By Andy Tillison (taken without permission from his Facebook post yesterday)

Although it has been mentioned before I would once again like to return to Stephen Lambe and his book “CITIZENS OF HOPE AND GLORY – The Story Of Progressive Rock” which has just gone into its second edition. There have been a few changes, but one of the most obvious changes to us here is that the section on the Tangent has been somewhat updated. In the first edition the album selected to represent us was “A Place In the Queue” – however, this has now been replaced with “Le Sacre Du Travail”. Lambe describes it as “Magnificent” and speaks of it as bringing “Progressive Rock full circle” He finishes the article off by saying “Ten years into a career full of ups and downs, this is not only the finest album by the band but one which perfectly summarises all of progressive rock”. It’s pretty obvious that I’m very happy that Stephen felt this way – in fact I must admit I felt my bottom lip tremble a bit when I read it. “Sacre” was an album that divided folks a bit, and those people have had their say, and more importantly they have been LISTENED TO!!

I have just finished writing the new Tangent album which Inside Out have heard and agreed to release in early 2015. They are exceedingly enthusiastic about it and I can tell you that it is a very different style of album from “Sacre” with a very upbeat and optimistic flavour. It’s an album designed for live sets which we hope to do more of in the future. Very shortly we’ll be starting to harass you all to come and see one of the handful of gigs we are doing this year (still adding) – we’ll even be roadtesting one of the new songs.

We’ve had some critics, we’ve had good and bad things happen to our band over the years. With Stephen’s book, it’s our turn to feel pleased and know we managed to move some people in the way we intended. Some folks from this list have once again been invited to beta test the album as it currently stands. They’re usually frequent contributors and friends, but I also send copies to people who aren’t so keen on the band and people who don’t even like the genre much. Pretty soon we’ll be working out how we’re gonna do the “get involved” bit – we ain’t gonna be going for an established thing like Kickstarter – once again we’ll try to let people hear what we’re up to and allow them to hear stuff as it develops. One person listening to the album at the moment is David Longdon…….

In the meantime – please feel free to check out what PROG magazine calls “An Excellent Read” – “Citizens Of Hope And Glory” by Stephen Lambe published by AMBERLEY. if you have the first edition you’re OUT OF DATE!!!