A while ago Marek Arnold was approached by the organizer of the Artrock Festival, Uwe Treitinger, asking if he could provide a song to promote the festival. Marek had performed there last year with Seven Steps To The Green Door and was there again this year with Toxic Smile. Marek agreed to write and record a song, along with many friends who were also going to be performing this year, and then have it available as both a full-length prog number and also as a radio edit. Later, Uwe came back with the idea, to offer it as CD, to raise revenue to contribute to a sculpture of Wolfgang Mattheuer in Uwe’s home city of Reichenbach.
Those involved were Marek (Seven Steps To The Green Door, Toxic Smile, Cyril, UPF, Damanek, Flaming Row ) on piano, keyboards, and soprano saxophone, Martin Schnella (Flaming Row, SSTTGD, Gray Matters ) acoustic and basic electric guitars, backing vocals, Melanie Mau (Gray Matters ) lead vocals, Niklas Kahl (Flaming Row ) drums, Piotr Witkowski (Collage ) bass guitar, Denis Strassburg (Cyril) bass guitar. In addition to these there were the following soloists, Marcella Arganese (Mr. Punch, Ubi Maior ) guitar solo and additional guitars, Stephan Pankow (Toxic Smile, SSTTGD ) guitar solo, Kalle Wallner (RPWL, Blind Ego) guitar solo, Steve Unruh (Resistor, UPF, The Samurai of Prog ), violin solo Martin Schnella guitar solo and Gary Chandler (Jadis ) guitar solo and additional guitars. Just one song, loads of great musicians, but at the heart of this is Marek’s piano and incredible sense of melody. Somehow this manages to sound like a band instead of a project and is a crossover hard rock progressive number that is a sheer delight. I have always loved Melanie’s vocals, and here she just shines, being given the opportunity to have fun, and unlike many prog numbers, this makes me smile from beginning to end as it is sheer progtastic delight with hooks aplenty.
