Interview with MACHINES OF MAN

On By NickIn progressive rock1 Comment

MoM

Earlier in April this year, Salt Lake City prog metallers Machines of Man released their debut single “Fractals,” as an introduction to their upcoming full-length album, for which they are currently running an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

Bassist Rocky Schofield tells us in the interview below about the meaning of the band’s name, the upcoming album, and more.

What made you go for the name Machines of Man?

Pretty sure Jon came up with that about the time I first joined up to jam in the very early days of MoM. I’ve personally always associated it with technology and the concept of man actually becoming more like a machine as time progresses. That could just be my sci-fi nerd brain taking over though. If anything, it does make for a great acronym. I mean, who doesn’t love MOM?

How do you usually describe your music?

First thing that comes to mind is Progressive Metal, but I hesitate to say that because I don’t feel that we can be lumped into a specific genre. We definitely have the heavy riffs and odd time signatures, but also a lot of ambient and melodic elements. We aren’t afraid to experiment and throw some curveballs in there too; whether it be a jazzy fandango, salsa jam, or a beautiful piano based composition.

What is your writing process like?

We generally use Guitar Pro to help construct our music. Jon usually takes the reigns on putting some general ideas together and then we all get the file and any one of us can add or change parts, and just kind of keep bouncing ideas around. It’s really cool to see just a few riffs metamorphose into a fully developed song.

Who or what is your inspiration, if you have any?

There are so many amazing musicians and bands who inspire me every single day. I love listening to just one instrument in a song and how it interacts with everything else going on. These things inspire me to widen my approach to playing. Video game music has always been a big one for me and some of the other guys too, and I think that shows in our music as well. My bandmates also deserve a big mention here. I feel blessed every time I set foot in the rehearsal space and bear witness to the talent these guys have. It’s also a huge push for me to always be working to become a better player.

Machines of Man - Dreamstates

Tell me about the creative process for your upcoming debut album.

We had a few of these songs around for a while and things were looking a bit bleak to be frank. After some time to step outside ourselves and really evaluate what we were doing and who we were, there was a renewal of inspiration and drive to get this album made. The process has been a long and difficult road, and I don’t think any of us would change that for anything. I’m glad we went through the lows because I feel it helped us really put our hearts and souls into creating this thing that has become Dreamstates. For me that’s exactly what this album represents.

Do you have a title for the record? What can prog fans expect?

Dreamstates! Releases on June 27th. You can preorder it through our indiegogo campaign with some extra goodies now.

Expect heavy riffage, sweet saucy goodness, and non stop pleasures for your ears!

What kind of emotions would you like your audience to feel when they listen to your music?

I would hope anyone who listens to this gets the same feels as I do when I hear these songs. I love being able to just put headphones on and get lost as the music takes you on a journey. Those are the feels I get and I wish that upon every person who listens to this music.

Machines of Man

Which do you like most, life in the studio or on tour?

Although I do thoroughly enjoy being in the studio and creating this stuff, nothing beats the road. That’s the fruits of the labor right there. Playing live, seeing old friends, meeting new friends, being able to connect with people in real life and not just behind a screen is as good as it gets.

Pick your three favourite albums that you would take on a desert island with you.

Opeth – Ghost Reveries, Between the Buried and Me – Colors, and Thrice – Alchemy Index (Yes it counts as one album!)

Thanks for the time, and be sure to check out our Indiegogo campaign to preorder the album!

Keep in touch with Machines of Man via Facebook.

Love On A Real Train

On By Dr NickIn progressive rockLeave a comment

This acoustic cover of a piece from Tangerine Dream’s Risky Business soundtrack, performed by students from Sweden’s Eskilstuna Musikskola, is simply wonderful.

soundstreamsunday: “Into White” by Cat Stevens

On By Craig BreadenIn folk rock, singer-songwriterLeave a comment

catstevens2 - Edited

The best records — and I guess by “record” I mean the standard late 20th-century long player — feel like one long song.  But I don’t think this sense comes just from the record itself, although certainly most musical artists search for unity in their work.  Just as much it comes from the listener, the tricks of memory, emotions of sound and a tuned mind’s expectations.  I often hear musicians say that the meanings of their songs are ultimately as much up to their listeners as to themselves, and this, I deeply believe, is true:  We are not a raggle-taggle bunch of music nerds, we are the song’s second composers.

Composing the life of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam, Steven Demetre Georgiou has taken a long, and at times fraught, road towards himself.  His journey, written into his music early as if he was an oracle, reads like a movie script: young man finds himself an English pop star in the late 1960s and doesn’t care for it; reinvents himself as a singer-songwriter and becomes a pop star again, this time worldwide, despite his reluctance; has a life-changing experience in the late 70s that spurs a religious conversion and exit from the stage; finds himself in the center of controversy 10 years later based on his religion’s teachings — there is regret, denial, and heartbreak for him and for his fans, his co-composers, who so treasure the peaceable and gentle music music he once made; seasons pass; twenty years on he starts making records again.

A remarkable, and remarkably human, life, full of success and missteps.  It’s all there in the song “Into White,” from Stevens’ fourth LP, Tea for the Tillerman (1970).  But the same could be said of any of the songs from the three albums flanking that record, Mona Bone Jakon (1970), Teaser and the Firecat (1971), and Catch Bull at Four (1972).  With ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith producing and guitarist Alun Davies providing detailed flourishes to Stevens’ simple strumming, these albums largely defined a genre in the early 1970s, their consistency of sound — acoustic, breathing, mostly stripped of effects except for exquisitely executed mic placement and recording — matched by Stevens’ lyrics of personal searching and that incomparable voice.  “Into White” is, in Stevens’ own recounting, a song about color, and how when the color wheel is spun it turns white.  He turns the effect into poetry, surely, much as one might expect from the man who could make such an album and also paint an LP cover that so deftly illustrates his own music.  The images he makes in the song are ripe with Green, Brown, Yellow, Blue, Red, and Black, as he renders this waltz-time world a temporal illusion, with “everything emptying into white.”  Youth and wisdom and a turning universe reside here.

soundstreamsunday presents one song or live set by an artist each week, and in theory wants to be an infinite linear mix tape where the songs relate and progress as a whole. For the complete playlist, go here: soundstreamsunday archive and playlist, or check related articles by clicking on”soundstreamsunday” in the tags section above.

Yorke or Waters? Israel and Music.

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock3 Comments

star of david

I’m guessing that Americans and non-Americans have rather different views on this issue, but it’s fascinating, regardless.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/thom-yorke-breaks-silence-on-israel-controversy-w485142

Unleash the Archers at the absolute Apex of today’s metal @UnleashArchers @BrittneyPotPie

On By Time LordIn progressive rock3 Comments

archersalbummarch

Apex is the unbelievably impressive new album from Unleash the Archers. It starts triumphantly with an epic seven-minute-plus track, “Awakening,” a heroic kick-in-the-doors and burn-down-the-house entrance that lets you know in no uncertain terms that there’ll be no nonsense on this disc, only a whole lot of awesome. It sets the right tone from the get-go, with awesome riffing over galloping verses and righteously headbanging choruses.

The second track, “Shadow Guide,” has a brisk old-school metal feel to it, as vocalist Brittney Slayes again takes no prisoners. And then the third track, “The Matriarch,” continues with the unusually high standard of metal excellence established by the two opening tracks. At this point, you wonder how long this album can keep up such a high level of rip-roaring metal.

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With “Cleanse the Bloodlines,” things are still pretty excellent, but the dopey video previously released for the track has tainted the tune for me. Also, it has a creepily fascist track title. Yet it is undeniable that Brittney is positively thrilling with her vocals beginning right at the three-minute mark and with the excellent tension woven by the guitar riffage. Oh well, it’s a concept album, with a character speaking, not a statement from the band, so resistance is futile.

The next five tracks are all superb: “The Cowards’ Way” chugs along thanks to some magnificently mighty bass propulsion power. “False Walls” kills it with blistering riffs knitting together a more laid-back approach, as head-banging choruses alternate with head-nodding verses. We are treated to a most satisfying guitar solo that slips in coolly after about six minutes of preparation. “Ten Thousand Against One” pummels you with bad-cop kick-drumming and death growls, and good-cop ethereal vocals. “Earth and Ashes” mercifully lets you catch your breath for a minute as acoustic guitars do some dueling with the bass guitar, but just when you’ve been faked out, the track gets the album to rip back into you again with relentless fury. Later on, a surprise vocal duet suddenly steers us into a really sweet guitar solo break that circles the earth for a while and then blasts off into hyperspace. Whew! Next up, “Call Me Immortal” does right by any listener who seeks metal excellence. This is such a great track, I can’t believe they saved it and placed it in penultimate position on the album. How cool is that. It just might be my favorite song, next to the album opener and closer. Excellence is always immortal, and here it is too in spades.

When the album concludes with the amazingly sprawling and superbly-paced guitar-feast “Apex” (track 10), there is no escaping the conclusion that this is the very best effort to date from Unleash the Archers. They have established themselves as a truly standout metal act. Brittney slays the competition and her band mates have honed their musical skills to an apex of metal perfection. Permit me to give the apposite last word to Brittney and the band by quoting their truly thrilling grand finale of a last track: “Follow me… to Apex!”

Progarchist rating: ★★★★★ 10/10 A+

Unleash the Archers, Apex

Sgt. Pepper: It was 50 years ago today …

On By kruekuttIn art rock, psychedelic rock2 Comments

by Rick Krueger

It’s official: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club is now my 5th-favorite Beatles album, determined scientifically as follows:

Continue reading “Sgt. Pepper: It was 50 years ago today …” →

Synopsis: Schooltree “Heterotopia” Act II, Part 2 @schooltree

On By Time LordIn progressive rock3 Comments

In my review of Schooltree‘s masterpiece Heterotopia, I noted that the album moves in three phases: first, an incredible Act I that (like the whole album) never flags in excellence; then, the beginning of Act II which has four outstandingly classic songs that are all the more astonishing simply for being buried in the middle of this amazing prog opera and yet take it to a whole other level of musical accomplishment; finally, there is the remainder of Act II which (more than any other of the tracks on the album) offers a theatrical dramatization that is absolutely spellbinding in the manner of the best Broadway musicals.

As promised, here is the concluding synopsis of the album’s storyline as it concludes in the latter half of Act II:

Suzi passes before a mirror in which her zombie body confronts and warns her not to go near the river, from which no one ever comes out alive. Go there and you’ll destroy us both, she says. (You & I)

Suzi is derailed by this exchange and begins to lose herself and forget where she is going. It feels like she’s been on this road forever – or maybe just one really long day. Under a lamppost she sees a flash of light – it’s the centipede cat, which she now barely recognizes, as if from another life, and follows once again. It leads her to the river. (Into Tomorrow)

At the edge of the river its siren song calls to her, offering solace, peace at last; all she needs to do is leap into it. Suzi knows she must jump in with her resolve intact or be swallowed by the abyss. She falls in and sinks. At the bottom of the river, she begins to dissolve, but at the last moment remembers what that she has learned in Otherspace and uses it to move through the meaninglessness “like a ghost through a wall.” (The River, Bottom of the River)

Beyond the “wall,” Suzi finds and awakens Enantiodromia, and asks her to take her fair hand and make her whole again. But awakened Enantiodromia is changed from her former self; looking around at the darkness arisen during her slumber, she is the black-handed reaper now, bringing balance to the land once more, now by using her black hand to annihilate that which does not belong in this world, and attempts to begin with Suzi. Suzi pleads with her to stop, explaining she is only half of what she’s supposed to be, telling Enantiodromia of her quest though endless night outside of time to wake her. “I am not a shadow, just a girl; an exiled soul in the wrong world.” Enantiodromia tells her that she’s been in this world too long and is no longer just a girl; she cannot return her home. But as repayment for awakening Enantiodromia, she allows Suzi the chance to go back to take control of her zombie body, and return as one to her, at which point she’ll take them both together to the next place. (Enantiodromia Awakens)

Suzi returns to the mirror and faces her self, finally understanding the power of the ghost, making a connection between worlds and operating her zombie body like a puppet, using her will to control it. They merge, not quite whole but moving together, and slowly march toward Enantiodromia the Reaper. As Suzi gets ever closer, she becomes sick with disease as her body fails. But she marches forward nonetheless, facing the end, she is ready to become whole, if only to die in doing so. Enantiodromia takes her hand. Suzi’s body is destroyed and she dies in a triumphant blaze of glory. (Zombie Connection, Keep Your Head, Day of the Rogue)

Having achieved mastery in both worlds, Suzi is able to use her mind to grow her body from her head like a seed in the air downward to the ground. NeoSuzi glimpses what utopia could be for the first time, as something that can never be possessed, but experienced. (Utopia)

Kscope Podcast 86: Steven Wilson Featured

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rockLeave a comment

Slider-POD86

The mighty Billy Reeves talks with the equally mighty Steven Wilson on the new Kscope podcast.  Enjoy.  Lots of great music as well.

       Kscope Podcast Eighty Six – Top 10 Steven Wilson Songs   

Anneke van Giersbergen is *en fuego*: Vuur @vuur_band @AnnekeAnnique

On By Time LordIn progressive rockLeave a comment

Here comes Anneke to blow us all away with her new band VUUR and their wonderfully heavy progressive metal. Nice! You’re doing it right, Anneke.

Two tracks from Steven Wilson’s forthcoming “To the Bone”

On By Time LordIn progressive rockLeave a comment

The tracks from the new Steven Wilson album are sounding good: “The Same Asylum As Before” and “Pariah.” Can’t wait until August 18th to hear the new album. And I’d love to see him in concert again too. He’s one of today’s best artists. We’re so lucky to have him. The new tracks are such brilliant and moving music.