One of our esteemed founders, Dr. Birzer, has had a few excellent posts today on the intersection of art and politics, in part to a reaction of some recent releases and in larger part in reaction to some larger trends.  In reading them, I had about 1.5 cents of my own I wanted to throw in.

This isn’t to say I don’t ever like political subject matter intertwined with music.  But some ways of doing it are more appealing than others.  One of my favorite albums this year – Galahad’s sprawling, incredible Seas of Change – is very political in its lyrics.  It’s focused on the tumult in the U.K. over Brexit.  However, which side of that debate it eventually comes down upon is hard to say.  I’ve read reviews that say it’s pro-Brexit, others that say it’s anti-Brexit.  When I pore over the lyrics, I come away with … I don’t know.  It seems like Galahad has plenty to critique on both sides of that debate.  Irrespective of that, one of the things I like about it is that it takes a “clean up your own backyard first” approach.  Nobody is doing a Roine Stolt on Lost America here, sitting back smugly criticizing another polity as if theirs is somehow perfect.  The path Galahad has chosen is one of self-reflection, the one chosen by Stolt is cheap, smug, self-superiority.  Galahad’s path is engaging (as is Marillion’s FEAR), Stolt’s is off-putting.

Continue reading “A Few More Words on the Politics Thing” →

One of the lamentable facts about great art is that it is often inspired by pain.  It is frequently beauty borne of suffering.  As many readers of this blog (and virtually all of the writers) are Rush fans, we are keenly aware of how the dual tragedies of Neil Peart’s life served as a creative impetus behind the band’s triumphant return on 2002’s Vapor Trails.  Riverside itself is no stranger to tragedy, having lost their brilliant guitarist Piotr Grudzinski in 2016, while the band’s de facto leader, Mariusz Duda, lost his father only months later.  Thus, the fuel for the creative fire behind Wasteland includes the pain of tragedies both real at a personal level, as well as imagined at a civilizational level when one considers the album’s apocalyptic theme.  And based on some of Duda’s own words in a recent interview (see here), it may also serve as a metaphor for our current, chaotic times.  The results of this creative fire are nothing short of stunning.

Continue reading “Riverside’s Incredible New Album is a WINO (Wasteland in Name Only)” →

Among the current wave of progressive rock acts, few (if any) are more unique than Gazpacho.  Quite simply, there is nobody else that sounds anything like them.  Describing them to the uninitiated is difficult, if not impossible.  I’ve tried to tell others that they are the love child of latter-day Talk Talk and Pink Floyd, but even this description is inadequate.  They truly are one of a kind, and their music defies words whenever it is separated from the band’s name.

However, it’s not merely their music that makes them unique, it’s the subject matter they tackle on their albums as well.  One avenue of pursuit has been to find tiny slices of history, remembered by few, and use those as a springboard for lyrical exploration.  They did this on Tick Tock, using the attempted Paris-Saigon flight and subsequent non-fatal crash in the desert of Antoine d Saint-Exupery in 1935 as the subject matter foundation for that album.  In 2014, with Demon, they went even more obscure, basing their album on the “mad ramblings” of an unknown apartment tenant in Prague, as left behind in writings found in said apartment.

With their latest album, Gazpacho uses the tragic loss of Soyuz One (also the title of the leadoff track) and the loss of its lone cosmonaut, Vladmir Komarov, as its jumping off point.  Most people won’t know much about this, but for space geeks like me that devoured volumes as kids regarding both the U.S. and Soviet space programs, the space race with the moon at the prize, and so on, the tragedy of Soyuz One is well known.  To give a little more background, Soyuz one was the first flight of a new Soviet spacecraft.  While Komarov was selected as the cosmonaut to fly the mission, his backup was Yuri Gagarin, a more recognizable name since he was the first human in space and a hero of his country.  Komarov was a personal friend of Gagarin’s, and refused his attempts to allow a national hero to take his place.  This is important, as both men knew the Soyuz spacecraft was nowhere near ready to fly.  But bureaucratic inertia and political considerations (much like what contributed to the loss of the space shuttle Challenger) overrode technical considerations.  Knowing that the mission was going to fly either way, Komarov insisted on remaining as its pilot, knowing full well that it would likely end in tragedy.  Sure enough, it did.  Among the many things that went wrong was the failure of the parachute to properly deploy upon re-entry.  Through a radio link, Komarov cursed his Soviet masters as he plunged from the heavens to his death in the Russian tundra.

From this base, Gazpacho builds an album that explores themes such as isolation and moments in time frozen in history.  While only two tracks, the leadoff Soyuz One and the epic Soyuz Out, deal directly with the ill-fated mission, one can easily see how the other tracks tie to the ideas explored in the album’s lyrical foundation.

Soyuz One starts off in typical Gazpacho fashion, simple riffs stacked on top of one another, eventually building a layered piece of dazzling complexity, punctuated by some heavier riffing beginning midway through the song.  There is almost a fatalistic, mysterious feel to the piece, and it sets the tone for the rest of the album.  Next up is Hypnomania, which includes some uncharacteristic heaviness for Gazpacho – but it works great nonetheless.  The next track, Exit Suite, contrasts is predecessor by being slow and subtle, with some excellent violin fade ins and outs.

Emperor Bespoke is next, and it’s one of my favorite tracks on the album.  A slightly longish piece clocking in at 7:43, it begins with a light, folky feel, but by the middle of the song has a much bigger feel – it’s very well executed and powerful.  Gazpacho is great when they go big.  Sky Burial is shorter, but similar in structure to its predecessor, and is very sweeping and majestic.  Fleeting Things follows, and is relatively mellow most of the way through, and lyrically, expresses one of the album’s themes with more directness than any other song in this set.

Soyuz Out is the epic of the album, and the song that deals most directly with the Komarov tragedy.  The piece begins with an eerie feel, which pops up in interludes from time to time.  Some of the more uptempo sections include some best rhythm section work I’ve heard on any Gazpacho album, the interplay between the bass and drums pulling the listener along for the ride.  And speaking of being along for the ride, Jan Henrik Ohme delivers lyrics that put you inside the Soyuz One spacecraft as it makes its final, fatal fall to Earth:

The phase of entry

The shields are burning

I couldn’t keep the angle

This devil ship – a future machine

Come in too steep on one wing

Out of Control

I know you mean this

There’s no more next time

Musically, the closing section of Soyuz Out conveys the gravity of what has happened in the preceding lyrics with haunting effectiveness that joins the temporary to the permanent, that which is fleeting becoming that which is eternal.

The album closes out with Rappaccini, ending the album in a mellow yet melancholy mood.

What an album!  Gazpacho made us wait nearly three years for this one, but they definitely made it worth it.  This 48 minute slice of Gazpachian goodness can stand proudly aside any of their previous works, and continues the roll they have been on since 2007’s Night.  Needless to say, when I write my end of year review discussing my favorite albums of 2018, Soyuz will definitely land on the list.  I’m pretty sure I’m not alone on that score.  If you like Gazpacho, if you like prog, you shouldn’t be either.

One of the most satifying things a music fan can do is make a new discovery.  That happened to me lately as I was given a review copy of Damanek’s debut album, On Track.  Lucky me.  On Track is one of the best releases I’ve heard in what has been a pretty good year for prog releases.

A little background here is in order – Damanek is the brainchild of Guy Manning, who among other things is a veteran of The Tangent.  For this release, Manning is the chief composer and lyricist.  Beyond that, there are numerous contributors to the album.  Among them, Manning borrows from his former band to tap Luke Machin on the electric guitar, Marek Arnold contributes on a number instruments (his sax figuring prominently),  and numerous other musicians play their part.

The first track, Nanabohza and the Rainbow, sets the tone for the album.  Beginning with some native-sounding beats, the song evolves into a jazzy looseness (the latter being very pervasive throughout the album).  The aforementioned saxophone makes its first appearance toward the end of the song, along with some superb piano, with the song closing on some motifs that could be described as mid-Eastern.  That’s quite a palette, and it’s only the first song.

Long Time, Shadow Falls follows next, and has a bit more of a new-agey feel to it, with some African rhythms to drive the point home.  Lyrically, the song is a commentary on poaching and preservation (or more precisely, the lack of the latter), and the music is most effective in underscoring the message.

Track three, The Cosmic Score, is largely piano driven and is the most relaxing track on the album.  Arnold’s sax makes an appearance midway through, playing off the piano, followed by a synth solo that harkens back to first golden age of prog in the 1970’s.  Lyrically, The Cosmic Score is sung on a grand scale; musically, it invites you to kick back and relax as you contemplate.

The musical palette widens even further on the next track, Believer – Redeemer.  If you have ever been looking for some funk/R&B influence in your prog, then this is the track for you.  The Santucci Horns (as they are known in the album credits) provide some brass here with trumpet and trombone to further accentuate the dominant influence here.

The following track, Oil over Arabia, begins with some jazzy piano and guitar before the saxophone once again joins in the fun.  Midway through, the pace picks up and the song begins to rock out a bit more, and eventually Arnold provides some excellent clarinet to the song as well.  Lyrically sparse, this is almost an instrumental track, and a damn good one at that.  As with all the songs, the playing is top notch, but this one really stood out to me.

The Big Parade has a somewhat Beatle-esque sound to it, and it’s not hard to imagine John Lennon circa 1968 writing or singing a song like this. The fact that it is an anti-war song makes this all the more so.  This song qualifies as the most quirky diversion on the album, and despite its protesting nature, it’s a fun listen.

The melancholy Madison Blue is up next.  This is a relatively simple track musically, primarily driven by the piano.  Here, however, what sounds like a small string section and the flute beautifully underscore the mood of the piece, which lyrically concerns the loss of someone dear.

Saving the epic for last, the album closes with the 13 minute plus Dark Sun.  The first five minutes or so feature a slow groove with Arnold’s clarinet adding some nice color at various points.  Midway through, the pace picks up dramatically, with excellent guitar work by Machin, some jazz-tinged electric piano and more of Arnold’s clarinet (come to think of it, I can’t think of many prog albums where the clarinet played such a prominent part).  Some very proggy organ is also included before the song slows down and eventually returns to the same groove with which it began.  It’s a quite-satisfying musical journey.

In closing, On Track has some of the best musicianship of any album I’ve heard in quite some time, and that’s saying quite a bit given the plethora of outstanding progressive rock releases we’ve seen this year and for several years running now.  Overall, the music is a, well-balanced mix of styles, including classic and modern prog, jazz, and various world music styles, tastefully and seamlessly combined.  As debut albums go, this one is a smashing success.