t like other musicians, or they don’t like working with you?
I can’t stand them. Preening, egotistical idiots, all of them. Don’t get me started on singers. They’re the worst of the lot.
No, not really. Partly it’s personality as I’m naturally a bit of a loner. Partly its practicality. I mentioned the lack of time, well, organising people takes a lot of time. If I’m to get the work of recording all these songs recorded, I need to be efficient and that usually means doing things myself. Having said that since ‘Fit the Fourth’ I’ve had other people collaborating musically on most releases, with ‘Demon’ my latest album as the most collaborative. You can get some great results by just asking good musicians to record what they think fits.
I’m a solo artist for a good reason – I have no interest in compromising on what these songs should sound like. This is my project, my vision, what I want to say with the popular song format. I have no desire to share that with someone else or to work at someone else’s pace. I’ll have other people play for me, but it’ll definitely be me with the final say so.
What was Murder and Parliament?
Murder and Parliament is a name I gave to an instrumental project that was a sort of heavy metal-ish, post-rock, weird ambient music. I had a load of music that had originally been written for classical instruments back at uni, but never realised. I decided to rearrange a lot of it for rock band, add a load of drums and make an album of it. It worked pretty well. I like the mix of heavy metal instrumentation and scored out part-writing. There are also some great additions from Alun Vaughan on bass and Chrissie Caulfield on violin.
It isn’t finished either. I’m slowly bringing together ideas for Murder and Parliament’s second album. I’m not sure when it will be ready, certainly not in the next 9 months, but hopefully before the end of 2020 there’ll be another Murder and Parliament album.
Unusually for a “serious” musician, you also release a lot of singles and EP’s. Why is that and where do you see the value?
I take offence at being called a serious musician! Well, not really, but seriousness is too easy, I have no interest in it. I want to be an entertaining musician, a fun musician. I sincerely believe that in art the most difficult thing to do consistently and well is being fun. I want my music to be fun.
Is it unusual to do lots of ‘non-album’ releases? These days I think the artist that only releases one album every two years is behaving pretty strangely. That’s not how the audience listens. Why not pay attention to the audience a bit more? People these days listen to a lot of audio – whole albums and playlists on a commute, hours of podcasts just when mowing the lawn or washing the dishes. And they move on to new stuff quickly. That’s where culture is, so why not give people what they want? I’ve got a tiny group of fans, but they do like my music, so why not give them stuff to listen to.
And besides, I have the ideas and the songs. If I have two songs that fit together but will probably never belong on an album, why not release them digitally? Same with the EPs. I had a load of acoustic murder ballads last year. They weren’t long enough to be an album on their own, but there were enough to make an EP, so I did. As I said, I want to get all my good songs recorded. Lots of releases are necessary!
How did you first meet up with the Great Elephant, and was curry involved?
There are two versions of this story, the public one and the real one. I’ll ask you please to print the ‘public’ one, but I’ll tell you the real one too. Just whatever you do, don’t print the real one.
Here’s the public version: David Elephant from Bad Elephant music stumbled across my third album, ‘Three Rows of Teeth’, online. He liked it, played it on his podcast and we got to chatting online. He offered to put out my fourth album ‘Fit the Fourth’, and I said yes. Really easy. David’s great to work with.
So that’s what you can print. Please don’t print what actually happened, which was this: He showed up at my house. Him, in a suit, with trunk and tusks, and these two thugs behind him, one with a Yorkshire accent the other sounding German. They muscled their way into my house, trashed my studio and made it very, very clear that if I didn’t do what they said I would be physically hurt. Then they made me sign this contract. It was three hundred pages long, they didn’t let me read any of it, and they made me sign it in my own blood.
I’m scared, Kev. Scared. And so is every other BEM artist. Except Simon Godfrey, because he’s an idiot.
Have you any desire to work with any other artists on BEM? I have always thought a joint effort with Matt Deacon could produce interesting offspring.
Yeah, in principle. I’ve co-written and performed on a song with Mike Kershaw and added some guitar to Shineback’s last album, but apart from that I haven’t done much. I’d be well up for working with Matt Deacon, though I’m a little scared of his obsession with hot sauce. That’s kinda weird.
Talk us through Demon, song by song, and what you were trying to achieve in each case.
I have actually recorded a video for each song explaining what they’re about. I’ve done guitar tabs and stuff as well. But they’re only for people on my mailing list. The album is autobiographical, just not in the lyrics. Each song alludes in some way to family, or places I’ve lived.
“Wizards of this Town” is about drunk wizards trying to fix their town through magic. It has odd drunken verses and a big singalong indie rock chorus. Definitely one of my most accessible songs. People really seem to like it. It’s inspired by the area I was working in at the time, having just left teaching to move into educational charity.
“Modern World” is the second track. It’s the longest track on the album and it’s a Frankenstein song – I stitched together disparate parts. There’s a 90’s indie rock style section, an off-beat prog rock section, and a musique concrete section that one reviewer confusedly said was “just noises”. Which is true, but then, that’s all music is! This song is there as a bit of a potted musical biography, and also as a challenge. It says – this album mixes ‘normal’ rock with a little bit of weird. You better be ready.
“Weather Balloons and Falling Stars” is the third in my tentacle trilogy. It’s an upbeat, rocky love song to tentacles. It’s also tying into older albums.
“West Wind” is the most prog song on the album. It has folky acoustic guitar, stringsy mellotron sounds and all the time signatures. Well, three of them. It is also a sequel to a song written by the other half of my songwriting duo from years back, Comrade Robot.
The middle section of the album breaks from the rock band set up. We have “Patterns of Light”, a short acoustic song that includes my sister’s bassoon and lots of vocal harmonies. Then “Cutting Up All Of Our Dreams”. For this song I sent my mum a score of what I would be singing and asked her to arrange her singers around it. This was the result. The song fades into some scary spoken word stuff courtesy of my brother in law, Joel.
This middle section with a spoken word bit is supposed to be an allusion to the middle of “Ok Computer” by Radiohead and “Six” by Mansun, both of which have a spoken word thing in the middle.
We then go back to the rock band format, with “Drop Dead’s Punching Above His Weight Again”, a song about a serial killer. This is a big homage to David Bowie and has great lead guitar from Gareth Cole who has been playing guitar a lot for me in the last two years or so. He’s also on last year’s EP ‘Spirit Box’.
“Tinfoil King” was written very quickly for February Album Writing Month. It uses crossword-clue lyrics to say humanity is rubbish. Some days it’s my favourite song on the album.
And finally, “Demon”. “Demon” has been around for a while; Comrade Robot recorded a version. I always wanted to do the big loud rock version, so here it is. It’s about various things, including a drunken night out with Pete, the other half of that duo, so the first and last songs have that theme of drunkenness in them. It also has great drumming in the middle where I told Michael Cairns to play an inappropriate, slightly sloppy jazz solo. He obliged. It’s great.
That last song is a reminder of my early twenties, being slightly glum and unsure about what to do with life.
And that’s the album. I’m dead proud of it.
So what’s next for Tom Slatter, and where can we hear more of your music?
As to what’s next – I have literally no idea. In the short term I’m focusing on telling people about ‘Demon’ and doing some online gigs because that’s a bit more practical than touring for me at the moment.
Beyond that, this is pretty uncharted territory. For the first time in at least a decade I don’t have any songs ‘in the bank’ that I definitely want to record. There’s maybe one piece of unfinished business – an ep I released a few years ago that i don’t think was recorded well enough, that I might redo – and then I’ve got no more ideas.
That means I need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what the next version of me sounds like. Which is kind of exciting? I’ve no idea what I’ll write next.
‘Synchronicity Embraced’ is the 26thalbum by the Italian band, and their second for Sleazsy Rider following on from 2016’s “Deep Blue Firmament’. The band themselves are the same quartet who have now been together since drummer Riccardo Spaggiari joined in 2003, but singer Francesca Nicoli formed the band in 1985, and was soon joined by Vittorio Vandelli (classical, acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, backing vocals) while Giovanni Pagliari (keyboards, piano, backing vocals) has been in the band since 1990. It is certainly interesting to play this back to back with an album from only a few years earlier, as while they are both instantly recognisable as Ataraxia, the two are very different indeed.
In many ways this album feels far more modern in a musical sense, with just Francesca’s vocals taking it further back in time. Harmonies abound, and it feels a softer and gentler album, more controlled and in many ways even more sacred. Francesca sent me some incredible words to describe the band, their journey, and this album, and I was going to dig out a quote, but the more I read it the more I felt it so totally captured what I was hearing, and it needs to be read in its totality. If you feel inspired by her words, then I can only say that the album itself is majestic, all consuming, beautiful and transcendent:
“True changes need practice and music is such a heavenly practice. We feel like channels able to pick up and transform into music the energies surrounding us or coming from above.
If our life is meant to be a spiritual growing and not just a materialistic experience, all the domains where spirituality is expressed can become a source of enlightenment. Behind all those ways of believing (a specific faith rather than paganism), there is our naked soul alone in “her” voyage. For this reason, in our tunes liturgical chants are sometimes mixed with tribal rhythms and pagan rituals. The important thing was/is to preserve our spiritual freedom from any kind of supremacy, searching and diffusing a spiritual knowledge that’s not linked to a dominating specific religion but to the harmony of the cosmic forces. The aim is to reach again the primeval plenitude, calmness and inner light, being a part of the whole. We feel the magic power of the word, the practice of the enchantment. We started from the ancient Greek “mysteries” and the role of women in ancient pagan cults. Enchantment means “singing inside”. Magic words have not a practical purpose, it’s an act of creation gaining a power and I’m conscious that this creation is a revelation, a process of deeper knowledge and self-knowledge. The magic word resounds before being pronounced. Knowledge and experience happen at the same time and all of this is a sacred announcement, a message that doesn’t need rationality to be caught. It is a sort of spiritual call coming from the depths. Memory and singing are linked, they enable a deeper subtle “sight”.
Greek mysticism was based on “mysteries” often embodied by a sybil or a priestess who, through her vocals and gestures, let the elemental spirits flow and express. We spent a lot of times on Greek islands and we were deeply affected by their atmosphere and the cults that were practised over there centuries ago. Our music is born to speak the pure and noble language of nature. The ancient rituals celebrated the art of the essence. They were able to concentrate into mantras, dances, sequences of sounds and rhythms the energy that, passing through human beings, kept them spiritually alive. People “felt” without the need of rationally thinking. It was just like breathing, inspiring and expiring are phases of our living, they create a balance. The ancient rituals were based on the celebration of nature, during those rituals the soul of the man was emptying progressively in order to get in touch and be filled by the harmony of creation and cosmos as “what it is above it’s also down here and within us”. Thanks to those rituals, the initiated managed to get rid of the coded language that became chant, sound. The ancient wisdom was based on letting go, forgetting ourselves, our ego and masks in order to feel and live “the moment”. Water and stone… Our music is often made of the substance of the water and the power of the stone, dark and coloured, lunar and marine at once. The sea is often present in our albums. We feel that the rhythmical sound of the waves is made of the same substance of music.
We also approached the theme of self-healing and what illness means nowadays, the way it is taken into charge by the official medicine. In old times, it was clear that illness was often linked to a pain of the soul, a part of us that was missing, a wrong direction taken by our life, so our body suggested, in a striking and precise way, that we had to re-consider our life. Shamans were spiritual guides who concretely helped people to find again their soul in order to find their good path. There was a deep and very interesting exchange between the healer and the soul who was in front of him. Shamans offered their life to take care of other people’s spiritual, psychological and physical needs and improvement. Music maybe has the same aim, it opens the doors of conscience leading the listener to make a voyage inside himself after having put away, for a while, the mask of ego – who many of us wear to survive nowadays -, in order to take a path of self-conscience and confidence. Music is a natural healing opening the gates of Grace and Beauty. For a while, we can silence rationality and enter into a dimension made of a different substance, the one of dreams, of perceptions, of a bright inner sighting, of intensity and pleasure. There are many self-healing songs.
At the end, making music is a sacred act, a sort of modern ritual to celebrate the elemental forces, we simply are ready and accept to be filled by Grace. In this way we can transmit energy to the others and start this mutual exchange, especially on stage. Year after year, our music started becoming subtler and people started telling us that we were able to open gates of far-off dimensions, to make they travel in places that probably belonged to their origins. We go back to our origins in order to start perceiving again in a way that is nearly forgotten. When we play in places that still own the power and the purifying energy of time (ancient cathedrals, gardens, old squares, archaeological sites, woods, etc) our music becomes ‘circular’ and enables both us and our listeners to perceive and live again forgotten memories and sensations, it doesn’t matter which is the country. Music comes from silence and becomes silence again, just like a ritual starting from silence and ending into silence. Listeners can choose their own path to be followed and explored. Along unique paths, everyone finds his/her lost memories, hidden fears and deep desires. For this reason, a concert is such an important thing, it enables everybody (both the musicians and the listeners) to know better his/her own unveiled essence.
Of course, folk music means a main use of acoustic instruments rather than machines or computers and a special taste for traditional airs or themes but, in our opinion, all of this has to be transformed into something new. A completely new chant born from the immutable heart of Time. And sincerely, sometimes it is quite hard to define what our music is, being the mirror of different personalities within the band. Since our first albums, we have rarely been interested in creating single tunes. We have always enjoyed telling stories like modern minstrels, trying to filter what mythology, traditions and legends have handed down to us. We have always chosen to release concept albums. We are quite different the ones from the others, but we share a common inspiration. Our concept albums are always born on the basis of a collective inspiration on a specific theme. For this reason, we need each other to compose an album and we think that the band’s force is its unity and the different creative processes driven by each of its members. A song usually comes to life as a powerful river running along our imagination till it finds a way to go out and start living among people.
Music, for us, is also hope and hope is not a passive act as it engages all our power and will. Music is the miracle of coming into being and letting go. We just need to cultivate our own availability to the GRACE OF THE EVENT. Mystery is transparent, sometimes you need no words.”
Melodic Revolution Records and Blå Lotus are thrilled to announce that Högtidwill be officiallyreleased worldwide digitally on June 21st, Summer Solstice
Fredrik Andersson tells us about the new album. So, this is our sophomore effort, consisting of songs put together during late 2017 and on through 2018. As usual, I had written and prepared them beforehand and presented them to the rest of the band through rough demos, albeit striving to leave enough space for the others to leave their own mark on them and by months of rehearsal and occasional live performances, we eventually had fine-tuned them to the degree that we could lay them down the basics during the hot sizzling summer of 2018. The remainder of the overdubs (that is, Farfisa, Mellotron, Pianet, synthesizer and vocals, all weighing heavy on my shoulders) did suffer a bit due to procrastination (the whip apparently didn’t crack hard enough) and me ending up in hospital due to an intestinal inflammation towards the end of the year. I got better though, not least through the spiritual support of my fellow bandmates and eventually we could present the finished product to our main man Nick who instantly approved.
We agreed upon dubbing it “Högtid”, approximately the Swedish word for feast, or rather celebratory season (i.e. Christmas, Easter, Midsummer and so on), sort of hinting at the superficial theme of the two main tracks ‘Pagan Solstice’ and ‘Summer Demons’ and maybe also the inclusion of our momentary rendition of an old Swedish marching tune (‘Gånglåt’). Despite this, it’s not a concept album, no overarching theme or grandiose convolution, no siree Bob! They just happened to be the songs we decided upon rehearsing during this last year-and-a-half. You could say though, that there is a common theme between the two aforementioned main songs in that they both deal with the expectations laid upon oneself and the urge to get away from them; one more in the external side of things (‘Pagan’) and one the internal (‘Summer’). ‘Pagan’ was actually a leftover song from my previous band (as was ‘Unreal Estate’) in which I played the guitar and thus these were written accordingly so I had to find a way to present them on the Hammond but eventually they proved to be more in tune with the Lotus spirit anyway.
‘Summer’ on the other hand began its life as an unassuming, Neil Young-esque folk song, amounting to probably no more than a couple of minutes in all, but demonstrably ended up being the longest track on this record. The mopey lyrics should probably not be interpreted too deeply by a suicidal person though. Then we have the most optimistic track on the album, ‘While You Were Asleep’, a psychedelic ode to the divison of labour and the fact that despite what all the fearmongers tell us, overall the world is a better place at this very moment than ever before throughout history and that it will be ever so slightly better tomorrow, so stop whining and dig into the fact that this is more a showcase of the Farfisa rather than the Hammond. A bit of variation thrown in for good measure. And finally ‘Rats’n Brats’ is just a piece of vintage heavy rock’n roll; a good excuse for letting our hair down and maxing out the fuzz boxes toward the end.
And there you have it. We hope you will enjoy the fruits of our labour as much as we have enjoyed perfecting it during this period. It’s just a pity that we can’t really put into words the exact anglo-saxon depiction of its name. Guess that’s why we insist on inserting all these norse umlaut-laden words everywhere.
//Fredrik, keeper of the sevenhundred keys
Artist: Blå Lotus Formed during the fall of 2016, Blå Lotus was basically three guys with a vision of making heavy prog rock without the aid of a guitar. Heavily influenced by old school progressive acts of yore, they immediately set out to create a fulfilling soundscape equipped with just bass, drums and Hammond organ and a vast array of lengthy jam-based compositions interspersed with heavy stoner-like riffs.
Band Members Fredrik Andersson: Hammond and Farfisa Organ, Mellotron, Synthesizer, Electric Piano, Flute & Vocals Linus Karlsson: Bass Guitar, Theremin & Random Sound Effects Wiktor Nydén: Drums & Percussion
Album Title: Hötid Album Art: Viktor Örneland Release Date: June 21st, 2019 Label: Melodic Revolution Records Format: Digital
Track Listing: 1. Pagan Solstice 2. Open Hand On All Fours 3. Unreal Estate 4. While You Were Asleep 5. Gånglåt 6. Summer Demons 7. Rats’n Brats
Watch the official teaser here released March 12, 2019
What the critics have said about their debut Tube Alloys
This is a great album, and it is incredible to think that they came together in Autumn of 2016, and recorded this album in April the following year, as they sound as if they have been bouncing ideas off each other for years. If you have ever enjoyed the sound of a Hammond Organ in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, then this is essential. ★★★★ 4/5 Kev Rowland – Power of Prog
Wow! This new Swedish heavy prog rock band just totally blew me away. It’s clear these guys are totally enjoying themselves. That “no guitar” policy only proves, as Quatermass or Rare Bird (their first two albums only) had proved all those years ago, that great music can be had without a guitar. Blå Lotus is simply the new generation of it. Really worth it. ★★★★ 4/5 Progfan97402 – Prog Archives
The sound is really cool and I like this album a lot. In this case, we are talking old-style 1970s heavy prog and symphonic prog. There is even some John Lord’s Deep Purple like keys and music here. The Hammond organ sends warm shivers down my spine and gives me a silly grin. 3.5/5 points by Torodd Fuglesteg – Sound Of Fighting Cats
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