Interview with SPLIT BEARING

On By NickIn Progressive rockLeave a comment

Split Bearing

Split Bearing from Olomouc in Czech Republic are active since 2002, and last year they released their second studio album “Welcome to the Present.” Guitarist Mirek Reznicek and singer Petr Duliskovic talk about their work, playing live and more.

Your latest album was released in 2014. Is there any new material you are working on at the moment? What is comes next in the sound and history of Split Bearing?

M. R.: Yes, we are working on new material…

There is quite a lot of stuff we need to brush up on, review, innovate and compose.
In the second half of 2015 a new member came to the band – bassist Honza Duliskovic, who is a great asset for us. Not only gaining a player – but I think he is inventive too as well… so hopefully the new songs will be served soon.

Welcome to the Present
Let’s talk about playing live. How does Split Bearing look on the stage? What can you tell us about your performances?

M.R.: The concept of SB live performance regarding the songs, corresponds with the type of event.

When we played with Deep Purple, certainly our performance was not about rougher songs and conversely – when we share the stage with some power metal band, then we play a bit harder. 🙂 But the playlist is mostly universal for all.

SB love to perform live, we really enjoy every minute on stage, but still we have to try hard to gain more opportunities to appear at rock/metal gigs.

Are you satisfied with the reaction of audiences on your shows?

M. R.: Progressive metal is still marginal thing. Most of the time, when we perform at the festival or play at the club, mostly only the other bands are staring at us.

Unfortunately, we still do not have enough of a name to that can draw hundreds of fans, but we are happy beyond a few 🙂
 
Are there any plans for a European tour in the close future?

M.R.: Almost none… We really wish to get a chance to perform in abroad, we are working on it and hopefully something interesting will come in our way soon.

What are some of the issues you guys have come across before, during and after your live performances?

M.R.: Phew….the basis of the issue which we normally face to is that we are leaving concerts with “one pocket leaking and spilled second”…

Simply no celebration in terms of return.

Randal Club_Bratislava_2015
As you describe what you do as progressive metal, what is your opinion about the progressive metal scene today?

P.D.: There are a lot of bands playing this style nowadays and they are pretty good but for me personally not every band has “something” that will really catch you and force you to listen to it from beginning to end. So it’s not always only about great musicians but also the music they are able to create.

For example Anubis Gate or Circus Maximus – their songs are heavy, powerful, technical, catchy but mainly very melodic, one of the elements which I like the most.

What is your opinion on the new subgenres of progressive metal that are based on the term “modern”? Do you think that this makes the sound better or does it corrupt it?

M.R.: I like what new brings USA for example Periphery and their last double album… bambastic, heavy, and a modern sound.

It is true there were nordic Meshuggah with a math metal before Periphery, but this fusion of Periphery is awesome.

Maybe less of screaming, but that is just my opinion. 🙂
 
What is the progressive metal scene like in your country?

P.D. Unfortunately it is quite weak… In fact you can count them on fingers of one hand.  It is a pity and I am so sad about the music situation in our country.  That is why you must be really a big fan and dedicated to create a prog metal band here.

Recommend us some great bands from Czech Republic that we should check out.

Personal Signet.

Are you satisfied with where Split Bearing currently stands? What would you love to improve?

We are mainly satisfied with a new band management. In fact we never had a proper management.

I think this part is neccesary element and our fantastic Vilma really helps with PR and support us as much as possible.

And what would we love to improve? Definitely expand the scope of audience and fan base. Maybe one day we will succeed 🙂

Follow Split Bearing on Facebook.

Thieves’ Kitchen — The Clockwork Universe

On By Time LordIn ProgarchyLeave a comment

Roger Trenwith has a great review of a great album; here’s a taste:

Amy Darby has one of those unaffected voices that trace a lineage of female contemporary jazz and folk singers back to Barbara Gaskin, Jacqui McShee, et al, and in places, even Joni Mitchell is brought to mind. The overall feel is of a decidedly folk-tinged Canterbury air, but fronted by the lush occasionally jazz, occasionally prog rock-styled guitar of Phil Mercy, who is certainly influenced by Steve Howe … and influences do not come much better than that. When Johan Brand is adding his best pounding Rickenbacker bass sound to the mix, then the “Yes go to Canterbury” bus is well and truly on the road, particularly so with the intro to Prodigy. Suffice to say none of this is plagiaristic or intentional, and the end result is Thieves’ Kitchen and no-one else.

…

An album to get lost in, the intricacy is combined with great delicacy on the baroque piano ballad Astrolabe and its instrumental companion, the beautiful closer Orrery, tracks that punctuate the longer vocal songs. Surrounding those two tunes we have all manner of complex instrumentation always delivered without bombast, complementing the theme of the album perfectly, which narrates stories of naturally imperfect human contact and interaction with precise science and technology.

The focal point of the album is the twenty minute The Scientist’s Wife, a tale of a spouse’s estrangement to her husband’s questing obsession, and a “long ’un” that fully justifies its length. The music drives along with purpose searching for the end goal in much the same way as the protagonist’s husband is striving for his own answer. It takes over five minutes before the “wife” makes herself heard, calming the building musical insistency to sing her lament for days past when she was the light of her husband’s eye, only to be slowly martyred on the altar of the grand experiment. Some lovely flute work from Anna Holmgren only serves to underline the melancholy…“When I sing, I sing alone; I’m fading to grey”. The experiment recommences, the band let loose amongst the unfathomable cogs and pivots. Some great guitar work from Phil bursts through the intricate turning mechanisms, before we return to melancholy, ending with “Charming strangeness, a beautiful mind” from Amy and followed by Anna’s sad flute. Quite lovely.

Flying Colors – “Second Flight: Live at the Z7”

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock musicLeave a comment

Raw, precise, and inspiring, “Second Flight: Live at the Z7” is yet another taste of the virtuosity that Morse, Morse, Portnoy, LaRue, and McPherson provide for Flying Colors.

http://theprogmind.com/2015/11/05/flying-colors-second-flight-live-at-the-z7/

Unified Past – “Shifting the Equilibrium”

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock musicLeave a comment

Read my thoughts on the new album from Unified Past.

http://theprogmind.com/2015/11/05/unified-past-shifting-the-equilibrium/

RUSH Premiere “Tom Sawyer” Video From “R40 Live” Film

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock music1 Comment

Canadian rock legends RUSH will release their “R40 Live” concert film later this month. A performance clip of the song “Tom Sawyer”, taken from “R40 Live”, can be seen below. All roads have led to this. Forty-one years in the making, RUSH‘s “R40 Live” tour took a very real journey back through time. Beginning with the grand design: a state-of-the-art stage set that pivots,…

http://www.prog-sphere.com/news/rush-premiere-tom-sawyer-video-r40-live-film/

New STEVEN WILSON Album “4 ½” to be Released in January

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock musicLeave a comment

22nd January will see the release of a new Steven Wilson album “4 ½”, so titled because it forms an interim release between Steven’s recently released fourth album Hand. Cannot. Erase. and the next studio album. 4 ½ comprises 6 tracks with a total running time of 37 minutes. 4 of the songs originated during…

http://www.prog-sphere.com/news/new-steven-wilson-album-4-%C2%BD-released-january/

LSD and the best cover ever of “Bohemian Rhapsody”

On By Time LordIn Progarchy1 Comment

LSD = Lake Street Dive.

This is totally hilarious and completely awesome. One of the greatest covers I have ever seen and heard! Hat tip to Carl for alerting us to this.

A few comments from Carl:

I discovered Lake Street Dive via the work of lead singer Rachael Price, who is a fabulously gifted jazz singer. While still in a teen, in 2003, Price received an honorable mention at the Montreux Jazz Festival’s International Jazz Vocal Competition and the following year she was a semi-finalist and the youngest competitor in the history of the Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition. Despite her impeccable jazz chops, she never received the sort of adulation heaped upon female jazz singers such as Diane Krall. In 2004 she began performing in Lake Street Dive, consisting of classmates from New England Conservatory of Music in Boston: Mike “McDuck” Olson (trumpet, guitar), Bridget Kearney (upright bass), and Mike Calabrese (drums). The band was the brain child of Olson and was originally envisioned to be a “free country band” (!). All four members have a deep background in both classical and jazz music, and all four have made known their love for 1960s R&B, soul, rock, and related music. And, in fact, the band first started to gain traction when a self-shot video of their performance of Michael Jackson’s “I Want You Back” went viral.

So, hardly a prog band! But anyone who prefers their pop to be quirky, smart, occasionally edgy, often fun, and always played with impeccable chops and taste, Lake Street Dive is the band for you. And they do have fun taste in cover songs, ranging from ABBA to Fleetwood Mac to Hall & Oates (their version of “Rich Girl” is smokin’, as they say) and Paul McCartney.

Their cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is part of a series of Halloween vidoes they’ve produced in recent years. On one hand, it is quite campy (perfectly fitting for a Freddie Mercury classic) and quite fun, but also impressively sang and played, with some rather brilliant instrumentation. At the heart of it all, as always, are the harmonies and the lead vocals of Price. (Anyone interested in 3:30 of vocal bliss should watch her sing “What Am I Doing Here”).

Backstory to The Tangent’s PYRAMIDS AND STARS (2005)

On By bradbirzerIn Progressive rockLeave a comment
2005. Very rare.
2005.  The Tangent’s first live album.

Ian Oakley posted this fascinating backstory on Facebook and very kindly gave me permission to repost here.  Thank you, Ian!

 Ok I may be totally biased as I tour managed the week and financed the CD – but this really is a remarkable live album – There was just something magic that night, it just seemed that for one reason or another that night everything came together at once and the band were firing on all cylinders. Then we had the enormous good fortune to have a venue sound engineer who was sympathetic to the music; because what you are hearing on that CD is basically a direct feed from the desk into a portable 4 track machine – which only really worked once on the whole tour – this night. No overdubs – just a raw live band doing only the 5th date of their entire career! Atmosphere wise there is only one other live ‘Prog’ album that I think captures a time and a place so well – Twelfth Night’s ‘Live and let Live’. So I totally agree with you Bradley, this is a real 3rd wave classic and I would go as so far to say it contains a far better performance of the material from ‘The World That We Drive Through’ than the studio album itself. . . .  I would add that this was also recorded just a week after some members of the band had actually physically met for the very first time – let alone played together! (I remember having to introduce Andy to Jonas at a TFK gig after TMTDA was recorded: “Hi Jonas” – “Hi you are?” – “Ahh I’m Andy we just recorded an album together”…

The Tangent’s PYRAMIDS AND STARS, 10 Years On

On By bradbirzerIn Progressive rockLeave a comment

There are few bands that perform as well live as they do in the studio.  And, of course, there are some for which the opposite is true.

One band that only gets that much more interesting live is Andy Tillison’s ever-evolving The Tangent.  This year, amazingly enough, is the tenth anniversary of the first live The Tangent release, PYRAMIDS AND STARS.  Looking at the line up for that tour, one has to wonder if one is caught in some kind of heavenly time-loop or fantasy prog game.  Andy Tillison, Roine Stolt, Jonas Reingold, Sam Baines, and Zoltan Csorsz.  The lineup could be for a Flower Kings album or, perhaps, a Steven Wilson album.

2005. Very rare.
2005. Very rare.

The ever, endlessly talented Ed Unitsky painted the cover, and, of course, it’s gorgeous.

Only six songs make up this 77-minute feast: The World That We Drive Through; The Canterbury Sequence; The Winning Game; The Music That Died Alone; In Darkest Dreams; and the only song under six minutes in length, a cover version of (ELP) Lucky Man.

The songs—all of which come from the first two The Tangent albums—sound as gorgeous as Unitsky’s cover art would suggest.  This is The Tangent, but it’s The Tangent fully alive.  What happened in the studio is merely prologue.  That the embryo, this the fine young man come of age.

Andy and Roine are especially playful and open to the spirit of the muses.  Their love of this music is palatable.

Sadly, this live album is extremely hard to find, and I made it a point several years ago to dig deeply across and through the internet to find a copy.  It was well worth the hunt, for I treasure this album like no other.  It’s a precious thing to behold.