Pianist Gleb Kolyadin’s triumpant launch of his new solo album Mobula with the help of a few old friends
Gleb Kolyadin. Photo by Leon Barker
Friday night’s gig was to launch Russian pianist Gleb Kolyadin’s new album Mobula. A year ago, Kolyadin and Marjana Semkina from their prog folk band iamthemorning played the same venue, the small and perfectly formed Piano Smithfield in London. That was an emotional event. After his ‘ unforgettable Thailand holidays ‘, Kolyadin had just returned to the UK, following his arrest and imprisonment in Thailand while on tour as a session musician with the Russian dissident rock band Bi-2. He faced deportation to Russia, where the band could have been persecuted for anti-war sentiments. Semkina highlighted the story via social media and an online petition.
Friday’s event was inevitably more low-key but still hugely enjoyable. Kolyadin announced that although this was an album launch, he wouldn’t play it as it’s ‘unplayable.’ By that, he meant that it was recorded with several guest musicians, most of whom weren’t present. Although he had ‘no exact plan’ for the evening, he did announce that he would be joined later by guitarist Charlie Cawood and percussionist Evan Carson for ‘improvisations’ on some of the tracks from Mobula.
Kolyadin began with three piano improvisations. This was a privileged invitation into his private world; it felt as if we were eavesdropping on his innermost thoughts. Sometimes he seemed to be a mere observer, with his eyes closed or his head cocked to one side, as if sharing in the sense of wonder with the spellbound audience. His playing was never showy, but always virtuosic.
Kolyadin took us on a journey through variegated landscapes, a tour through classical music, contemplative passages, blues, jazzy syncopations, and a lilting waltz. His touch was lovely; sometimes delicate, at other times robust. His left hand was very fluid, crossing over his right hand at times in the style of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.
The second improvisation had some lovely Debussyian touches (in the style of French composer Claude Debussy), with impressionistic use of the sustain pedal to create a nebulous cloud of sound. It began with glittering cascades in the right hand and a repeated motif that shifted from major to minor. There was a clever echo effect in the right hand. A syncopated section in modernist style, reminiscent of the great Keith Emerson, led to a gorgeous rendition of The Beatles’ classic The Long and Winding Road, with a jazzy twist at the end.
‘What am I going to play?’ mused Kolyadin before the third improvisation. You got the impression he would have been happy to improvise all night; we would have been happy to listen. He began with an angular melody, watching his fingers detachedly. There were lively, joyful cascades of sound, like the pealing of bells, with a growling bass. A jazzy, syncopated passage was perfectly executed. A fast, Baroque section was lightly swung, then a Gershwin-like jazzy groove. For a moment, he was in perfect sync with the rhythm of a shaker that came from behind the bar. He told me afterwards that this was deliberate! A Mussorgskian passage (in the style of Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky) led to a symphonic section. Finally, he delighted us by plucking the grand piano strings with his right hand, creating a metallic, eerie sound.
This was a concert of three halves, and in the second half, Kolyadin played four songs from the new album Mobula. He began with a piano solo, Gaia, gentle and lyrical, with sudden uplifting key changes. He was joined by Evan Carson on percussion for the next three songs. Glimmer featured flowing, lyrical piano. Carson concentrated deeply, letting the music seep into him before he got into the groove. The song ended with majestic chords, and an appreciative shout, ‘Yeah!’ from the audience. It was well-deserved. Radiant began with solo piano, flowing like water. Carson played a single instrument, a drum held on one side while the other hand played it. He’s such a versatile player that he created a whole percussion section on his own. Guitarist Charlie Cawood joined for Dawnlight. Cawood picked out individual notes on his acoustic guitar, like stars in the firmament. Kolyadin took us on an odyssey of different key signatures.
The iamthemorning band. Photo by Leon Barker
The final third of the concert was an iamthemorning band show, with singer Marjana Semkina joining the other musicians. Her voice sounded a little deeper than usual, almost whispering at times. She explained that she had lost her voice completely the previous day, and that she was there mainly to provide ‘moral support and as a glorified merch seller.’ She did both jobs more than adequately. In fact, if she hadn’t alerted us to her vocal problem we probably wouldn’t have noticed, as she is such a consummate artist and performer. The expanded iamthemorning duo played a short set stretching back over 10 years consisting of ‘Touching II’ from Ocean Sounds (2016), ‘Os Lunatum’ (from Belighted, 2104), ‘Song of Psyche’ (from The Bell, 2019) and ‘Ghost of a Story’ from the 2020 EP Counting the Ghosts. Semkina, with her trademark dark humour, told us that the songs were about ‘dead girls,’ and that her birthday gig in April would be a chance for us to drink to her being one year closer to death. Charlie Cawood brought some lovely guitar touches, with a gorgeous solo on Os Lunatum with double-stopping and strummed chords. On Ghost of a Story, his guitar tone was a lucid as a lute.
But, quite rightly, the evening belonged to Kolyadin. His solo piano encore was romantic at first, with off-beat rhythms across both hands, playing with precision and emotion at the same time, creating little vignettes within a larger narrative. The indefatigable Chris Parkins of the promoter London Prog Gigs suggested there was just time for one more song, unless ‘anyone has got anywhere else to be?’ Nobody had.
The final encore was a pensive piano song, with chords in the right hand falling like rain. It morphed into an elegant dance, with a Baroque feel, and ended with a passionate rising theme, bringing a superb evening to an end.
The iamthemorning band, Photo by Leon Barker
Gleb Kolyadin’s new album Mobula is out now on Kscope.
“It’s about death… in the nicest possible sense of the word.”
*****
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, the album has been touring the UK’s planetariums, reaching Jodrell Bank in Cheshire late last year. The showings have been immersive, with surround sound and visuals of scenes from outer space, replicating the original album launch in 1973 when it was played to journalists at the London Planetarium.
This evening, Steven Wilson launched his eighth solo album, The Overview, in another immersive experience. He launched his last solo album, The Harmony Codex, at EartH in London, but tonight’s show was very different. His previous album was ‘cinema for the ears’; we listened in reverential darkness.
The new album is cinema for the eyes as well as the ears. There’s a remarkable new film from Miles Skarin, who worked on the visuals for the most recent Porcupine Tree album Closure/Continuation and the accompanying tour, as well as Wilson’s solo albums The Future Bitesand The Harmony Codex.
Skarin’s film looked pristine on the massive IMAX screen, and the sound matched the quality of the visuals. The drums were particularly impressive, and Wilson’s voice sounded incredibly intimate.
The opening scene depicts an alien who asks, ‘Did you forget about us?’ As Wilson later admitted, he was slightly tongue-in-cheek when he wrote those words. But there is a serious point here; he is concerned that rather than looking up at the stars in wonder, we have become so obsessed with technology and with ourselves—particularly with smartphones and social media—that we have forgotten to look up at the sky and marvel at the universe.
Wilson says that his lifetime has seen the most rapid evolution of the human race during the 300,000 years of our life on earth due to the development of technology. He has been concerned about the possible adverse effects of this for a long time, dating back to ‘Every Home is Wired’, a song he wrote for the Porcupine Tree album Signify nearly 30 years ago. In 2007 he wrote a whole album about it, Porcupine Tree’s Fear of a Blank Planet. But as he said in the discussion, this is the first time he has looked at the problem ‘in a cosmic way.’
Wilson was keen for the images of space that accompany his new album not to replicate those that we have already seen in films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Interstellar, impressive as those images are. His brief to Skarin was to create something new, and Skarin has met the brief and even exceeded it. Sometimes, the imagery was concrete, as in the climate change imagery in the first half of the album, Objects Will Outlive Us. At other times, it was abstract and pattern-based, as when it accompanied the electronica at the start of the album’s second half, which forms the title track. On the IMAX screen, it appeared to have a depth to match the soundtrack, even though it was in 2D.
Musically, this could be Wilson’s strongest album since Hand. Cannot. Erase. from 2016 although further listens may change that view, The Overview has been described as Wilson’s return to prog rock, as it only has two long tracks and a powerful concept – the perspective that space travel gives on our lives. Wilson hasn’t denied that the album could fit into that genre, but it seems very accessible on first listen, and although the musicianship and production are superb it doesn’t feel self-indulgent in any way. It says what it needs to say – and the concept is possibly the most existential subject Wilson has ever tackled – and then ends. Highlights include the drumming of Russell Holzman (son of Wilson’s regular keyboard player Adam Holzman), the guitar solos of Randy McStine and Niko Tsonev, Adam Holzman’s keyboard solo, Wilson’s acoustic bass solo and Theo Travis’s soprano sax at the very end.
The album playback and film were followed by a fascinating discussion about the concept of The Overview, the Overview Effect – the cognitive change that many of those who left the Earth to travel into space often report. This can be positive or negative – William Shatner of Star Trek fame only saw death when he travelled into space, but others have had a spiritual experience seeing the ‘small blue dot’ of our planet from a distance that provides perspective.
Alex Milas, founder of Space Rocks, an organisation that promotes collaboration between space scientists and artists, chaired the panel discussion. Wilson explained that when the two of them had lunch together, and Milas explained the Overview Effect to him, he saw the album’s concept and heard the music ‘in a split second.’
Miho Janvier wowed us with her research into the sun – a spacecraft is about to provide us with views of the sun’s poles, which have never been seen before. She showed us a massive image of the sun and a tiny image of the Earth, which showed how insignificant our planet is. Mark McCaughrean baffled and delighted us with statistics about how big space is and how we have now seen images from only 290 million years after the Big Bang! The images we can now see are 13.5 billion years in the past, or 50 billion light years away. Miles Skarin said that when he put those numbers into his computer software to create scientific accuracy, the computer said ‘no.’
Wilson said the album is ultimately about human beings rather than science fiction. His wife Rotem’s voiceover provides incomprehensible statistics about the vastness of space, but the abiding image from the film is of Wilson as an astronaut, a lonely human floating in space. As Wilson says, our insignificance – the universe doesn’t care about us – means that we may as well at least ‘enjoy the ride.’ And if space is scary, it’s also beautiful. Wilson concluded that space gives us a sense of perspective: “It’s about death… in the nicest possible sense of the word.”
Panel members
Steven Wilson musician and producer
Alex Milas Space Rocks founder,
Miho Janvier astrophysicist and solar physicist at The European Space Agency,
Mark McCaughrean; senior scientific advisor for human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency (retired), and James Webb Space Telescope mission scientist & professor at the Max Planck institute.
I am pleased to announce that the Second Edition of my book, Porcupine Tree On Track, is now available to order from Burning Shed and other good bookshops.
The new edition is fully revised and updated to include an in-depth analysis of Porcupine Tree’s most recent album Closure/Continuation.
“… [Holmes’] analysis is critical and well-balanced, and he does well to keep his fandom out of the text. An interesting and thoughtful critique of an interesting and thoughtful band.”
2024 was a stunning year for Prog Rock new and old
The Cover of Living & Alive by Beatrix Players
The Return of Beatrix Players
Beatrix Players, led by Ms Amy Birks, made a welcome return to the progressive rock scene in late 2023 with the release of their album Living and Alive. In 2024, they brought the complete album to Manchester’s Band on the Wall and then to a triumphant home gig in the village of Barlaston, near Stoke-on-Trent. Birks was heavily pregnant and jokingly complained of ‘baby brain’; she has since given birth to a baby daughter. In the meantime, Birks and her band were superb live. Birks was a charismatic leader, her wonderfully expressive voice ranging from a warm, low mezzo to a high soprano, sometimes urgent in her delivery and at other times quietly intimate – often in the same song. She was a powerful stage presence, drawing the audience in, as their enthusiastic response showed.
Amalie Bruun (Myrkur)
Myrkur – Danish Black Metal and Scandinavian folk music
The Danish composer, vocalist, and classically trained multi-instrumentalist Amalie Bruun released her debut album under her own name in 2006. In 2011, she formed the indie pop duo Ex Cops with Brian Harding. The band split in 2014, and she started releasing music under the name Myrkur, Icelandic for darkness. In late 2023, she released Spine, which combines many of the styles of previous albums into a sophisticated whole, graced by her remarkably versatile voice. The album was partly based on her experience of being pregnant with her son Otto, who was born in 2019.
But the song My Blood is Gold, reviewed here in the ongoing Off the Beaten Track series, is a product of another significant life event: the death of her beloved father, Michael Bruun, in 2021. This profoundly moving track perfectly describes Bruun’s despair at her father’s death and her resolve for his memory to live on through her music.
Bruun brought her music to London in April 2024, demonstrating her versatility as a singer and songwriter in an eclectic set. Over the course of four albums and various EPs and singles, she has combined black metal with Scandinavian folk music, sometimes on the same album. Her latest album, Spine, her most eclectic yet, formed the bulk of the setlist, including a run of six songs at the start of the show. Bruun was joined on stage by Swedish folk singer Jonathan Hultén, the support act, in a gorgeous version of House Carpenter, a traditional Nordic folk song, attracting the most excited applause of the evening.
Marjana Semkina on the cover of her second solo album, SIRIN
Marjana Semkina and iamthemorning – a difficult but artistically successful year
Marjana Semkina is a member of the prog rock group iamthemorning with her Russian-born compatriot, the pianist Gleb Kolyadin, both of whom are now resident in the UK. The duo have released several records, the most recent being The Bell (2019) and the EP Counting The Ghosts (2020).
Semkina has recently pursued a parallel solo career, releasing her first solo LP, Sleepwalking, in 2020 and her EP, Disillusioned, in 2021. In 2024 she sang on the Moonflower EP with Zora Cock of Blackbriar, and released SIRIN, her second solo album. Semkina created this album without the support of a record label, raising tens of thousands of pounds for the project via crowd funding. She is an exceptional talent, as a singer and a songwriter, and a passionate promoter of her poetic and profound vision of the world through her music.
Semkina had a challenging year. Her bandmate Kolyadin was arrested and imprisoned in Thailand while on tour as a session musician with the Russian dissident rock band Bi-2. He faced deportation to Russia, where the band could have been persecuted for anti-war sentiments. Semkina highlighted the story via social media and an online petition.
Kolyadin was released after a week in prison and returned to England via Israel. A few days after his release, the duo performed an emotional comeback show at Piano Smithfield in London. Later in the year, the duo were joined by a full band to perform iamthemorning songs at St. Matthias Church in Stoke Newington, London. Semkina began with an evocative selection of her solo material, and Kolyadin demonstrated his supreme skill as an improviser in a solo piano set before the iamthemorning band played a superb band set.
The Cover of Harmonic Divergence by Steven Wilson
An Overview of Steven Wilson’s Year
While fans of Steven Wilson eagerly await his new album The Overview due in March, in 2024 he released a Record Store Day album Harmonic Divergence based on his 2023 album The Harmony Codex. Producer Ewan Pearson also remixed ‘Inclination’ from that album. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote, ‘Ewan Pearson sprinkles sunlit Balearic euphoria’, and Wilson described the remix as ‘a hypnotic cosmic disco odyssey.’
The year also saw the re-release of Storm Corrosion, the collaboration between Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metal band Opeth, in a new Dolby Atmos remix. Wilson has been making surround mixes of his own and other bands’ albums for so long now that he has been asked to do a surround sound mix of King Crimson’s Red for the second time after he did his first surround mix of the album in 2009. He decided to teach himself the art of surround sound mixing after Elliot Scheiner created 5.1 mixes of the Porcupine Tree albums In Absentia and Deadwing.
As Mikael Åkerfeldt admitted, Storm Corrosion isn’t an easy listen. However, it is certainly not as challenging to listen to as the albums Wilson has produced for his Bass Communion project, such as Ghosts on Magnetic Tape. Both albums take a while to give up their secrets and bring joy to the listener. In the Dolby Atmos mix of Storm Corrosion, the opening track makes the most startling use of the new technology. On other tracks, the effect is more muted, but when surround sound is used, it’s more effective as it is used sparingly.
Finally, in 2024, Wilson brought festive greetings to his fans with a physical release of his 2023 Christmas song, December Skies, complete with two Wilson-themed Christmas cards. The year also marked the fifth anniversary of the release of love you to bits, Wilson’s album with his no-man bandmate Tim Bowness, a melancholy disco masterpiece.
Perpetual Motions by Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard
Perpetual Change with Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard
Gavin Harrison, the drummer in Steven Wilson’s band Porcupine Tree, released Perpetual Motions, his second album with bass player Antoine Fafard, a collection of inventive musical explorations and collaborations from the virtuosic duo and several friends. The album’s title describes the perpetual change of musical arrangement from one of Fafard’s compositions to the next, the only constant being the playing of Fafard and Harrison on every piece. Remarkably, Fafard presented Harrison with complete recordings to add drums and percussion later; Harrison’s playing perfectly matches the pieces so it’s impossible to tell that his recordings were done separately.
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate
Malcolm Galloway had a more than Adequate Year
Malcolm Galloway of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate provided deep insights into his health condition and his writing process in a fascinating two-part interview: Part One and Part Two are here. Galloway and his bandmate Mark Gatland have a new album out in March, The Uncertainty Principle. In the meantime, One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov), one of the singles from the album, was released in 2024. It’s a compelling snapshot of a moral dilemma in which one man’s brave decision probably averted World War III. Hats Off shared the bill in Camden, London with a new discovery for me, the band EBB, who have a wonderful stage presence.
Prog the Forest at the Fiddler’s Elbow
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland, with the promoter London Prog Gigs, hosted a charity prog festival, Prog the Forest, at the Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden. All performers gave their services for free to support the rainforest and wildlife conservation charity, World Land Trust, which ‘protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats.’ This was the sixth year of Prog the Forest and the most successful to date, raising £2750 to protect nearly 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats.
The eclectic line-up was made up of: Spriggan Mist, a ‘pagan progressive rock band’; singer-songwriter Leoni Jane Kennedy, who was hand-picked by members of Queen for the Freddie Mercury Scholarship and plays acoustic Rush covers as well as her own songs; The Mighty Handful who include a ‘former music director of Strictly; Mountainscape who play instrumental post-metal; Theo Travis of Soft Machine, who has played saxophone and flute with numerous jazz and prog bands; Tim Bowness and Butterfly Mind; and Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate.
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets
Prog History Brought to Life
The late 1960s to the mid-1970s were arguably the golden era of Prog Rock, particularly in the UK, but as can be seen from the reviews above, the genre continues to thrive, with superb new music being produced both on record and live.
New life has also been breathed into prog rock classics, with the return of Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets with live interpretations of early Pink Floyd songs. Robin A Smith continued to tour Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells – the 50th anniversary, with a stunning new arrangement of the classic album; 2024 was also the 50th anniversary of the release of Peter Hammill’s solo album The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, from which the epic track ‘A Louse is not a Home‘ is taken.
Special Thanks
With thanks to Jerry Ewing and Prog magazine for keeping the prog flag flying, and to Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs for his tireless contribution to the live scene in London.
For an overview of the year in classical music in 2024, click here.
Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, released on 25 March 1973, made a slow start. It didn’t enter the UK album charts until 14 July 1973, and then only at a lowly number 31. It wasn’t until after the release of the horror film The Exorcist in December 1973, which featured the opening piano motif of Oldfield’s piece as its theme tune, that the album became a massive worldwide success. It remained in the UK top ten for a year from March 1974 and peaked at no. 1 on 5 October of that year. In total, it has spent over five years in the UK top 100. The cover artwork, shot by the English photographer Trevor Key shared an iconic simplicity with Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which was released a few weeks earlier. Both album covers, with their classic triangular designs found their way into millions of British homes in the 1970s and beyond. In 2010, the cover of Tubular Bells was featured as one of ten Royal Mail stamps with famous British album covers, along with Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell (1994).
“There was Sibelius in it, there was Debussy in it. It was all of the best bits of music I’d ever heard.”
Tom Newman, Tubular Bells Producer, on the original demo tape
Recording Tubular Bells
Oldfield wrote the album in his late teens and recorded virtually all the instrumental parts himself at the Manor Studio in Oxfordshire. It was the first release on Richard Branson’s record label, launching the Virgin brand. The album was recorded on Virgin’s 16-track tape reel-to-reel recorder, with Oldfield over-dubbing multiple instruments. Oldfield’s Producer, Tom Newman described the album as ‘minimalist’ music. It was partly inspired by the track ‘A Rainbow in Curved Air’ from Terry Riley’s 1969 album of the same name. Newman said that Oldfield, rather than using tape loops as Riley did, instead played each loop by hand to avoid a mechanical feel. The first side of the album ends with the English singer-songwriter, musician, author, and poet Vivian Stanshall introducing several of the instruments that Oldfield played, ending with the tubular bells. This passage is reminiscent of The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945) by Benjamin Britten in which an announcer introduces various sections of the orchestra.
Live Performances
Oldfield first performed the full album live in concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) in London on 25 June 1973. He was very reluctant to perform, and only did so because Branson gave him his Bentley which had belonged to George Harrison. Many of the musicians who played in the QEH concert joined Oldfield again for a studio recording of the piece on 30 November 1973, which was broadcast on BBC 2 television on 5 January 1974.
The fiftieth anniversary celebrations began in August 2021 when there was a run of concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Oldfield wasn’t involved with those concerts, having retired from live performance. They were directed by the arranger, composer and conductor Robin A. Smith, who first met Oldfield in Los Angeles in 1991.
“There’s no question that Tubular Bells is one of the most unique pieces of music written [in the 20th] century. It embraces so many platforms. It is highly complex, embracing minimalist, rock, serialisation, and in many ways heralded the emergence of new age music; chill and ambient.”
Smith was introduced to Mike Oldfield by Mike’s sister, Sally Oldfield, when he was working as a session musician on her 1990 album Natasha. Smith worked with Oldfield on the world premiere of the 1992 album Tubular Bells II at Edinburgh Castle, on Tubular Bells III (1998), and on a live performance of The Millennium Bell (1999) in Berlin on New Year’s Eve 1999. The last time Smith and Oldfield played live together was at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012.
Oldfield’s live performances of Tubular Bells in 1973 stuck fairly closely to the original recording, but for the 50th anniversary Smith has enhanced the original by adding extra ‘cinematic textures.’ As he said in the Tubular Bells 50th Anniversary Tour Documentary (2022),
‘There will be many people who come here and go, ‘it doesn’t sound anything like the record”.
Fans of the original record who attended the concert on Tuesday evening in Manchester needn’t have worried – Smith is a consummate arranger, and has even been nominated for a Grammy for his skills in this department. And he was joined by a superb live band who did full justice to his arrangements – which were rich and orchestral in style – and to the spirit of Oldfield’s music.
The First Half of the Concert – from Ommadawn to Discovery and a shiny Gem
Robin A Smith and Jay Stapley
The first half began with the opposite of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony (1772), in which the players gradually leave the stage until only two violinists are left. Each performer came on stage individually, starting with Smith who was the evening’s Musical Director, pianist and keyboard player. The opening sequence, played as a continuous medley, consisted of instrumental themes from Tubular Bells II, Ommadawn (1975)/Return to Ommadawn (2017), the song ‘To France‘ (from Discovery 1984) and the instrumental Summit Day (from Guitars 1999). Smith was joined in the lovely contemplative, opening section by Maxime Obideau on acoustic guitar then Jay Stapley on sweet-toned Fender Strat. The track built to a nostalgic, bluesy solo.
Lisa Featherston, who played bass for most of the concert, provided soulful vocals in a lovely arrangement of ‘To France’. Percussionists Jack Davies and Will Miles and cellist Kwesi Edman soon joined, and the band was completed by vocalist Daisy Bevan. At this point it’s worth mentioning the stunning contribution of Bevan throughout the evening. She trained as a soprano with Sara Fulgoni and Mary Plazas at the Royal Northern Collage of Music in Manchester and has performed at opera houses around the world. Her wordless vocalising throughout the evening was stunning, sometimes full-throated and operatic, sometimes soulful, at other times gentle and wistful.
Featherston also sang lead vocals on Moonlight Shadow, Oldfield’s most popular single, which reached number four in the UK in 1983, and number one in several European countries. This was a rockier version than the folk-tinged original, with heavy, rumbling drums giving it more momentum, and a lovely, fluid guitar solo from Jay Stapley. He also provided vocals on a rocky version of Family Man, which reached number 15 in the UK singles charts in 1982.
The highlight of the first half was Robin Smith’s composition The Gem from Tubular Bells Reimagined released on bandcamp in January of this year. This instrumental epic began with atmospheric electronics, some gorgeous slide guitar work from Maxime Obideau, and resonant bass from Lisa Featherston. A plaintive cello solo from Kwesi Edman led to the sonorous main theme, which was reminiscent of the piano theme from another epic prog track, ‘Storm Corrosion’ from the 2012 album of that name by Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth. Will Miles and Jack Davies on percussion, including timpani, played elemental, cinematic rhythms. Smith’s piece had some lovely key changes, and an uplifting sense of musical inevitability. The second section was lighter and more folky, with glowingly optimistic keyboards, mandolin and a nice flowing bass line. A cello solo and a piano solo brought a beautiful moment of stillness before the final section with warm wordless vocals from Daisy Bevan, which may have reminded some listeners of Clare Torry’s gorgeous wordless vocals on ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ from The Dark Side of the Moon. And Stapley’s guitar solo was suitably Floydian. After some heavy, military drumming and further epic key changes, the song ended with an affecting piano coda from Smith. A stunning finale to the first half of the concert.
TheSecond Half of the Concert – Tubular Bells
The second half was devoted to Tubular Bells. Part I began with low earthy electronics, and a synthesised ethereal choir before the distinctive opening piano theme appeared, to applause from the audience, played by Obideau, and doubled by Stapley’s guitar as Bevan’s voice soared above. A transitional section led to a duet between mandolin and a solo by Kwesi Edman, whose lyrical playing was a delight. A visceral heavy rock section saw the two guitarists coming to the front of the stage, and they soon returned to play a lovely blues duet, with an intricate but funky syncopated section. Smith played honky-tonk piano, smiling beatifically. His calm but enthusiastic presence was a joy to behold. There was more funk with thundering drums, leading to a single repeated note played on the tubular bells which took pride of place at the rear centre of the stage amongst the massed ranks of percussion instruments. A precisely picked acoustic guitar solo led to a heavy metal guitar passage, with funky guitar and a bouncing bass line in unison, and delicate chords from Obideau. There was a sense of anticipation as the music built up to a climax in the closing section where various instruments from the band were introduced by the recorded voice of Sam West. After all the drama, Part I ended with a solo acoustic guitar. There was a well-deserved standing ovation.
Part II of Tubular Bells began with shimmering electronics, with a spacey almost psychedelic feel as Obideau on mandolin picked out the first theme and Bevan sang tender vocals. A transitional passage led to a pastoral, folky section with added percussion, the musicians smiling in rapturous concentration. Edman played a graceful cello solo with a heartfelt melody. Bevan brought operatic drama to another transition passage, which led to a joyful, folky reel on double guitars with soaring guitars and stirring percussion.
The next section on the original album featured Oldfield’s strange vocal section in which he grunted, growled and shouted in the voice of a cavemen he christened Piltdown Man after the early 20th century fraud in which the remains of ‘early man’ were allegedly found in Piltdown, East Sussex. Oldfield told Richard Buskin of Sound on Sound that, ‘Back then, I was absolutely useless as a vocalist and as a lyricist, and I actually damaged my larynx doing that part.’ The story goes that he only added it at the suggestion of Richard Branson and others who thought that the album needed some vocals. Perhaps wisely, the vocals, which were recorded, were placed very low in the mix in Smith’s version, allowing the two guitarists to shine with double prog metal solos, joined by thunderous drums. Obideau, in full rock star mode, played a stunning solo which drew applause from the audience. Another solo from Edman led to another pastoral section which could have been written by an early 20th century English composer like Frederick Delius. The two guitarists continued to show their versatility with a Floydian solo from Stapley and a psychedelic solo from Obideau, and Smith traversed the keyboard with jazzy flourishes. Bevan came to the front of the stage for a well-deserved solo spot. The piece ended with the full band playing a thunderous repeated chord in true rock’n’roll style. Another standing ovation ensued.
The band acknowledge a standing ovation from the audience
A Jolly Encore
The encore was a witty and joyful version of the traditional piece The Sailor’s Hornpipe, which has become a staple of The Last Night of Proms, complete with audience participation. Stapley encouraged the audience on Tuesday to ‘clap at will’ as the music got faster and faster. There was yet another standing ovation.
A Joyful Performance
The original Tubular Bells was the product of superb musicianship, a fertile imagination and many hours spent in the studio painstakingly overdubbing everything by hand, the product of a singular vision. Robin Smith’s stunning arrangement paid fitting tribute to the original but added drama and cinematic touches to produce a compelling new version. He was joined by an excellent ensemble of virtuoso musicians who performed with joy and dedication, delighting a packed Bridgewater Hall.
Performers
Robin A Smith – Keyboards/Piano/Musical Director Jay Stapley – Guitar Maxime Obideau – Guitar and Mandolin Lisa Featherston – Bass Kwesi Edman – Cello Daisy (Anastasia) Bevan – Vocals Will Miles – Percussion Jack Davies – Percussion Sam West – Recorded Narration on Tubular Bells Part I
Sources
Robin Smith’s website Tubular Bells 50th Anniversary Tour Documentary Official Tour website The Official UK Albums Chart Michaels, Sean, Coldplay album gets stamp of approval from Royal Mail (The Guardian 8 January 2010) Buskin, Richard, Classic Tracks: Mike Oldfield ‘Tubular Bells’ (Sound on Sound April 2013)
Tubular Bells continues touring, with 13 more dates in England until 12 Novemberand a European tour in March – April 2025
This article was corrected at 16.24 on Tuesday 29 October to confirm that the percussionists were Will Miles and Jack Davies. Tom Marsden played percussion on a previous tour.
An excitingly eclectic mix of prog bands perform to raise funds for an environmental charity
On a wet Sunday afternoon in early December, intrepid prog rock fans and supporters travelled from South London to North London… and also from Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium – and Manchester (your correspondent). This was a full day’s music festival without mud and dodgy toilets. There was a well-stocked bar, a small stage with an excellent sound and enough seats for those who didn’t fancy standing through sets by no fewer than seven bands and solo artists.
The event was jointly hosted by Malcolm Galloway of prog favourites Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, who was the MC for the festival, and Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs. Mark Gatland, the bass player in Hats Off, stage managed and helped organise the event. All performers gave their services for free to support the rainforest and wildlife conservation charity, World Land Trust, which ‘protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats.’ This was the sixth year of Prog the Forest and the most successful to date, raising £2750 to protect nearly 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats.
“We’ve just sent £2570 to the World Land Trust from Prog The Forest 2024, enough to protect almost 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats, in co-operation with local communities. That takes our cumulative PTF total to over 89 acres.“
Malcolm Galloway, on behalf of Prog the Forest
Malcolm Galloway entertained the audience in between acts with acre-related facts and fun quizzes. We learned that oxen need two shoes per hoof as, unlike horses (but similar to the Devil), they have cloven hooves. Before the invention of the yoke, the blood supply to a horse’s head was cut off with unfortunate consequences. As one band member quipped, ‘You wouldn’t get this at a Taylor Swift gig.’ Well, quite.
The first band was Spriggan Mist, a ‘pagan progressive rock band.’ In real life, lead singer Fay Brotherhood is a ‘professional ecologist and bat worker’, and she was on message with her splendid forest-related headgear, which featured forest greenery, antlers and flashing lights. An antler-related incident occurred when Brotherhood hit the mic with her headgear, causing a howl of feedback. The rest of the band are Baz Cilia on bass and vocals, Maxine Cilia on guitar, saxophone, woodwind and vocals, Neil Wighton on guitar and Ali Soueidan on drums.
Introducing the song Kintbury Witch, Fay Brotherhood asked, “Any witches in the house?” “Me”, came the reply from a female voice at the back.
Opening song Isambard was uplifting heavy rock, with Floydian guitar solos of epic length. The Portal was written the day the immortal David Bowie died, an upbeat pop song with a nice melodic bass line, lute-like guitar and fierce drumming. Coloured lights on Brotherhood’s gloves lit up in appreciation of the music. Brighid was more downbeat, Brotherhood – with her vibrato vocals, exciting headgear and compelling stage presence -reminding some audience members of the great Lili-Marlene Premilovich, better known as Lene Lovich.
Multi-instrumentalist Maxine Cilia also reminded us of the late ’70s/early ’80s by introducing a Keytar (pedants will note that the name wasn’t used until 2012) on When Stars Collide; she also played the saxophone later in the song. The next song, Ianatores Teresteres, began with a fuzz-guitar riff reminiscent of the 1973 single Radar Love by Golden Earring. Maxine Cilia further demonstrated her versatility by playing a heavily-echoed recorder. The band ended an exhilarating and highly theatrical set with Kintbury Witch, Brotherhood dancing enthusiastically with animal skulls, which she held in either hand to illustrate a witches’ ceremony.
Singer-songwriter Leoni Jane Kennedy was hand-picked by members of Queen for the Freddie Mercury Scholarship. She has supported Rush tribute band Moving Pictures with acoustic covers of Rush songs. She started her set with a cover of ‘Kid Gloves’ from Grace Under Pressure (1984), singing in a lovely low, sultry voice and accompanying herself with virtuoso strumming and versatile picking on her acoustic guitar. She played a gorgeous, melancholy cover of ‘Tears’ from Rush’s 1976 album 2112. She also covered ‘New World Man’ from Signals (1982), judiciously changing its name to ‘New World Woman’, the title of her 2023 album.
Leoni Jane Kennedy asked the audience if anyone had heard of Rush’s 1976 album 2112. When she got an enthusiastic response she said, “I’m in the right room!”
Kennedy also writes her own songs. On Temple, she demonstrated the full range of her voice, with lovely legato singing, and nice guitar harmonics at the end. She held the audience spellbound with Life Like This, which had interesting chord changes and a nice harmonic structure. Her best song was Ammunition, written as part of her Master’s in Songwriting. Although written to a brief, this was a beautiful, poignant song about her relationship with her father, ‘You weren’t there to watch me grow.’ With her soulful voice, superb guitar playing, and charismatic stage presence, Kennedy deserves to go far.
MC Galloway teased us by introducing a group of five Russian composers, Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin, sometimes known as ‘The Mighty Handful’ or the (partially famous) Five who apparently ‘changed the perception of time in their music’. This concept would appeal to prog fans, who love a complex time signature.
MC Galloway announced The Mighty Handful as including a ‘former music director of Strictly‘. We were now firmly into prog territory, with time signatures on songs like Vital Signs and Exit Piece that even the best Strictly dancers would have struggled to illustrate through the medium of interpretive dance. Ralph Blackbourn on keyboards made a stunning impression of Rick Wakeman in several songs, although sadly without the cape (the Uncaped Crusader?) And on Cavalier Spirit, he channelled the cavalier spirit of the great Jon Lord (Deep Purple) on bluesy Hammond organ.
“We’re here for the trees”, announced Matt Howes of The Mighty Handful. Faster than lightning in a rainforest, the response came back from the audience, “The trees can’t be here!”
Matt Howes was a mesmerising frontman, singing in a rock style on Cavalier Spirit and in a stratospheric falsetto on a new song, All the Birds, which he quipped wouldn’t be released until 2026 to avoid putting pressure on themselves. Guitarist Christopher James Harrison brought some fine playing to the driving guitar rock of Hypothetically Speaking from the band’s epic concept album Still Sitting in Danny’s Car, which Howes described as ‘going on and on’. Bass player Tom Halley, a member of a barbershop quartet in another life, brought funky bass lines and then beautifully cascading lines to Distant as the Stars. Howe introduced The Signal (ii) as a difficult song that ‘might go wrong’. The song was, in fact, superbly executed, with a proggy start, a funky keyboard solo from Blackbourn, and a spacey section with complex polyrhythms. At the end of the piece, Blackbourn leapt with joy, and the audience shared in the sheer exuberance of the band’s performance.
According to their Facebook page, Mountainscape play, ‘Instrumental post-metal. We blend elements of post-rock, black metal, doom, sludge and ambient in a filmscore inspired way.’ For those in the audience who were post-metal curious, Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs announced the three-piece as ‘prog adjacent or modern prog’ and said that they had been written up in Prog magazine; as Parkins said, if Jerry Ewing, Prog’s Editor, said they are prog they must be. Talking to band members later, they admitted playing a ‘softer’ set than their usual metal offering. Perhaps, in honour of the occasion, the band should have changed their name from Mountainscape to Treescape (although apparently some mountains do have rainforests growing on them).
Mountainscape consists of Dan Scrivener on guitar, Ethan Bishop on bass, and James Scrivener on drums, but the band’s sound was so full that they often sounded like a much bigger band. Atoms Unfurling began with ambient, spacey sounds and military drumming, then soaring, anthemic guitar. There was some black metal riffing at the end, but not enough to frighten the horses of prog – there were strong melodies that belied the band’s description of their music as ‘sludge’. On Iridescent, they lived up to their description. They created a compelling soundtrack for an imaginary film or video game, with a soaring, legato guitar solo with a few nicely proggy corners. Supernova featured some thrillingly evocative key changes, and Belonging began with a halo of tranquil electronics followed by deep, visceral bass and uplifting black metal riffs. The band’s exhilarating and prog-friendly set ended with the low-slung groove of Patterns in the Mist.
During the interval (or should that be a Winterval?), the audience went off to forage in the forest for food… or perhaps to comb the streets of Camden, while there were sound checks for the festival’s second half.
Theo Travis is a member of Soft Machine and has played saxophone and flute with numerous jazz and prog bands; the list of musicians he has collaborated with reads like a who’s who of jazz and prog. He also played duduk – a wind instrument with a large double reed, originally from Armenia – on‘ Beautiful Scarecrow’ on Steven Wilson’s last solo album, The Harmony Codex. His latest solo album is the beguiling Aeolus: One Hour Duduk Meditation, with ‘Production and Soundscapes’ by Steven Wilson. Last Sunday, he treated us to a short set for solo flute, made up of five evocative pieces. He used a loop pedal extensively to create harmonies and multi-layered trance-like themes. He also used flutter tonguing above stately melodies, sounding like a delicate butterfly or a bird’s wings fluttering. Sometimes, the effect was deliciously unsettling; elsewhere, the melodies sounded medieval and ineffably sad. He also created mesmerisingly deep organ notes. In the final piece, he played a stately riff, with complex flourishes above, building multiple parts that at one point sounded like one of Bach’s two-part inventions. A spellbinding set.
At the start of his set, Tim Bowness invited us to visualise dry ice and the epic strains of German composer Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra (the ‘theme music’ for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Then it was the turn of Prog Royalty to grace the stage – Tim Bowness was one-half of no-man with Steven Wilson (or originally one-third of the band that also consisted of violinist Ben Coleman, who played violin on The Harmony Codex). He introduced his band Butterfly Mind, saying they first played together in a five-minute soundcheck during the interval. The band consisted of Andrew Booker (drums), who had joined at very short notice, Rob Groucutt (keyboards), John Jowitt (bass) and Matt Stevens (guitar). Theo Travis, ‘dressed for the occasion’ in an elegant smoking jacket (if that’s the correct term; this Blog shouldn’t be relied on for fashion tips), played on some songs.
The band began with a blistering version of ‘Time Travel in Texas’ from no-man’s 1996 album Wild Opera, with a scorchingly funky bass line and an amazingly virtuosic guitar solo. Bowness was in fine voice here and throughout the set. The band were incredibly tight, despite their lack of time together. Next was ‘All the Blue Changes’ from no-man’s Together We’re Stranger (2003), which began with delicate piano and guitar and morphed into a punk/indie rock anthem. There was a change of pace for ‘Wherever There is Light’ from 2008’s classic no-man album Schoolyard Ghosts – which also contains the classic Pigeon Drummer – the band’s last album before 2019’s Love You to Bits. Bowness’ voice was a soft-grained wonder on this track. Theo Travis on flute provided a simple melodic theme that was very different from his solo set, with a gorgeous tone; the second time round, he decorated the song with delicate, filigree ornaments. Another early highlight was ‘Sing to Me’ from Tim Bowness’s third solo album, Stupid Things That Mean the World (2015). Bowness’ voice was pure, sweet and thoughtful. The band brought warm backing vocals, loose-limbed and relaxed drumming, gorgeous piano and bass flourishes, a lovely echoey guitar solo, and a heart-stopping key change after the words ‘the way she looked at you.’
‘Rainmark’ from Bowness’ fifth solo album, Flowers At The Scene (2019), included the lyrics, ‘I would save you/From the coming flood’, giving him the chance to meditate wittily on the floods that had come to his adopted home of Bradford on Avon, which apparently were so bad that from his house on the hill, the Co-op could only be reached ‘by dinghy’. and there was ‘no Ocado for three days!’ More remarkable than these First World Problems was the final acapella section of the song, with stunning drumming from Booker, effectively a drum solo with amazingly complex rhythms. The band were joined again by the ‘elegantly attired’ Travis for a stunning version of no-man’s 1993 single Sweetheart Raw. He played warm, low saxophone, then let rip with a fluid but angular jazz solo, playing an extraordinary number of notes in a very short time. Travis played soulful flute on ‘Mixtaped’ from Schoolyard Ghosts, then fiercely passionate sax. The song ended with Bowness’ beautiful solo voice. Travis rounded off ‘Things Change’ from no-man’s Flowermouth (1994) with a jazzy flourish while Stevens held his guitar aloft in triumph.
To close the festival, MC Galloway was joined onstage by Mark Gatland from Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. The band began with a world-exclusive premiere of ‘Certainty’ from their new album, The Uncertainty Principle. The song was a showpiece for Galloway’s superb guitar playing, ranging from a lyrical Floydian solo to jazzy, offbeat playing and an epic, bluesy solo. The band were joined by Galloway’s wife, the flautist Kathryn Thomas, on Century Rain. Having already heard Theo Travis on flute, all we needed was Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson to complete the prog flute trio, but perhaps he was busy recording voiceovers and flute for the next Opeth album. Unlike Anderson, Thomas played while standing on both legs, but more importantly, her solo was wonderfully florid, matched by Galloway’s equally ornate solo, while Gatland provided viscerally robust bass.
Gatland introduced ‘Walking to Aldebaran’ from Hats Off’s last album, The Light of Ancient Mistakes, as ‘the hardest, slightly maddest’ song of the set, combining as it does prog metal and Andrew Lloyd Webber, all in nine minutes! The song began with fierce prog metal riffing, then Hendrix-style guitar. Galloway sang with Bowie-like passion. Another fearsome prog-metal section led to a melodic passage that could have come from a West End musical. The song ended with melancholy piano and a haunting guitar solo, giving it a dystopian feel like many of the band’s songs.
The highlight of the set was another song from the new album, ‘Between Two Worlds’, about somebody waiting for the result of a scan. Galloway explained that this puts the patient metaphorically in the position of Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously well and not well, while awaiting a diagnosis. Galloway explained that on the new album, the song will be a piano ballad, but as he can’t carry a keyboard to gigs he played a guitar version instead. The result was a moving, contemplative ballad, Galloway singing with compassionate empathy while Gatland and the audience listened respectfully. As Gatland quipped, it was ‘the feel-good hit of the summer.’
In common with much of the finest prog rock, the band’s subject matter is frequently depressing, but there was also joy and passion in their playing. In the final song, My Clockwork Heart, they were joined onstage by Chris Parkins, who smiled and nodded along and then joined in the chorus. This brief moment of joy summed up the spirit of the whole festival. There was genuine camaraderie – other musicians stayed and watched the other bands, and some performers from previous years came to watch, too. Many of the musicians chatted with the audience members after their sets; at times, it felt like an amiable networking event for prog rockers and their fans… Bring on Prog the Forest 2025!
Update at 14.04 on Sunday 15 December 2024: The next Prog the Forest one day festival will take place on Saturday 6 December 2025.
Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt’s 2012 ‘weird beautiful’ collaboration re-released in a Dolby Atmos surround sound mix
*****
The cover of Storm Corrosion painted by Swiss artist Hans Arnold. Steven Wilson said in his book Limited Edition of One that the painting is ‘a riotously twisted bacchanalian scene that somehow evinced the dream-fever mood of the music; beautiful, deathly, deeply fecund and ancient ritualistic.’
“This is a very cinematic, impressionistic and immersive record. We just got together and it poured out of us. With this record you’re entering into a very unusual and unfamiliar sonic universe and that’s a very exciting thing to be part of.”
Storm Corrosion was a collaboration between two band leaders – Steven Wilson of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and Mikael Åkerfeldt of progressive metal band Opeth. They worked together on the project in Wilson’s home studio, No Man’s Land on various occasions between March 2010 and September 2011. The result was the band’s only album to date, Storm Corrosion, released in May 2012. Åkerfeldt and Wilson had first worked together when Wilson co-produced Opeth’s album Blackwater Park in 2001.
Influences
If fans expected the Storm Corrosion album to be written in the style of Blackwater Park, or the later Porcupine Tree albums which had strong metal riffs, they would have been disappointed. Instead, the collaboration produced something altogether stranger, but an album of which both men remain very proud. Wilson told Jonathan Horsley of Decibel Magazine that they both had, ‘a fondness for outsider music’, and that the album was inspired by Scott Walker, and Åkerfeldt’s love for the, ‘very dark, macabre, psychedelic folk music’ of British progressive folk band Comus from the early 1970s. Wilson also told Horsley that movies were a major influence – before going into the studio they would watch,
“…fairly surreal, dark, fairly experimental movies, David Lynch movies, Japanese ghost movies, and these would set a tone for where we were going.”
The resulting album is described by Wilson in a new documentary on the Blu-ray 2024 re-release of Storm Corrosion as, ‘weird beautiful.’
Part of a Trilogy
Wilson described the album as, ‘heavy, but without the use of metal vocabulary.’ In his mind, it created a trilogy with his 2011 solo album Grace for Drowning, which was recorded at the around the same time, and Opeth’s Heritage, also released in 2011. Both albums marked a change of direction; on the former Wilson experimented with a more jazz-inflected style, and on the latter Åkerfeldt embraced progressive rock. But neither album prepares the listener for Storm Corrosion. As the band’s website said, ‘it takes the listener on an unprecedented journey into realms yet undiscovered.’
Mikael Åkerfeldt and Steven Wilson. Image credit: Stuart Wood
Surround Sound and the new Dolby Atmos Mix
Wilson has been making surround mixes of his own and other bands’ albums for so long now that he has been asked to do a surround sound mix of King Crimson’s Red for the second time after he did his first surround mix of the album in 2009. He decided to teach himself the art of surround sound mixing after Elliot Scheiner created 5.1 mixes of the Porcupine Tree albums In Absentia and Deadwing.
Wilson’s first 5.1 mix was for Porcupine Tree’s 2007 classic album Fear of a Blank Planet. Remarkably, this first attempt was nominated for a Grammy, and Storm Corrosion was similarly nominated. More recently, Wilson has adapted his home studio to create mixes in Dolby Atmos as well as 5.1, and he mixed his last two solo albums The Future Bites and The Harmony Codex and the most recent Porcupine Tree album Closure/Continuation in Atmos. He launched The Harmony Codex in a surround sound playback in London in September last year. The 2024 re-release of Storm Corrosion on Blu-ray includes the 5.1 mix from 2012, and the new Dolby Atmos mix which is reviewed in detail below.
A Note on Dolby Atmos
Traditional 5.1 surround sound systems send discrete sounds to each of the separate channels with Left front, Right front, centre, Left rear and Right rear speakers (the ‘five’ of 5.1) and a subwoofer that handles low bass (the 0.1 or ‘point one’ of 5.1). Dolby Atmos is much more sophisticated and flexible than 5.1. It’s capable of producing up to 118 ‘sound objects’ at once, allowing the mixing engineer to move sounds around the space and place them very precisely in the surround sound image, adding height information so that the sound can come from above the listener, creating a truly immersive experience. Originally designed for cinemas, Atmos has more recently entered the domestic market and can be used on stereo headphones, TV soundbars, laptops, tablets and phones as well as full-scale home cinema set-ups with speakers embedded in the ceiling or upward-firing speakers on top of the front Left and Right pair.
The beauty of the technology is that it automatically adapts to whatever configuration is used, provided the correct hardware and software are used. It’s widely available on Blu-ray (both audio and video discs) and on audio and video streaming services.
The Dolby Atmos Mix, Track by Track
1. Drag Ropes
The opening song, the first one written for the album, is a poignant tale of a hanging. Jess Cope, who created the video, that perfectly matches the song’s macabre and rather gothic atmosphere, told Lisa Cope that it’s about a witch being hanged. The twist is that the executioner is the lover of the alleged witch. The song’s protagonist is the executioner himself, who addresses the lover he is about to hang with affection,
Now my dear friend Now for your sin You're to suffer Here it begins
Storm Corrosion – Drag Ropes [Official Video] Roadrunner Records. Åkerfeldt told Lisa Cope it was ‘the best video I have ever seen’
The track opens with strings, beautifully recorded by London Session Orchestra at Angel Studios in Islington, North London, with a lovely sense of depth. The ambiguous chords feel similar to those that open ‘The Raven That Refused to Sing’ from Wilson’s 2013 solo album of the same name, creating a sense of anxious anticipation. Åkerfeldt’s vocals in the first verse are sweetly moving and intimate. A hesitant rising piano figure leads to the second verse, and a mellotron theme and a woodwind flurry from Ben Castle lead to verse three.
“Wilson and Åkerfeldt create a full choir of individual voices which surround and immerse the listener, a perfect demonstration of the stunning effect of Dolby Atmos.”
The track reveals its Dolby Atmos secrets gradually. After the third verse, subtle percussion from Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison appears to the left and right of the mix, either side of the front speakers. Wilson’s multi-tracked voice is spread across the surround sound picture in the chorus, representing the voice of the witch replying to the protagonist, her executioner.
A contemplative instrumental passage, with a full-bodied piano and evocative stings, leads to an astonishing section at around 5:00 where Wilson and Åkerfeldt create a full choir of individual voices which surround and immerse the listener, a perfect demonstration of the stunning effect of Dolby Atmos, as are the guitar riffs that soon join the complex picture. This is one of the strangest parts of the track, with its insistent repetition of the mantra ‘lies are manifold’, describing the many lies that the witch has told, the multiple voices suggesting that this is the voice of the crowd at the execution.
At around 6:50 there’s a gorgeous guitar solo from Åkerfeldt with rich strings and a lovely piano motif, before Åkerfeldt returns with verse four, then Wilson with the chorus and sweet woodwinds, bringing to an end a stunning track, easily the best on the album.
‘Drag Ropes’ is the only track from the album that Wilson and Åkerfeldt have performed live together, and once only, on Wilson’s solo tour in support of his 2015 album Hand. Cannot. Erase. on 28 September 2015 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. A stereo recording of that performance is included on the re-released album.
2. Storm Corrosion
The meaning of the title track often feels just out of reach, which is the case with many of the album’s lyrics. Wilson developed a technique of improvising lyrics when he was writing his first solo album Insurgentes (2008). He told Frank Jenks of the Listen In FULL podcast that there is a dream logic to the way he improvised the lyrics for that album,
‘What we dream has no bearing on reality – it’s almost like improvisation… we make leaps of logic and intellect that you would never make in a waking state.’
The ‘fever dream’ state that Wilson describes in his book Limited Edition of One (see the caption to the album cover image above) may therefore relate to the style of lyrics on this album. Certainly, some of the lyrics are hard to unpick, such as,
Passed on the second hand slips outwards Born in the curve the song drips endless Thrown out the boy believes the secret Grown up the dogs begin to reach it
But the words ‘storm corrosion’ do seem to have a clearer meaning, referring to the damage that a storm can do.
The track begins with the sound of a storm. A gently picked acoustic guitar accompanies Wilson’s tranquil voice, with added reverb on his wordless vocalising. Åkerfeldt provides a subtle guitar solo. So far, the mix is very simple, as there are only one or two guitars and a solo voice.
The first real hint of surround sound is from a shaker which drifts whimsically around the image. More robust percussion joins on either side as the track descends into sound effects with indeterminate strings, a more restrained ‘noise’ than some of the noise-rock on Wilson’s Insurgentes, vividly describing the storm as it corrodes nature and other objects.
In an unusual effect, the opening acoustic guitar reappears through the maelstrom, and the electrical storm is then switched on and off as the guitar continues to play. It’s easy to imagine an external presence turning a knob to switch the effect on and off.
When the vocals return, they are spread much more widely across the surround sound image, sounding warmer and more confident as if they have beaten the storm. The track ends with a pastoral instrumental section, until the storm returns with final flurry of strings that for the first time fills the whole of the surround sound picture. The storm has won after all.
3. Hag
According to Collins English Dictionary, the word ‘hag’ means, ‘an unpleasant or ugly old woman.’ It’s similar to the word ‘harridan’, meaning a belligerent old woman, which is the title of the opening track of Porcupine Tree’s 2022 album Closure/Continuation. But ‘hag’ has a secondary meaning, ‘witch’ that is probably more relevant here. We are back in the world of the opening track, ‘Drag Ropes’, where the witch is hanged following her imprisonment, and is left in ‘stony silence’ at her death,
Incarcerate in dread now Separate the heart and you lose me you hag Leave you hanging, falling, failing Giving back your stony silence
The track begins with deeply introspective psychedelic folk. There’s a quietly haunting two note motif on guitar and piano, soon echoed by Wilson’s vocals which are so languorous that we hear a long breath like a sigh before he even starts to sing.
An instrumental section fills the surround sound image, with the shaker orbiting the listener. A single bass note, repeated like a heartbeat, creates a mesmerising pulse. But the momentum is suddenly lost, as children’s laughter leads to a double-length middle eight, ‘A corner of the churchyard’, with Wilson’s falsetto vocals brooding over a piano passage. Unexpectedly, rich backing vocals appear, surrounding the listener as the pulsing bass and shaker return. There’s a sudden descent into what is almost noise rock, with frenetic drumming from Harrison. but the song manages to retain a melody which is then repeated by quivering flute. We return to the introspection of the beginning, as we end on the word ‘silence.’
“There’s some beautiful music on there but it’s a demanding record. If you’re doing other shit as you listen to it, it’s going to pass by like elevator muzak. You really have to sit down and pay attention! If you allow it to sink in, it could be a life companion…”
The lyrics of this song are anything but happy, referring to the body of a dead lover. The style is still psychedelic folk, with voice and acoustic guitar. But an eerie mellotron choir soon joins in, a tritone above (‘the devil’s interval’) suggesting that the protagonist may have murdered the lover and is now bound by guilt to tend her grave forever.
Wind, blow through, my lover Tend your grave forever
An echoing low note leads to the arrival of a sweet guitar from the distance and a lovely, wordless duet between Åkerfeldt and Wilson, before we return to the opening section. A gorgeous guitar solo, hauntingly placed on the extreme left of the surround sound image, brings a heart-stopping moment of beauty before the track is cut off brutally by a buzzing sound that flies around the listener.
5. Lock Howl
This is the only instrumental on the album. It begins with a single organ chord, followed by unison guitars coming from the left and right. This doubling of guitars is very common on Opeth and Porcupine Tree records, but unusually here they are hollow-sounding acoustic guitars, rather than distorted metal guitars. The two guitars sound out an insistent rhythm, offset against a hi-hat in the middle and added guitars at the rear, creating an immersive choir of guitars. A zither is strummed, and strings from the London Session Orchestra provide slow-moving chords as the track builds, until it falls away with a single percussive note in the rear speakers.
There’s a lively passage with handclaps and other percussive sounds, with a tune that keeps dropping away to nothing. We return to the opening organ chord and, a lovely woodwind section which sounds like a brief glimpse of the music of the spheres, the natural harmonics said to be produced by the movement of celestial objects. We return to the twin guitars of the opening, but this time with a discursive melody like plainsong, and again the complete surround image is populated as another slow string melody soars above. The track cuts off suddenly as a delighted Wilson says ‘Yeah!’ Well, exactly!
6. Ljudet Innan
The title of this song is Swedish for ‘the sound before’, or ‘ancient music.’ Again, the meaning of the words is just out of reach. On a literal level, the protagonist appears to be in a controlling relationship with a lover, ‘mine is what you are.’ But there could also be a metaphorical meaning, as the lover is waiting ‘in the sky’, perhaps referring to the storm of the title track.
The song begins with Åkerfeldt singing falsetto, very different from the death metal growls which he often uses on Opeth albums. His fragile vocals, accompanied only by reverberating electric piano, have a nostalgic, regretful feel that may relate to the title of the song, music that came from before. Slow-blooming strings gradually appear, sounding like early Tangerine Dream from their 1974 album Phaedra, a moment of contemplative beauty.
The next section, with languid drumming from Harrison, sounds like Rain Tree Crow, a brief offshoot of the art rock band Japan which featured Richard Barbieri of Porcupine Tree on keyboards, There’s also a hint of the intense introspection of Talk Talk on albums like Spirt of Eden (1988). Åkerfeldt’s pensive guitar briefly brings elegant ornamentation to the song (another link to ‘ancient music’ in the form of Early Music.) The second verse is sung by Wilson in the introspective style of the late Mark Hollis, lead singer of Talk Talk. A final, anthemic guitar melody with rich mellotron strings and passionate vocalising from Wilson brings the track to a majestic conclusion.
Conclusion
As Mikael Åkerfeldt admitted Storm Corrosion isn’t an easy listen, although it is certainly not as difficult a listen as the albums Wilson has produced for his Bass Communion project such as Ghosts on Magnetic Tape. Both albums take a while to give up their secrets. In the new Dolby Atmos mix of Storm Corrosion, the opening track makes the most startling use of the new technology. On other tracks the effect is more muted, but when surround sound is used it’s more effective as it is used sparingly.
As Steven Wilson told Jonathan Horsley, the best records are those that, ‘you can intellectualise’ because of the structure, the production, the way the music unfolds, and thoughtful lyrics. But there need to be beautiful melodies, ’emotional kicks…and a deeper soulful presence’ in the music too. Storm Corrosion achieves all these things, creating a dark, contemplative, introspective masterpiece of psychedelic folk.
Sources
Wilson, Steven, Limited Edition Of One – How To Succeed In The Music Industry Without Being Part of The Mainstream (Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown April 2022)
stormcorrosion.com (archived)
Cope, Lisa, Mikael Åkerfeldt & Jess Cope talk about the making of Storm Corrosion’s official video for ‘Drag Ropes’… (Vimeo 30/09/2012)
Horsley, Jonathan, INTERVIEW: Storm Corrosion’s Steven Wilson (Decibel Magazine 21/05/12)
Collins English Dictionary (Harper Collins)
Jenks, Frank, Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree…with Frank Jenks (Listen in FULL podcast August 2010)
Roberts, Becky, Dolby Atmos: what is it? How can you get it? (What Hi-fi, updated 19/02/2024)
All lyrics are taken from the Blu-ray booklet
Technical Details
The album was auditioned in Dolby Atmos 7.1 on a Sony Blu-Ray Player with a Marantz receiver and Bowers and Wilkins surround sound speakers, but without height speakers.
Singer songwriter Marjana Semkina is a member of the prog rock group iamthemorning with her Russian-born compatriot the pianist Gleb Kolyadin, both of whom are now resident in the UK. The duo have released several records, the most recent being The Bell (2019) and the EP Counting The Ghosts (2020). More recently, Semkina has pursued a parallel solo career, releasing her first solo LP, Sleepwalking in 2020 and her EP Disillusioned in 2021. Earlier this year she sang on the MoonflowerEP with Zora Cock of Blackbriar, and she has now released SIRIN, her second solo album.
Sirin and Alkonost -Birds of Joy and Sorrow (1896) by Viktor Vasnetsov. Source: Wikimedia
The album takes its title from Sirin, a creature from Slavic mythology, with the head of a woman and the body of a bird. Semkina describes the bird as,
“… a harbinger of bad luck and death… if you meet the Sirin bird it’s believed you will lose a battle or a big catastrophe will happen... Sirin cries and mourns for humankind, and nothing can be more appropriate in this day and age.”
Semkina feels that the ‘bad luck and death’ predicted by Sirin has already happened, in particular the War in Ukraine. Her previous songs have been embedded in folklore, the imagination and literature, with a strong preference for the 19th century. On X (Twitter) she amusingly describes herself as ‘dead Victorian girl.’ But her resistance to the war prompted her to become more political. She was on her way to an anti-war protest in Trafalgar Square when she wrote the lyrics to the opening song, ‘We are the Ocean’, with the poignant final chorus, ‘Bring them home’, a plea to bring the soldiers back home from war. The song also includes the lines,
Louder our voices will ring Through the walls of this prison And I sing louder The louder we sing The harder they'll fall
These words gained further resonance when Gleb Kolyadin was arrested and imprisoned in Thailand while on tour as a session musician with the Russian dissident rock band Bi-2, facing deportation to Russia where the band could have been persecuted for anti-war sentiments. Semkina highlighted the story via social media and an online petition. Kolyadin was released after a week in prison and returned to England via Israel. A few days after his release, the duo performed an emotional comeback show at Piano Smithfield in London.
Marjana Semkina – We Are The Ocean (Official Lyric Video)
As well as war, Semkina embraces other dark themes on the album, but in a rather unexpected way. For instance, the ninth song, ‘Swan Song’ sounds like a deeply-felt love ballad, with a stirring chorus and rich, yearning strings. But the lyrics are, in Semkina’s words, a ‘meditation on death’, and what may happen after death, ‘Soul is taking off, but where will it land?’ In the July issue of Prog, Semkina told Jeremy Allen that she enjoys writing songs like the eighth track ‘The Storm’ which sound happy but are ‘anything but.’ One of the major influences in writing in this style is Steven Wilson, who she says,
“… writes in a similar manner in some of his songs, like ‘Drown With Me‘, which is an exceptionally happy-sounding song about somebody who’s drowning.”
Marjana Semkina – Swan Song
The album also features a sequence of songs about the end a bad relationship, starting with the fourth track, Pygmalion. The dedication on the YouTube video reads,
This is for the one that tried to bury me, but instead dug his own grave.
It’s a haunting song, reminiscent of the way Steven Wilson’s songs for Porcupine Tree often start quietly and move towards a climax, like a short story or a film. It also demonstrates the full dynamic and emotional range of Semkina’s remarkable voice, from soft, almost whispered at the start to anguished, powerful bitterness at the end, where Semkina almost shouts the final words ‘we/Will be together to the end’, before the track brutally cuts off. The song begins with lovely, ambivalent chords and a simple melody, before a brief electronic blast that leads to the deeply bitter chorus.
Marjana Semkina – Pygmalion (Official Music Video)
The song adapts the myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a life-size statue he made of a woman, brought to life by Aphrodite the goddess of love. Semkina’s lyrics suggest that the woman created in the myth is a perfect, passive object, created by a man entirely for his own pleasure, made up of all the elements that appeal to him, including obedience and only speaking when spoken to. The lines ‘And stories will be told/Of my exceptional betrothed’ are deeply bitter and sarcastic. The depth of feeling is similar to Porcupine Tree’s ‘Hatesong’ (from the 2000 album Lightbulb Sun) which drips with vitriol,
This is a hate song just meant for you I thought that I'd write it down while I still could I hope when you hear this you'll want to sue
Wilson’s song is part of a collection of four or five tracks on Lightbulb Sun which he referred to as ‘divorce songs’, written after a bitter breakup.
The next song in Semkina’s bitter trio of songs is ‘Angel Street’, the title of the 1941 American version of the play Gas Light, written in 1938 by British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton, from which the term ‘gaslighting’ is derived. Semkina’s lyrics refer to the ‘mind games’ played by her Ex. Again, this a song which is attractive on the surface, beginning with gentle acoustic guitars and contemplative vocals, followed by a jaunty chorus in 3/4 (the dance rhythm in which waltzes are usually written) and a folky instrumental accompaniment. But don’t be deceived by the song’s pretty exterior – the lyrics are vicious,
All your words are empty shells Nothing exonerates lies There's not a shadow of truth in your eyes Nothing saves you from yourself
The final track in this stunning sequence of ‘hatesongs’ is ‘Gone’. Again, the words are savage,
Your poison in my veins takes its toll Your thorns piercing my soul I'm fabric sewn with pain All in vain
But there is beautiful music here, with undulating piano and brooding strings, and a sense of hope arising from the bitterness. Semkina’s tenderly fragile voice is gentler than on the other tracks in this sequence. The song ends on a note of optimism, ‘I’m not alone/I’m not.’
Although this a solo album, Semkina is joined by several collaborators, enhancing the record’s rich and varied sound world. Grigoriy Losenkov plays piano, bass and synths. Vlad Avy plays electric guitar, synths. Keli Guðjónsson (Agent Fresco) plays drums on most tracks. Charlie Cawood (Mediæval Bæbes, Knifeworld) provides multiple instruments, including exotic instruments such as bouzouki (Greek long-necked lute), hammered dulcimer (a favourite of Steven Wilson on some of the Porcupine Tree albums), zither, liuqin (Chinese mandolin) and guzheng (Chinese plucked zither). There’s also a string quartet – Margarita Chernyshevskaya and Petr Chepelev (violins), Julia Uliashcenkova (viola) and Julia Romashko (cello). Semkina is also joined by two guest vocalists Jim Grey (Caligula’s Horse) on the beguiling song ‘Anything but Sleep’ and Mick Moss (Antimatter) on the achingly gorgeous ‘Death and the Maiden’.
Semkina created this album without the support of a record label, raising tens of thousands of pounds for the project via crowd funding. She is an exceptional talent, as a singer and a songwriter, and a passionate promoter of her poetic and profound vision of the world through her music.
SIRIN is available to stream and to buy via Bandcamp. iamthemorning will be performing live at St Matthias’ Church, Stoke Newington on Friday 1st November 2024.
The Deluxe Edition of In Absentia (Image from Burning Shed)
What happens when the music and lyrics to a song give out conflicting messages? The singer songwriter Marjana Semkina told Jeremy Allen in the July 2024 issue of Prog magazine that she likes writing songs, such as ‘The Storm’ from her new album Sirin, which sound hopeful but have lyrics that are the complete opposite,
“I do like a juxtaposition and I think it contrasts really well in art. If there’s darkness, the light will shine brighter”
Semkina said one of the bands that most influenced her to write in this style is the prog rock band Porcupine Tree, and the songwriting of band leader Steven Wilson. She said ‘Drown With Me’ by Porcupine Tree is, ‘an exceptionally happy-sounding song about someone who’s drowning.’ On the TV Tropes website, the effect on the listener is described as ‘lyrical dissonance’, presumably referencing on the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance.
‘Drown With Me’ has an interesting history. In 2020, Steven Wilson told Lasse Hoile that he thought the song was going to be ‘one of the highlights’ of the Porcupine Tree album In Absentia (2002). He replaced it with ‘Prodigal’ which he said, ‘is one of the weaker songs’, although he stressed this was his personal opinion and others might disagree. The reason for the substitution was that he felt ‘Prodigal’ was a better recording, although he regretted the decision later.
‘Drown With Me’ is a gorgeous, upbeat song in which the music contrasts sharply with the lyrics. The song takes one of the themes of In Absentia, the world of serial killers and murderers. The protagonist’s plan is to drown the song’s addressee and her family. As in ‘Blackest Eyes’, the first track on In Absentia, the victim is enticed into the killer’s violent world. Compare ‘Swim with me into your blackest eyes’ with ‘You should drown with me’. Both songs feature rich, multi-layered backing vocals in the chorus, which help to disguise the grim message.
Although it was available on a special edition of the album released on DVD in 2003, the song remained relatively hidden for years. Fortunately, when Porcupine Tree released the deluxe edition of In Absentia in 2020 the track finally appeared on streaming services in a remastered version. Live versions are also available on the live album/DVD Closure/Continuation.Live. released in December 2023, and Atlanta, released in June 2010.
Porcupine Tree – Drown With Me (CLOSURE/CONTINUATION.LIVE – Official Visualiser)
Sources
Allen, J. A Light in the Darkness (Prog magazine, July 2024) Hoile, L. The Making of In Absentia (Documentary film from In Absentia deluxe edition 2020) Parts of the above article are adapted from Porcupine Tree On Track (Sonicbond 2021) by Nick Holmes
Inventive musical explorations and collaborations from a virtuosic duo and friends
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The cover of Perpetual Mutations. Image by Galina Timofeeva. Graphics by Antoine Fafard.
In classical music, a concerto in which a soloist – such as a pianist or a violinist – performs with an orchestra, is a common form. Less common is the concerto for orchestra, although the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók did write a popular piece of that name, stating that it wasn’t a symphony but a series of soloistic, virtuosic sections for each part of the orchestra, in effect a series of concertos. Now Canadian bass player Antoine Fafard and English drummer Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree, The Pineapple Thief, King Crimson) have created a similar concept, a series of nine pieces for jazz duo and a range of soloists who play soprano sax, cello, violin, oboe, Fender Rhodes and piano. The aim of their new album, Perpetual Motions is, ‘to stretch out artistic possibilities and contribute to expanding the musical spectrum.’
Antoine Fafard. Photo by Colin D Miller.
The duo’s previous album Chemical Reactions was also ground breaking, using string quartet and full orchestra with drums and bass guitar. The title of the new album describes the perpetual change of musical arrangement from one of Fafard’s compositions to the next, the only constant being the playing of Fafard and Harrison on every piece. Remarkably, Fafard presented Harrison with complete recordings to add drums and percussion later; Harrison’s playing perfectly matches the pieces so it’s impossible to tell that his recordings were done separately. Harrison told Raffaella Mezzanzanica of MusicalMind that,
“Having a studio at home means you can do one take or a hundred takes…Sometimes it takes me two days to record a song, but when I listen to it later, I might decide to do it all again. That is the luxury (and curse) of working on your own in your own studio.”
Gavin Harrison
1 Dark Wind
The opening track begins with a fiercely rhythmic bass line, and big band brass, giving the track a similar feel to Harrison’s 2015 album Cheating the Polygraph, a reimagining of the work of Porcupine Tree for big band. Melodic soprano sax soon takes on virtuosic runs, with aspirational rising chords. There’s an evocative breakdown section with a trombone solo. The piece is often in 5/4, but the rhythmic patterns constantly change. A stunning start to the album.
2 Deadpan Euphoria
The ‘deadpan’ of the title presumably refers to the handpan drums on the track, which create a sound like steel drums. There are also log drums, long cylindrical pieces of wood, hollowed out with slits on the top. Fafard provides lovely, melodic fretless bass which entwines the long sustained notes of the cello – an unusual but very effective combination. The bass guitar drops lower as a liquid, free-flowing guitar surrounds the cello. A lovely track.
3 Viral Information 101
Like the opening track, this begins with a fierce, repeated bass note. Acoustic guitar flourishes with subtle marimba are followed by a folky violin solo. There’s a sudden, romantic slow section with melodic violin that would make excellent film music. The song ends with a gorgeous fretless bass run and exhilaratingly thunderous drums.
Gavin Harrison and Antoine Fafard – Objective Reality (2024)
4 Objective Reality
An unusual song, built around bass guitar harmonics, the same short phrase repeated at different pitches. Above the angular, geometric shapes of the urgently rhythmic backing track a sweet-toned oboe flows like liquid honey, adding vitality and humanity. The track ends with Harrison’s superb percussion runs. An intriguing track.
5 Quiescent II
This short, mellow track features a sprinkling of jazzy Fender Rhodes, and highlights Harrison’s relaxed, loose-limbed drumming which contrasts with his more energetic playing elsewhere on the album. Again, Fafard provides some inspiring fretless bass. The song builds to a climax with rhythmic chords and an insistent theme. A good contrast to other songs on the album.
6 Spontaneous Plan
This song begins with spontaneous piano flourishes, with big band brass that could have come from a John Barry score for a James Bond movie. The piano becomes jazzier and more freestyle as the track progresses. It ends with a joyful burst of brass. The song is energetic and lively, constantly changing and evolving, perfectly expressing the perpetual motion of the album’s title.
7 Pentalogic Structure
Another showcase for the cello, which plays a mysterious melody at the start with gentle guitar, before a chaotic repeated theme surrounds the cello which resolutely continues to plough its own furrow. Fafard told Raffaella Mezzanzanica that he wrote most of the songs on guitar, and this track features a fast-flowing, classical guitar solo which combines virtuosity with a sense of optimism. As the track comes to an end, the cello returns with a slow, angular melody which casts a shadow on the hopefulness of the guitar solo.
8 Solus Souls II
Laid-back piano chords are joined by a searching bass line. Again, as throughout the record, Harrison’s playing is a joy to hear. His subtle, spacey percussion leads to tom tom rolls that gain energy as the track becomes more complex and syncopated.
9 Safety Meeting
Piano chords and more big band brass chords rouse themselves, perhaps to illustrate a meeting of safety officers. Again, a highlight is Fafard’s elegant classical guitar playing, sometimes reminiscent here of another guitar virtuoso, Steve Howe of Yes. He follows this with a limpid bass guitar solo with gentle piano chords. This constantly changing song ends with jazzy piano chords and swelling brass, ending an excellent, varied collection of songs from two superb musicians and a range of performers from across the world.
Personnel
Gavin Harrison: Drums and Marimba Antoine Fafard: Electric Bass and Classical Guitar Jean-Pierre Zanella: Soprano Saxophone on track 1 Dale Devoe: Trombones and Trumpets on tracks 1, 6 and 9 Joasia Cieslak: Cello on track 2 Isodora Filipovic: Cello on track 7 Reinaldo Ocando: Marimba and Vibraphone on track 3 Pier Luigi Salami: Piano and Rhodes – Piano on tracks 6, 8, 9; Rhodes on track 5 Tadeusz Palosz: Handpans and Log Drum on track 2 Ally Storch: Violin on track 3 Rodrigo Escalona: Oboe on track 4
Sources
Mezzanzanica, R. Antoine Fafard unveils some “secrets” behind “Perpetual Mutations”, his new album with Gavin Harrison (MusicalMind 16 May 2024)
Mezzanzanica, R. Gavin Harrison talks about “Perpetual Mutations”, how to keep his balance and his view on the future of Porcupine Tree and King Crimson (MusicalMind 27 May 2024)
