The previous Voyager album, V, made my Top Ten list for 2014 of the best prog albums. Click the link to read my review.
Now here’s the awesome video for “Ascension” from Voyager’s forthcoming new album Ghost Mile (release date: May 12, 2017). Can’t wait!
Got this email in my inbox this morning:
Well, hello, hello! I hope all is well in your neck of the woods 🙂
I wanted to give a quick update on all things music, including a surprise coming up!
OK, it might not be that quick, but I promise it’ll be good!
NEW ALBUM:
It’s very funny… I started out last year, thinking I was going to write a non-metal album. The idea was to keep it in the Celtic and Fantasy vein, similar to some of my non-metal tracks I’ve already put out. That was my intention.
Let’s just say I’ve strayed from that idea quite a bit!
You might know I’ve been working with producer Oliver Philipps (Phantasma, Everon, and he does a lot of work with Delain, and many, many bands).
The cool part about working with him is he’s really encouraged me to just let the music come out however it needs to, and to not try and force it into a certain box. This has been very good for me.
And you know what came out?
A lot of metal! 😆
I guess you can take the girl out of metal, but you can’t take metal out of the girl.
Well, I’m looking at the 8 songs we have completed pre-production for, and so far there’s a really nice balance of more ambient, mellow or mid-tempo tracks, and higher-energy metal songs.
Also, I didn’t mean to, but a lot of my little prog tendencies have come forth from the depths of Leah-land, haha!
Oliver is just now finishing the orchestration for what, at the moment, is an 11-minute beast of a track! And the interesting part is, neither he or I ever get bored of this song. He told me — “It’s the good side of prog without the evil” (or annoying parts)! 😉
My goal is to have 10 tracks for this album and keep it shorter (though I’m not helping the situation with 11-minute tracks!), so I have a couple more songs to go. I have at least two that are contenders, which I need to finish writing, so that is my objective in the coming week.
Continue reading “LEAH Working on Next Album”
I often believe that Marillion is as much a mood or a state of mind as it is a band. I try hard to keep up with band, but, frankly, it’s hard at times. The band does so much and so often that I sometimes realize months later that they’ve released this or that DVD, blu-ray, CD, or download. Clearly, this is a first-world problem, and it’s a joyous one.
Only about a month or so ago did I realize that the band had released a blu-ray set of its three nights playing in the Netherlands in March, 2015. One disk per night.
Disk one: “Waves and Numbers,” March 20, 2015
Disk two: “Marbles in the Park,” March 21, 2015
Disk three: “Singles Night,” March 22, 2015
A mood, a state of being. The essence of Marillion?
I have few regrets in life, even after 49 years, but I do regret that I have yet to see the band live. I hope the Good Lord grants me the time still to make this a reality.
Ok, so I’m a sucker for cool names and unusual titles. Whatever melodeath is, I don’t have a clue. But, the word intrigues me.
An email from the band states: “Iapetus is not a project based on any desire for fame or monetary success – we’re just two dudes who love making music, and who want people to hear and connect with what we’ve made. To that end, our album will be entirely free in its digital (and possibly physical) format forever.”
Here’s the press release:
This looks pretty great.
From MVD:
Culled from concerts in Chile, Brazil and Argentina in 1993 and 1997, ELP Live in South America is an essential collection to the catalog of this progressive rock supergroup. Features versions of their hits from their forty five year career including Lucky Man, From The Beginning, Hoedown, Knife Edge and Pictures at an Exhibition. Four CDS of great listening.
CD TRACKLISTING
Disc 1:
From ForceField Media:
“We walked down streets and crammed onto trains, our faces masks of fear. Unsure how to react, we, collectively, did not react. We grieved for a country and an ideal we never thought would die. We grieved for a loss of certainty.
We argued about what we thought would happen. We preached understanding. We advocated for anger. Some people said that we’d at least get some incredible art, other people said that was a small view of a world we were quickly realizing we’d misunderstood. Everyone was right. Everyone was wrong. Art made in precarious times matters as much as we let it matter.
But what are we looking for from the art we enjoy? Escapism? A reckoning with harsh reality? A temporary shared hallucination? Music can heal because it presents the pain of being human as universal.
Musically, an homage to Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, “Kingmaker” tells the story of a powerful and devout medieval woman, Eadgyth, the granddaughter of King Alfred the Great, and often remembered in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions as “St. Edith” (one of a few St. Ediths, this Edith might have been known as “St. Edith of Polesworth; not surprisingly, many of the traditions are vague).
The sister of King Athelstan, she married King Otto of Germany in 929. Wildly popular, she promoted a devotion to St. Oswald, one of the most romantic figures of the high middle ages.
Only relatively recently, English scholars discovered her bones.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/17/archaeology-forensicscience
Continue reading “Princess Eadgyth (Edith), the “Kingmaker” by Big Big Train”
From the master, himself–
…And here is the front cover for our forthcoming new ‘Quiet Storms’ album.
🙂
A wonderful photo of Horton Tower in the snow taken by renowned photographer Roger Holman in 1960s. Already familiar to many of my dear friends, we just thought it would make a great album cover and is totally in keeping with the atmosphere and vibe of this new album.
Inner artwork, courtesy of the rather lovely Paul Tippett, and other details will be revealed soon.–Stu Nicholson
Jazz is definitely one of these genres that were always there in the modern music and that will be played until the end of the world, therefore challenging it and creating something original might seem an overwhelming task for artists. However, jazz is also the most flexible type of music, in which there will never be a final word said – it’s like a book written by thousands of writers with another thousands waiting for their time to contribute. One of these writers is Psychic Equalizer, a project by pianist Hugo Selles who gathered a team of musicians around himself, and who recently added a new chapter to the book. It’s called “The Lonely Traveller”.
Continue reading “Review: Psychic Equalizer – The Lonely Traveller”
