Italian metal sextet Rome in Monochrome has recently presented their EP titled “Karma Anubis.” In an interview with Prog Sphere, the band tells us about their work. Define the mission of Rome In Monochrome. Write music to feel alive. Tell me about the creative process that informed your new EP “Karma Anubis” and the themes…
Prog reports:
Bassist and producer Steve Babb tells Prog: “This is pure Glass Hammer. Fred Schendel and I are handling more of the vocals than we have in several years.
“But Susie is front-and-centre throughout most of the album – and our fans have not been shy in telling us that’s the way to go. Guitarist Alan Shikoh and drummer Aaron Raulson complete the Valkyrie lineup.”
Describing it as a concept album in the vein of 2002’s Lex Rex and 2005’s The Inconsolable Secret, Babb adds: “It’s the story of a soldier’s struggle to return home from the horrors of war, to the girl who loves him and must ultimately find her way to him.
…
“The burden was on Susie to bring the lyrics to life, and build an emotional crescendo for the album’s finale. Like a live show, it has to end with a bang.
“She delivers. The whole album builds till that final track and then – we’ll see you soon and I hope you’ll agree: it’s an epic finish.”
Read more at the link, including the track list.
If there’s one thing that is always welcome in any album, regardless of genre or style, it is variation. A varied sound in a record is proof that the band has an imagination, and is willing to take risks in their recording process. Showing some creativity will earn you points. It is for this reason that Excellion from good ol’ Mexico have earned points. A lot of points.
“Unsean” is an EP (the band’s fourth) that is difficult to predict, and constantly whips the carpet from beneath your feet. As soon as you think you know the structure for a song and are expecting the chorus to begin, the track takes a sudden turn in a bizarre direction and you’re left feeling impressed and lost at the same time, like suddenly finding yourself sat surrounded by crates of beer; you might not know why they’re there, you just go with it because it’s a good thing.
It’s not just the individual format of each song either; the release as a whole incorporates lots of different styles and isn’t content with maintaining one sound. “Unseen Pt. I – In Search of Infinity” seems to kick things off in a standard fashion, opening the album with some flashy guitar riffs in a djenty manner and theatrical vocals of singer Frozen Chava. But very quickly it becomes apparent that this is something special, as the song frequently bounces between this ordinary Metal sound and a chirpy, Rock-like style. The track is something of a strange medley; two songs colliding and becoming one fantastic entity, resulting in perhaps the most memorable track on the record.
The album continues in a similar fashion, with the lead single “Unlucky Charms” beginning with tech-y riffs.
When it comes to drums, there is something to be said for the beautifully strange timing of the percussion across the record, as well as the way it gels so perfectly with the guitars. Hearing one of these two instruments alone would sound bizarre and unnatural, but the two combined genuinely become the sum of their parts.
The EP’s production is also worthy of praise, with every powerful note of the guitars as well as each and every drumbeat being crystal clear. The vocals, while coarse and full of rage for the most part (with a number of creative exceptions), are distinguished nicely from the instruments, having their own room to breathe and take centre stage in the cleaner sections when the lyrics are actually audible.
“The Courier” takes a number of twists and turns during its five minutes, becoming just another notch on the band’s bow of experimentation. The frequent clean vocal sections make for some wonderful choruses, and only add to the sheer amount of variety on offer here.
“Diablo Jr.” shows the band’s technical proficiency; it’s a track that proves that if the band were inclined towards more complex styles of music, they could just as easily kick arse at that, too. “Unsean Pt. II – The Heart of the Sapphire” closes the album nicely with some ambient elements and more chilled atmosphere, and the track’s length (clocking in at just above six minutes) means that it has more time to transition gently between tempos, making for a well-rounded song.
This is an EP that comes highly recommended to anyone with an open mind, or simply to those who love hearing something slightly different. This is the type of band that deserve their shot at fame, and I for one hope that they make it, if only just to make people aware that creativity is still alive and kicking in the music industry.
Visit Excellion online:
https://www.facebook.com/excellionband/
https://twitter.com/excellionband
https://instagram.com/excellionband
Intrigued?
For more McLuhan, check out the man himself on The Medium is the Massage (2011 CD reissue).
Ahead of the release on August 6th of Excellion’s new EP, Unsean, the band have launched a teaser video showcasing all the tracks from the five-track release. See it below.
“For ‘Unsean’ we took a different approach totally; it is our first work since we established ourselves in Mexico City. We’re all sharing the same home right now, so it was a new interesting way to write music for Excellion,” commented backing vocalist and bassist Adrian Vilbel. “We were all involved in the moment when someone had an idea and he just called the rest of the group, and just like that, suddenly we were working on a whole song right there. It didn’t matter if it was late at night or too early in the morning, it has been a fun ride and we’re really proud of the results we’ve gotten.”
The title of the EP, Unsean, is not a typo but rather a wordplay. As singer and guitarist Frozen Chava explains: “There seems to be a lot of people that believe it’s a typo and well, it’s definitely not, but we expected that too when we decided to name our new work like that. It’s actually a word play where we used “Unseen” and at the same time “Sea” because that’s exactly the concept behind this new music. We humans actually know more about the space than the sea, it’s shocking that we only know about five percent of this vast amount of water on the Earth’s surface and that’s something to reflect about. There is a lot of mystery and things to discover down there, so yeah, that’s what UnSEAn is really about.”
Speaking about the creative process that informed Unsean, guitarist Frank Markz said: “We’ve always wanted to express the way we feel at the time when we focus on writing something new, so this was no exception. Actually it has a lot to do with the changes that were happening with our lives. We were moving to a new city, we were adapting ourselves to this new life, there were a lot of things we didn’t know at the moment and had to learn the hard way. The list can go on but I think you got the point by now, so we focused on looking for something to reflect those feelings and that’s how the “UnSEAn” project was born. That’s why you can see a Lion with horns under the water for the cover art — there’s some strange life form learning to adapt itself to a completely different environment, one that he or she isn’t used to.”
Drummer Omar Avley added: “To tell the truth, it has been an interesting concept to work on and we believe there will be a lot of people out there who will identify themselves with the same story. We really hope you guys enjoy these songs.”
Unsean is out on August 6th; check out the teaser including all five tracks off of the EP.
Unseen Track Listing:
Excellion online:
https://www.facebook.com/excellionband/
https://twitter.com/excellionband
https://instagram.com/excellionband
http://soundcloud.com/excellion
https://www.youtube.com/user/ExcellionBand
Assorted Colors is a compilation of tracks selected from the first three albums by The Anderson Council, but it also includes four new songs. You can listen to the whole album on SoundCloud and then go buy the CD.
Bob Makin explains the group’s name in his album review:
Fans of early Pink Floyd, early Who, Cream, “Sgt. Pepper”/“Revolver” Beatles and other British Invasion rock bands will get a kick out of this anthology of New Brunswick-based The Anderson Council, right down to faux English accents. Featuring four new tracks splattered among the best of three previous releases, [this album, which is named] “Assorted Colors” takes its title from [one of the selections included on it as track #4, called] “Pinkerton’s Assorted Colors,” a fun, energetic art rocker from the [band’s] 2006 release, “The Fall Parade.” The [song title is a] nod to [the band] Pinkerton’s Assorted Colors, an obscure British one-hit wonder from the mid-’60s, [and the song itself] also sounds like a blend of Floyd’s “See Emily Play,” The Who’s “Can’t Explain” and The Beatles’ “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”
Speaking of names, The Anderson Council derived theirs from the same bluesmen who inspired Pink Floyd: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Given such allusions, it’s not surprising that “Assorted Colors” isn’t very original, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable, especially a contagious passion and an array of tight, intricate harmonies. It’s kind of like a tribute to a time when pop music was very artistic before the record industry got fat, rich, and lazy, then conglomerated and virtually obsolete.
Check out the rest of his fine review, in which Makin singles out some of the best tracks on the release: “Girl on the Northern Line” (written by the amazingly talented Dawn Eden) and also my other favorite track on the album, “We’re Like the Sun”. Shine on, you crazy diamonds!
If love is one of the most common themes in song, love songs that stretch beyond simple declarations, admitting a type of defeat in the face of defining such an emotion, are remarkably rare. In the past weeks soundstreamsunday has featured Nick Drake and Lal Waterson, who each spun their songs about love from a point of deep uncertainty. So, on then, this week, to disappointment and devastation. It would be hard to name a song as beautifully crushing as John Coltrane’s and Johnny Hartman’s reading of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” an ode to unrequited love amidst a wash of “jazz and cocktails,” from the only album the duo made. Recorded in 1963, during Coltrane’s legendary run at Impulse! Records, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman is a one-off, remarkable in the careers of both men, one a premier saxophone player of his time and the other a largely unknown but extraordinary vocalist and interpreter of jazz standards. In itself the concept was business-as-usual: a large part of twentieth-century jazz music up to this time consisted of runs through the “American Songbook” of Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, et al. This pairing, however, stood out. Coltrane was moving fast at this point in his career, and Impulse! gave him the leeway to pursue concept records in a jazz recording industry that was still entrenched in the robber baron tactics that enriched all but the actual musicians (even the greatest players rarely got more than a day or two in the studio to produce an album’s worth of material). For his part, Hartman’s smooth baritone gave the sessions a focus on the lyric, and while Coltrane’s horn gave Hartman’s almost-lounge vocalizing a distinct edge, Hartman balanced the soloist’s tendency to go long (in 1958, Coltrane recorded another classic, but 14-minute version, of “Lush Life”), while his voice filled a gap you otherwise wouldn’t think about when listening to Coltrane’s other work. The result was six songs on an album clocking in at an economical 31 minutes. Every one of the songs is generous, and the musicians (also including Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison, all from Coltrane’s band and all legends in their own right) support a mood, literally set forth in the last song on the record, “Autumn Serenade,” of turning leaves, fading light, a cold snap. “Lush Life” is the album’s peak, a drinker’s guide to lost love, it’s final statement “Romance is mush, stifling those who strive, I’ll live a lush life, in some small dive, And there I’ll be while I rot with the rest, Of those whose lives are lonely too,” rendered, knowingly but without a hint of irony, as smooth jazz. Way ahead of its time.
*Photo above by Joe Alper: John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman, and Elvin Jones, 1963.
I believe Muse’s song, “Aftermath,” off of Drones, is the best song from 2015. It is hopeful yet realistic, and it is masterfully done. Check out the official video released a few months ago.
You can now pre-order the new King Crimson. Here’s the key concept:
Three themed CDs of material recorded in 2015, each forming a separate discrete
performance with audio selected from a variety of shows and fully mixed from multi-track tapes by Chris Porter, Robert Fripp and David Singleton. As no audience is audible between tracks, this allows for a “virtual studio album” effect. (The current King Crimson line-up was deliberately conceived as a performing band rather than as a band concerned with making full studio recordings).
You can read more over at DGM news. Here’s a taste, along with artwork and video:
Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind is the title of a new multi-disc set from King Crimson scheduled for release on 2nd September.
pre-order links for the 3cd/2dvd/1blu-ray limited edition are as follows
Inner Knot (USA) and Burning Shed (UK & Europe)Pre-order for the 3cd/1blu-ray set are as follows
Inner Knot (USA) and Burning Shed (UK & Europe)All copies come with a postcard featuring Francesca Sundsten’s striking cover artwork
Taken from the 2015 tours of the UK, Canada & Japan, Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind represents the most comprehensive release for this incarnation of King Crimson, and will be available as a 3cd/1blu-ray set, and in a 3cd/2dvd/1blu-ray limited edition.
The live set eatures every song and piece performed by Pat Mastelotto, Bill Rieflin, Gavin Harrison, Mel Collins, Tony Levin, Jakko Jakszyk and Robert Fripp and as Fripp commented last month while supervising mixing, “This is King Crimson… re-imagined.”
Audio/Video performances include:
Threshold Soundscape
Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Part One
Pictures of a City
Peace
Radical Action (to Unseat The Hold of Monkey Mind)
Meltdown
Radical Action II
Level Five
Epitaph
The Hell Hounds of Krim
The ConstruKction of Light
Scarcity of Miracles
Red
VROOOM
Banshee Legs Bell Hassle
Easy Money
Interlude
The Letters
Sailor’s Tale
The Light of Day
The Talking Drum
Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Part Two
Starless
Devil Dogs of Tessellation Row
In the Court of the Crimson King
21st Century Schizoid Man
Suitable Grounds for the Blues
One More Red Nightmare
Two unexpected beauties arrived in the mail today–the latest releases from Riverside and Karmakanic. Well, I write unexpected because 1) I had completely forgotten that I’d pre-ordered the Riverside; and 2) I wasn’t expecting it to show up with Karmakanic, which I’d also forgotten was a two-disk affair. Truly serendipity.
The Riverside release is really a re-release of last year’s LOVE FEAR AND THE TIME MACHINE. This special edition includes a second disk, a DVD, with the album presented in hi-res stereo as well as 5.1 surround (mixed by Bruce Soord). It also includes a hi-res version of five tracks from the recording sessions, and the videos made to accompany the album. From what I can tell, the booklet that comes with it contains no new information from last year’s release except for an update on who mixed the DVD.
Not surprisingly in the least, everything here is outstanding–from the packaging to the re-released music. If you haven’t yet, make sure you check out Erik Heter’s review as well as his interview with the band last year.
I’m especially taken with the five additional tracks labeled as “day sessions.” These add up to nearly 28 minutes of extra music. If you remember how The Pineapple Thief often released bonus material of their jam sessions a decade or so ago, you know exactly what to expect from these “day sessions.” Frankly, they’re stunning, sounding as much like Lunatic Soul as Riverside. The atmosphere created and presented by these tracks is really exceptional. It’s worth ordering this new package just for these five songs alone. I’m sure I will be spending many hours listening to these songs.
When I pre-ordered the new Karmakanic (already reviewed–several days ago), I didn’t remember having ordered the special edition. While the artwork–provided by Rush’s Hugh Syme–is simply stunning, I can’t say the same about the packaging. Mostly plastic, my new case came pre-crushed! The booklet is in good shape, but the innards that hold the two disks are just lots and lots of flaky pieces. Ugh. Thankfully, the disks are ok, but the packaging is weak and poor. Too bad, as this release deserves the highest treatment possible. The extra disk is also a DVD. It has five songs recorded at RosFest 2012, a “making of” documentary, and several interviews.
Both albums come from Insideout.
Progarchy 