Artist: In Mourning Album Title: Afterglow Label: Agonia Records Date Of Release: 20 May 2016 In Mourning is a name that that have flitted around the very edges of my consciousness for a few years now. ‘Afterglow’ however, takes the Swedish quintet out of my personal periphery and re-positions them at the very forefront of […]
https://manofmuchmetal.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/in-mourning-afterglow-album-review/
My great friend, Tobbe Janson, asked that I offer seven days of music-related memories. Thank you, Tobbe. Let the nostalgia begin.
Even earlier than my actual memory allows, I used to crawl out of my crib in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I was rather dangerous. My mom and two older brothers remember with much horror the one night that I had crawled onto the stovetop, lighting all the burners to full. When they heard me screaming, they ran down to find me standing in the middle of the stovetop. Amazingly, I stood perfectly in the middle, unharmed.
Usually, though, my 3 in the morning explorations were just plain mischievous. As far as I know, there was never a time in our house that we didn’t have music. Classical, jazz, musicals, rock. All was acceptable. Born in late 1960s, I became rather obsessed with two records. Frequently, I crawled out of the crib, descended downstairs, and put one of my two favorite singles on the stereo system. I’d not only figured out how to play records before I could walk, I knew how to blare the records at full volume, waking up my family. Most likely, I awoke several neighbors in my hometown of Great Bend, Kansas, as well. Our stereo went to 11.
The two songs: the Banana Splits Theme and Snoopy and the Red Barron.
Well, it seems a little early to talk about Christmas. But, not about Christmas music! As we get close to Advent (begins this Sunday) and prepare for Christmas and the holiday season, you have a lot of wonderful offerings from the music community. Indeed, there almost seems to be a revival of the Christmas song. Lots and lots to choose from.
If you want a great two-track EP, get The Reasoning’s “It’s Christmas (Sing it Loud),” out today, and available from amazon.com and iTunes. Rachel Cohen has the voice of an angel, of course, and it shows in every note she sings with one of the greatest prog/rock outfits around today. Thank you, Matt Cohen, master of many, many things. For those of you who shy away from prog, no worries. This is just a wonderfully joyous song. I think it could’ve easily been the finale to HOME ALONE.
Neal Morse, never unwilling to profess his own faith (in Christianity and in prog!) has two CDs out you might like. The first, out last year at this time and still available, is a PROGGY CHRISTMAS–featuring just about everyone you could imagine. As I wrote last year:
All of the members of Transatlantic (Portnoy, Trewavas, and Stolt), Steve Hackett, Steve Morse, and Randy George. Portnoy is even “The Little Drummer Boy”! Jerry Guidroz does his usual extraordinary mixing and engineering.
Also available–as a member of the Neal Morse Inner Circle–“Christmas 2013.” These songs date back almost 20 years. Very delicate as well as energetic.
Our own progarchist, lovely Leah, “metal maid,” has a gorgeous EP out, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” Three tracks introduce the listener to our favorite Canuck rocker (that is, below the age of 60. Sorry Geddy, Alex, and Neil) and the spirit of a metal Christmas.
Finally, out just since last Friday, is another progarchist album, In Dulci Jubilo. This one comes from classical and progressive guitarist Kevin McCormick and his oldest daughter, Rachel. My best description of this album is “immaculate.” In Dulci Jubilo is 14 tracks long at 46 minutes. A much more detailed review forthcoming.
Dear Artists, Groups, Record Labels, Engineers, Producers, Managers, and assorted Fellow Humans,
We the Progarchists absolutely love music. Indeed, we consider it one of the finest things in the world. Please let us review your work. We’re dropbox, email, and mail friendly. If you send us something, I promise we’ll consider your trust in us a sacred one. We will treat your work with all due respect.
Though we specialize in progressive and art rock, we feel qualified to review anything classical, rock, jazz, or blues related. Sacred music is fine as well.
For email notices, inquiries, news, etc., please contact us at bradbirzer@gmail.com.
For actual, physical, tangible mail (yes, we still love CDs and vinyl), please use the following:
Brad Birzer/editor
Progarchy
6 West Montgomery
Hillsdale MI 49242 USA
We also love interviews.
Yours,
The Progarchists
I have no idea if this is an American thing or not (and, quite possibly, a midwestern American thing at that), but I really miss movie maker John Hughes. The man knew how to write, how to bring together immense talent, and how to promote good music. After all, he brought together Steve Martin, John Cusack, Oingo Boingo, and Echo and the Bunnymen,
As we do every Thanksgiving break, the entire Birzer clan watched Home Alone. We have every line and every crazy moment memorized. But, we love it nonetheless.
As we finished the movie, I couldn’t help but think of some of my favorite John Hughes moments.
Who can really forget Ferris’s best line: “It’s not that I condone fascism. . . or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism. He should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon. ‘I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.’ A good point there. After all, he was the walrus.”
Or, the main character of “She’s Having a Baby” fearing the death of his wife during child birth with Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” playing over the scene?
Or, Farmer Ted growing up a little too quickly in 16 Candles?
And, so many other scenes.
At the time (the mid 1980s), no two movies hit me as hard as The Killing Fields and The Breakfast Club. Vastly different, of course, the former revealed the evils of totalitarianism. The latter, though, expressed our anger at the both the Yuppies and the Hippies. Each group had screwed up the world miserably, and we wanted to make our own way. They’d divided us into convenient categories, and we rejected them.
And, the movie begins with a quote from David Bowie.
Hughes knew us very well.
One of the last things I want to spend time on (mine or yours) is writing about things I don’t like on Progarchy. Simply put, there’s too much good in music to waste on trash. And, not surprisingly, I’m generally not very good at criticizing anyway.
But be warned, the packaged magazine now available in the U.S. at Barnes & Noble’s entitled “The Cure and the Story of the Alternative 80s” is a complete waste of printing materials.
I came across it this past weekend while in Grand Rapids, and I was quite taken with the title. Coming from Future Media (makers of the excellent PROG) and complete with 15 track cd, I’d assumed this would be good. It’s not. The cd has absolutely nothing from The Cure, and the magazine devotes only five pages of text (out of a total of 130 pages) to The Cure. None of the information is new to any one who has even the slightest interest in The Cure.
I’d assumed Future Media packaged and sealed their publications to keep the magazines and the cds in good form. As it turns out, Future Media seals the magazines to present its products in a false fashion.
So, take my advice, and avoid this magazine like the plague. A complete and total waste of $15.
Rant over.
Radiohead, Kid A (2000). While I don’t worship at the altar of Radiohead or Thom Yorke, I very much appreciate them. While Ok, Computer did a wonderful job of bringing a 1990s feel to 70s Alan Parsons and other proggish-bands of the mid 1970s, Kid A offered something radically new and mesmerizing in the world of music. Intense lyrics about the problems of post modernity and scientism only add to the haunted and haunting quality of the album. Though Ok, Computer has better moments, punctuating the imitative proginess of two decades earlier, Kid A has no flaws as it explores a fascinating new realm of bleak soundscapes. The lyrics of Kid A, however, remain unimportant, ultimately, as Thom Yorke’s voice serves as another instrument on the album. The producer, Nigel Godrich, deserves credit for being an equal member of the band. The opening track, “Everything in its right place,” sums up the production, the album, and its place in history. A masterpiece.
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks. 1968. This album is an insightful and penetrating introspection without ever falling into pure naval gazing. And, nobody writes better about the beginnings of love than Van Morrison. Possibly there exists something profound in the Celtic soul. Chesterton argued that the Irish were those the Gods made mad. Perhaps, this explains something. Or not. As I understand it, the album was done in only three sessions with the jazz musicians–who had never met one another–being given the music when they entered the studio. Happily, it possesses of the overproduced pop sound of its predecessor, Brown Eyed Girl. Astral Weeks is perfect for an autumn day. Or, really, for any day.
OK, confession time. After seeing this admission, you might decide to stop reading, thinking that I’m a little odd (and in that you’d probably be right). It’s my hope that some of you will be kindred spirits. Here goes:
After purchasing digital music from iTunes or Amazon, the very first thing I do, even before my first listen, is to right-click on the downloaded files and delete the genres that have been assigned to them. I do the same thing when ripping a CD; my first move, after CD details have been acquired from Gracenote or some other media identification service, is to delete the genre information.
There, I’ve admitted it. Is that weird? Do you do something similar?
In my case, this behaviour stems from early frustrations with digital music purchases. I would buy some Tangerine Dream and would be baffled by its classification as ‘Dance Music’, or I would download some classic Mike Oldfield and be astounded to see it labelled ‘New Age’. Besides such obvious travesties, I’ve downloaded many tracks where there is genuine ambiguity: a track labelled ‘Pop’ that I would tend to think of as ‘Rock’, or vice versa.
Just what is the difference between ‘Pop’ and ‘Rock’, anyway? I’ve never been clear on that; indeed, I no longer think it is possible to be completely clear on that.
The Amazon/iTunes model of music classification would have us believe that genres are an orderly array of rigid boxes, into which any given piece of music can be neatly placed. As prog fans we know better than anyone how flawed this model is. The boxes, such as they are, are not rigid. Their boundaries are fuzzy, very fuzzy – and these ill-defined boundary zones are precisely where the most interesting and rewarding music is to be found!
It is a familiar problem for any prog fan. Prog, with its tendency towards experimentalism and the effort it makes to draw upon many influences, invariably seems to lie at the intersection of some weird multi-dimensional Venn diagram of genres. And that point of intersection is difficult to pin down, as if a musical version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle were at work, affecting our observations. The easy way out is just to define prog as its own genre and abandon any attempt to relate it to anything else – but that’s a question I shall explore in another blog post!
In my more facetious moments, I often think that there are only three meaningful genres of music: stuff you like, stuff you don’t like and stuff you haven’t heard yet. Or perhaps Tim Hall (@Kalyr) had it right when he suggested on Twitter and his blog that genres should be regarded as recipe ingredients rather than pigeonholes.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but for now I’m going to keep on deleting.
English gentleman, bassist, and lyricist Greg Spawton offered some very kind words regarding Progarchy today. Thank you, Mr. Spawton!
Progressive rock has a very vibrant presence on the internet, with a number of communities and sites all with their particular strengths and idiosyncrasies. Over the years, I have probably visited Progressive Ears, Progarchives and DPRP more often than most, but there are many others, including sites hosted by individual bands (such as the BBT Facebook Group.)
Now, there is a fine new prog site called Progarchy which I strongly recommend. The site functions as a blog and includes reviews and articles. The number of contributors and readers is expanding very rapidly and I forecast that Progarchy will become an essential resource for prog listeners. The site can be found here and followed on Twitter here.
Progarchy 