A more than ‘adequate’ set from a dynamic duo. Dramatic ebb and flow from Prog’s Best New Band of 2023
Mark Gatland and Malcolm Galloway of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate
Situated opposite The Roundhouse on Chalk Farm Road, The Camden Club describes itself as ‘the newest venue to hit London’s iconic music scene’, hosting ‘the best live music in London.’ It’s a lovely venue, with a long bar along one side, a slightly raised stage with built-in lighting, seating for around 100 people and an at-seat food service. It has an excellent sound system, expertly managed at last Monday’s gig by sound engineer Tamara Sterle.
Last Monday evening’s gig was a prog double-header, featuring Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, and EBB who won Prog’s Best New Band last year. Hats Off front man Malcolm Galloway told Nick Holmes Music in a recent interview that when playing live he and bass player Mark Gatland concentrate on songs with vocals rather than the instrumentals that pepper their studio albums. At the last minute they adapted their set from their previous appearance at Prog for Peart in Abingdon (see setlist below) so that all the piano songs came first. As the venue opened, Galloway was still sound checking a new song ‘Hydrogen’ from the forthcoming album The Uncertainty Principle, in which the protagonist is stuck in an MRI scanner wondering what the test results will reveal. The poignant words describe the anxiety of ‘waiting between two worlds’. Galloway said there wouldn’t be time to play it in the main set, and in any case the song is ‘utterly depressing’, but it did give a hint of the thoughtful music we can expect from the next album.
Galloway was soon joined on stage by bass player Mark Gatland, sporting a glove on his right hand like a latter-day Alvin Stardust, leaping in the air as he played like an excitable punk rocker. An early highlight from the piano-based section was ‘Cygnus’, a soulful song with a moving piano intro. Galloway, a former hospital doctor gave an affecting account of how in his view the 2017 Cygnus Report into a possible future pandemic was ignored in relation to the provision of PPE during COVID. ‘Here Comes the Flood’ featured a mournful piano, heartfelt vocals and a sensitive fretless bass sound. A lovely song, with a beautiful harmonic progression.
The piano was duly despatched from the stage, and Galloway was unleashed to play his PRS guitar, with epic Floydian tones on ‘Walking to Aldebaran’, and the title track from The Light of Ancient Mistakes. There was a punky version of ‘One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov)’, reviewed here in the Off The Beaten Track series. It’s a fascinating song that describes how Arkhipov’s decision probably averted World War III. Gatland quipped that he was happy to play a song about a nuclear apocalypse. He was quick to qualify his comment;- he was happy because war was avoided. This was followed by the industrial funk of ‘All Empires Fall’, a song which describes the concept that, as Galloway puts it, ‘At the most basic level, the second law of thermodynamics suggests that any conquest is ultimately temporary’. It’s an poetic trope (the falling of empires, not the second law of thermodynamics) that dates back many centuries to poems like the late ninth century Anglo Saxon works The Wanderer and The Seafarer, and beyond. The set ended with ‘Century Rain’, which began as a slow-burn ballad which transformed to full-on prog with Galloway’s voice almost cracking with emotion, and a spectacularly energetic guitar solo.
The setlist for Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. Courtesy of Mark Gatland
If Hats Off… lit up the room with their passion and dedication, EBB created a different, more theatrical vibe, the prog equivalent of the indie band The Last Dinner Party another up and coming female band who are flamboyantly dressed on stage, the difference being that EBB have a male bass player, the superbly virtuosic Bad Dog.
EBB: left to right: Suna Dasi, Bad Dog (almost hidden), Erin Bennet, Nikki Francis, Kitty Biscuits, Anna Fraser. Photo courtesy Doug Wregg
The six members of EBB were joined on stage by a flowers (‘a flower?’) as was Myrkur in her recent London gig. More significantly, the Seventh EBB, known only as ‘Jenny’, joined the band on stage dressed in various theatrical outfits. The set began with a coup de théâtre, Jenny dressed as a jester animating the members of the band, lifting them from their knees and bringing them to life.
Images courtesy of Doug Wregg
The band follow the best traditions of prog rock, exhibiting a restless ambition that makes them hard to put in a convenient musical box, truly progressive in the best sense of the word. The theatricality of their stage show is matched by the musicianship – front woman Erin Bennet is a fine guitarist and singer, Suna Dasi provides atmospheric keyboards and evocative backing vocals, Nikki Francis brings precise keyboard textures and some lyrical sax, and Anna Fraser is an excellent drummer. Kitty Biscuits brings charisma and drama to the set, with spoken word sections and operatic backing vocals, sometimes ululating like Yoko Ono. When the three vocalists sang together, the effect was extraordinary.
EBB played whole of their new three-track EP, The Management of Consequences and several tracks from their first album Mad & Killing Time (2022). Highlights of the set included ‘Silent Saviour’ with an ambient start that moved to some deliciously proggy keyboards, rocky guitar and vocals, with added sax and a final guitar and bass unison flourish. There was a delightful funky, metallic syncopated riff in ‘Tension’, and we were introduced to a brand new piece ‘No One’s Child’.
A teaser of No One’s Child
The set ended with ‘Mary Jane’, a rousing song that reminded us that strong, simple melodies and vocal harmonies are always an important aspect of the best prog rock, as well as instrumental pyrotechnics. The audience demanded an encore, and EBB obliged with ‘Hecate’, with its grand prog metal riffs, liquid, undulating piano flourishes, and dramatic vocals from Kitty Biscuit.
Malcolm Galloway returned to the stage at the end to thank everyone for coming, and to stress the importance of live music. Audiences shouldn’t need too much persuading to come out when the venue, sound, music and performances are as good as this. Hats Off… brought cerebral drama and passion, and EBB brought musical and physical drama with the help of their seventh, silent member playing several different characters. What united both bands was the sheer joy in live music that they brought to the stage.
This blog was republished at 17.55 on Monday 29 July to replace a previous version that had minor edits and the final section missing; further minor edits were made at 22.47.
Malcolm Galloway is a former neuropathologist who took medical retirement due to the chronic condition Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. He is lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the prog rock band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, who have released seven studio albums, with another one on the way. The band is based in London, and was formed by Galloway and Mark Gatland who have been playing together since school. They are sometimes joined by Galloway’s wife Kathryn Thomas on flute.
In the second part of this in-depth interview, Galloway talks about the band’s sound, writing instrumentals, the forthcoming album The Uncertainty Principle, and future plans for the band.
The first part of this interview can be found here
The Hats Off sound
Nick Holmes Music: What’s unique about the Hats Off sound? Rather than trying to categorise the sound within a genre, what makes it uniquely your band?
I don’t know. I do find that a bit confusing. For example we play at quite a wide variety of different kind of events, from heavy metal events to Prog festivals, or to art galleries for the more instrumental side of what we do. Some songs might be just me and a piano and nothing else, and others, you know, 110 tracks of dense instrumentation.
But in terms of the thing that makes it you, I mean there might be certain harmonic habits, I suppose. I tend to like suspended seconds quite a lot!
Nick Holmes Music: Is there a guiding principle? Is there something you’re aiming at each time you start writing?
No, it evolves. We hope each song stands up in its own right as well, but each song is intended to serve the album as an overall experience. Even acknowledging that people don’t necessarily often listen to albums in that way, but in in terms of the architecture of the of how it’s produced.
Nick Holmes Music: Would you ever drop a song because it’s a good song, but it doesn’t fit in the musical/conceptual argument of the album?
Yes. So for each of our albums so far, I think we’ve had more material than we could fit onto the album. I’m not saying there necessarily is an objective way of judging a best song, but it’s not just a question of, ‘we like this song.’ It’s about the shape of the album, and if it doesn’t serve the intended purpose at that place in the album, then we won’t include it. It might then come into a later album, or it might get released separately or become a B-side.
We have a stack of ideas that didn’t fit a particular album, but were written at the same time, and I’m usually working on multiple projects at a time. Even at the moment, I’m working on album number eight, but I’ve also been exploring ideas for the next one as well.
Nick Holmes Music: Do you sometimes find you have to challenge yourself because it’s very easy to fall back on things that you’re comfortable with? Or are you happy to use those as building blocks, because you know they work?
I’m not sure. I suppose sometimes there’s a song, and you really like it and it’s really simple. I feel a bit uncomfortable releasing that because it’s so simple it must have been done before because it seems really obvious. And then I play it to various people and I think, ‘where have I stolen this from?’ – accidentally, I don’t deliberately steal. And Mark [Gatland] is fairly encyclopaedic in his knowledge of popular music. If he doesn’t recognise it, then it’s probably just that there are certain shapes of phrases that are fairly ubiquitous, but not necessarily somebody else’s.
Nick Holmes Music: Do you ever think it would be nice to write prog rock in strange time signatures such as7/8 or 14/16? Or do you just find yourself writing something and thinking, ‘That’s not in the standard 4/4?’
Usually it’s a question of writing something that feels right for the theme that we’re aiming for and then if that isn’t 4/4, that’s fine. I don’t think we would start being like ‘Oh, I’d really like to write a piece in 17/8 or whatever. But it might be, ‘This is an interesting rhythmic pattern.’ And then exploring that and sometimes the rhythmic pattern might come from a phrase, like in listening to an audio book. And there’s a certain rhythm to a phrase or a certain sense of a melody in a phrase, and that will set off an idea for a song. That’s more often how it would be rather than starting off as an exercise, ‘I want to write a canon’ or whatever.
Nick Holmes Music: So the kind of thing that Steve Reich was doing on Different Trains, using speech rhythms and then feeding them into a musical idea?
I think so, and Steve Reich is a big influence on me.
Nick Holmes Music: So does your classical knowledge and interest feed into your rock writing?
I used to think that they were very separate, but then it was pointed out to me that actually there was quite a lot of overlap. And as [the band’s] albums have developed, there’s become more and more overlap. Not necessarily in the ‘songy’ bits, but particularly in the instrumental parts.
Nick Holmes Music: So how would you know whether something that you’re working on, an idea that comes to your head, is going on a minimalist album in your own name, or it’s going to go on a Hats Off album?
If it’s short, it’ll probably be one of the burbly bits between the songs on a Hats Off album! If it’s – like when we were talking about Steve Reich – a rigorously worked out overlapping repeated pattern, developing emergent phase properties over 50 minutes or so, then it’ll probably fit better on one of my solo albums.
So far none of my solo ones, which have been my classical stuff, have had anything that involved singing. If it’s got drums, it’s more likely also to be Hats Off. But I think a lot of it’s just the length!
We tend to focus on a character and the dilemma they’re facing at that moment, and what they’re going through. So to me, the story of Vasily Arkhipov is fascinating, this Soviet submariner who had previously been involved in another submarine disaster where the crew had been exposed to a great deal of radiation and many of them ended up dying of cancer.
During the Cuban missile crisis, their submarine was under water, [with] no contact with Moscow. There was a group of America warships. There were depth charges being dropped. It’s said that the Americans were intending to signal to them that they’d been found, and to come up, rather than necessarily intending to sink them. But from their perspective, they were deep under water, cut off from everything, and with explosions going on around them.
And the captain of the sub thought that World War III may have started, and in that situation they’re meant to fire their nuclear torpedo. Normally it would be the First and Second in command on the submarine who would be making that decision and it had to be unanimous. The number one and two on the submarine had decided to fire, but by chance Arkhipov, who was a senior person on the whole fleet of submarines, was on that particular submarine. He also, because of his position, had a veto and he refused.
Vasily Arkhipov – Image courtesy of Olga Arkhipova
They tried to argue him round, but they didn’t. But the whole sense of what it might be like to be that person, that minority opinion, when the machinery that kept the air breathable was failing, so carbon dioxide was rising. It was very hot and high levels of CO2 are a really unpleasant feeling. It feels like you’re suffocating, it induces a feeling of panic. And in that situation, he was one person who kept his head and stuck to his decision. And it may well be because of that, that we didn’t end up so far with the Third World War. So it’s frightening in terms of how close it was.
I also know that my aesthetic leans towards the dark but on the other hand, I also like our songs to have an element of hope and human choice and consequence. So there’s somebody in an awful situation, but that made a hugely significant positive decision.
The New Album – The Uncertainty Principle
Nick Holmes Music: You’re working on a new album. Does it have a title yet?
At the moment it’s The Uncertainty Principle.
Nick Holmes Music: Are you going to stick with that, do you think?
I suspect we will, unless something better crops up between now and then.
Nick Holmes Music: For a non-scientific person, what is The Uncertainty Principle?
I’m not a physicist. I enjoy ‘popular science’ physics, but I’m not claiming to have a very great mathematical expertise.
For a big chunk of human history, cause and effect was gods making things happen. We couldn’t understand or predict, ‘why has this crop failed?’ Well, there’s some supernatural explanation. Then you had the Enlightenment as we started to get more of a scientific approach to understand, ‘Here’s an effect, and now we’re looking at what was the cause of it. Oh well, it’s because of this weevil, that’s infested the grain, or this is what’s happened in terms of the climate.’
You have the Newtonian world where if you imagine every particle in the universe, in theory, if you knew where every particle was and where it was moving, how fast, you could work your way back, if you had sufficiently good computers and maths, and work out the state of the universe at any point in the past or future. At that time, there wasn’t that great accuracy in the scientific measurements. The tools were limited, but as they improved with microscopes and telescopes, we got more precise understanding of the universe, and I think most scientists thought that as time went on, we’d get more and more this dream of limitless precision.
But with quantum physics, Heisenberg showed that the more precisely you know one thing about a particle, the less you know about another aspect of it. So then we’re talking about momentum and position, it’s not true that you could just get better and better microscopes, and so you would know more and more detail about where this particular particle is and what it’s doing. Actually, at a fundamental level there is uncertainty in the universe. It’s not that we are uncertain how we measure things, it’s not the failing of the technology. It’s actually a fundamental aspect that the universe appears to be built from randomness – there are random elements underlying reality. We then play with that in a metaphorical sense, maybe a little bit superficially!
In my medical work, one of the major reasons for medical errors is excessive certainty, when somebody is really certain they know what is going on with somebody and actually their knowledge is wrong. Being excessively certain can be very dangerous, and that could be true in medicine, in politics, in wars. I think certainty is an underappreciated danger. You know, people are always being told ‘Oh, you’ve got to be really confident and certain of everything.’ Actually, being able to acknowledge, ‘well, this is what I think but I don’t know’, I think is a really valuable skill.
Nick Holmes Music: So does this feed back into the concept of the previous album The Confidence Trick (2022)?
It does link into the idea of people being excessively confident and certain of themselves and harming other people through it. Often, unfortunately, the people who are very confident do very well on a personal level, but while harming those around them. Other people who are very confident are certain that when they send people into wars that it’s going to be easy and glorious, but it’s not them going and fighting and dying. It’s just a common theme throughout the history and science and medicine.
Nick Holmes Music: Is it something that you’ve researched specifically?
I used to do research and teach about overconfidence and excessive certainty in medicine, in diagnosis. One of the key things I used to try and teach was pause to every so often and think, ‘Why might I be wrong?’ We tend to always look for evidence that supports our existing beliefs. It’s much more difficult because it’s so counterintuitive – we want to be told. We want to find reasons that we are right. But it’s an important mental discipline to be thinking, particularly with high stakes decisions, ‘OK, well, why might I be wrong?’ And I think that happens too infrequently in public life.
Nick Holmes Music: And for the new album, can you say how that feeds into the songs?
We used to believe in cause and effect, so one of the issues at a quantum scale is that cause and effect are not as obvious as they seem to be in the macroscopic world. We used to believe in certainty. So the first songexplores that the historical setting of humanity coming across the idea that actually we can’t be certain, not just because we aren’t yet good enough technologically, but actually because it’s a fundamental part of reality, that certainty is impossible.
We’ve got a song relating to the famous meeting between Heisenberg and his former mentor Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. I don’t know if you come across the play, Copenhagen?
Nick Holmes Music: No, tell me about that.
Heisenberg was a very significant physicist who developed many of the most significant ideas in quantum physics, and he was working on the German side in WW II, and he was leading their nuclear research programme. He used to work closely with [Danish physicist] Niels Bohr, who was in an occupied country, and they had a meeting during the War and they both recall the contents of this meeting very differently.
Prof. Dr Werner Heisenberg. image provided to Wikimedia Commons by the German Federal Archive
What they say about what they thought the other person was meaning differs greatly. Heisenberg was quite ambiguous even after the War about what his role was and what his intentions were. Some people have argued, did he deliberately slow the Germans down? He did make an error in a calculation which may have helped persuade them not to pursue a nuclear bomb very vigorously. Others argue that they were not in a good position to be doing that anyway.
After the War, many of the German scientists were kept in an environment where they were bugged, and their conversations were transcribed, and they can be read now online. But again, these were bright people. Were they saying what they were saying because they knew they were being bugged, or were they talking openly?
There’s all these multiple reflected layers of what this person is thinking about, what that person’s thinking about, what they think the other person’s thinking… the idea of never being able to be certain what’s in another person’s mind. There’s a debate about was Heisenberg trying to get information to the Allies via his old friend, or was he trying to get his old friend to help in making a bomb for the Germans?
It is very ambiguous. There isn’t a clear answer, I don’t think, at the end. We don’t know for certain. We might have a gut instinct, but we can never know for certain what’s in somebody else’s head. And that’s just, I thought, a really nice example of two people who really developed the concept of the Uncertainty Principle.
Then we’ve got a story from the perspective of Moe Berg, an American baseball player who became an American spy who was sent to watch a lecture given by Heisenberg during the War, in Switzerland, armed with the idea that if he thought he was close to developing a nuclear bomb to assassinate him. Again, that explores that theme of how we know what somebody else’s intentions are on this limited evidence. This person being in this situation of having to make that kind of potentially momentous decision.
If it had been that Heisenberg was deliberately slowing down the Nazi bomb, then assassinating him could have been very counterproductive. On the other hand, it could have been the other way around, and it turns out that the War was coming to an end anyway, but the people at the time didn’t necessarily know that. It’s just another interesting example of the uncertainty playing out in interpersonal relationships amongst people for whom the concept of uncertainty had been a big part of their intellectual life. So that’s what appealed to me with that aspect of the story.
Instrumentals
Nick Holmes Music: I’d like to ask you about the instrumentals on your albums. Sometimes they are just used as an interlude to cleanse the palate before you go on to the next track. Do you see instrumentals as part of the fabric of the concept?
Usually our albums are about 50:50 instrumental and vocal tracks, and then in our live gigs we do the vocal stuff live. The instrumental tracks usually aren’t directly narrative. We have got a couple of examples of things that are fairly old fashioned, traditional programme music in the kind of Berlioz-type way.
We did a piece [Ark] about the history of the Ark Royal my grandad served on, and that one very much does follow the story. He was on the planes on the aircraft carrier. You’ve got bits of the music where it’s combat, and bits where it’s tensely waiting while you’re being hunted. In terms of classical music, I’m not saying there’s anything very original in that. I mean, that’s been a very standard thing in Classical music since the 1850s.
And there’s another piece called Refuge, which is about my great grandmother on my mum’s side, escaping from multiple pogroms in different parts of Europe and then hiding, being protected by a village in the Pyrenees during WWII. That one does have very programmatic elements. You’ve got things that sound a bit like a train, and the music directly reflecting episodes in a story.
On the other hand, most of our instrumental stuff is more non programmatic. It reflects a feel or a mood, or might be bringing up or bringing down an energy between two different tracks, and sometimes an interlude. Sometimes you’ve had fairly intense vocal track and you want to give people a bit of a breather before the next angsty screeching!
Nick Holmes Music: What’s coming up for Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate?
We’ll also be releasing Copenhagen as a single, the song about the disputed conversation between the physicists Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941.
We’ve got one or two more vocal recording sessions for the new album and a flute recording session to do, and then finishing off, mixing, mastering and the booklet. We put quite a lot of effort into all the packaging and the booklets. We try and give quite a lot of explanation of what the ideas were behind the albums.
Nick Holmes Music: You have been moving away from flutes, certainly on the last album, but are you moving back into collaboration a bit more with your wife [the flute-player Kathryn Thomas]?
I love her contribution to the albums. It’s a question of what she’s happy to do, as she is busy with her own work as a classical musician. It’s also a question of what serves a particular song and album and theme. There is a particularly chunky flute part to come on the next album.
Nick Holmes Music: And what about live shows? What’s coming up?
Our next gig is Prog For Peart in Abingdon, which raises funds for brain tumour research, on 13 July. Then we’ll be giving a joint headline show with EBB at the Camden Club on 22 July. We’re looking forward to Danfest in Leicester on 22 November.
We co-organise – with Chris Parkins/London Prog Gigs – an environmental charity fundraiser, Prog The Forest, which is in Camden on 1 December. I’m delighted that we’ll be joined by Tim Bowness and the Butterfly Mind, Theo Travis, Leoni Jane Kennedy, Mountainscape, The Mighty Handful, and Spriggan Mist.
On 29 December we’ll be playing I think our first show in Essex, with The Round Window, in Colchester.
I also do some solo shows, either with acoustic or electric guitar, or with keyboard. I’ll be playing a solo set at the Fiddler’s Elbow on 26 September. I’ll also be hosting an event -details to be announced – at the next Hard Rock Hell Prog festival in October.
Shows in 2024
Saturday 13 July: Abingdon – Prog For Peart, with IO EARTH, Comedy Of Errors, Sonic Tapestry, League of Lights, Tribe3, Forgotten Gods
Thursday 26 September: The Fiddler’s Elbow – Camden, Discover Unsigned Showcase – Malcolm Galloway solo set
Friday 18 October: Party at HRH Prog, details TBC
Friday 22 November: Leicester – Danfest, with The Hayley Griffiths Band and Candacraig
Sun 1 December: The Fiddler’s Elbow – Camden, Prog The Forest. With Tim Bowness and the Butterfly Mind, Theo Travis, Leoni Jane Kennedy, Mountainscape, The Mighty Handful, and Spriggan Mist
Sun 29 December: Three Wise Monkeys, Colchester, Essex – with The Round Window
Shows in 2025
Tuesday 18 Feb 2025: The 1865, Southampton – with The Lee Abraham Band
Last Wednesday morning, the first tickets went on sale for performances in Manchester by a music legend/national treasure now in his eighties, Sir Paul McCartney. That evening, another musical institution – also in his eighties – Nick Mason, was in town with his band A Saucerful of Secrets. Mason said the first time they played in Manchester, Pink Floyd were on the bill with another music legend, Jimi Hendrix. That was in 1967, and Mason quipped that only three people in Wednesday night’s audience would remember that.
It would have been easy for Mason to have retired from performing years ago, and spend his time driving his collection of vintage cars. There are plenty of Pink Floyd tribute acts on the touring circuit, not least The Australian Pink Floyd who bring stunning musicianship and antipodean artwork to Manchester Apollo every year on their annual tour.
Poster for the Jimi Hendrix/Pink Floyd tour in 1967 from JHE 2nd UK Tour Blog
When Mason was curating the Pink Floyd exhibition Their Mortal Remains, which opened at the V&A in London in May 2017 and then toured Europe and North America, he began to worry that he could spend the rest of his life cataloguing his past rather than playing music. At the same time, guitarist Lee Harris (The Blockheads) had approached Guy Pratt who had played bass on several Pink Floyd tours after Roger Waters left. The result was a new band, called Saucerful of Secretsafter The Floyd’s second album from 1968. Mason’s band started touring in 2018 and last came to Manchester in May 2022. Mason avoided comparisons with other Pink Floyd tribute acts by only playing less familiar music from the pre-Dark Side of the Moon era, sometimes playing songs that Pink Floyd rarely if ever played live. He also asked his band to improvise during live performances, rather than re-creating the original songs note-for-note. So the show was a mixture of improvisation and nostalgia.
The evening began unfashionably early at precisely 19.30, following a countdown of the kind used to launch a rocket (‘T minus 3 minutes and 3 seconds’… etc.) that introduced the band to the stage. The opening version of Astronomy Domine demonstrated the band’s intent not to replicate the original, with loose-limbed drumming, improvised guitar chords and an additional guitar solo. Pink Floyd’s second single See Emily Playincluded a new keyboard solo and an instrumental jam. A fascinating early highlight of the show was Remember Me, a demo which Pink Floyd performed at the Melody Maker National Beat Contest in 1965 (an early form of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for those who don’t remember it, but without the dancing dogs).
A clip from Melody Maker provided by Brian Long to the Radio London website
The band, still called The Pink Floyd, failed to reach the semi-final, losing out to The St Louis Union, Phil Hunter and the Jaguars, the Ravens and the Poachers. Mason quipped that this spectacular failure set back the band’s career by five years, although in reality by late 1970 they had their first UK number one with Atom Heart Mother.
Poignantly, Syd Barrett’s vocals original vocals were used, while the band added instrumental parts and backing vocals. Barrett’s family provided some lovely images of the tragic hero, whose story was told recently in the moving documentaryHave You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd.
Another highlight of the first half also seemed to reference Barrett, the song If which included the line, ‘If I go insane, please don’t put your wires in my brain’. Guitarist and vocalist Gary Kemp (introduced by Mason as ‘New Romantic turned Kray brother turned Prog Rock God’) provided a gorgeous acoustic guitar solo while Guy Pratt added a melodic bass line and Beken brought a warm keyboard wash. Fierce drumming from Mason led to the Atom Heart Mother suite, starting with evocative slide guitar from Lee Harris, who also provided a thunderous solo in the funky section later in the piece. A brief reprise of If ended the song.
There was humour when Mason who took a spoof phone call from Roger Waters who used to play the gong in the live version of Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Mason told ‘Roger’ that he was just watching Coronation Street with some friends and had no idea where Roger’s gong was. The band played a magnificent version of the song; there was a new keyboard improvisation above the opening guitar riff, and the track was played at a slower speed – anthemic but still psychedelic. A new, almost middle eastern-sounding guitar solo was added then another extended jam. Pratt added a gong part before the song unwound itself with sound effects and waves of electronics from Kemp on guitar. A section that was almost musique concrète faded into silence before the opening theme returned. As the track ended, an audience member shouted a satisfied, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Well, exactly!
The second half, like the first, was introduced by ambient music and speech. We heard the infamous quote from a BBC TV interview in 1967 when Hans Keller asked Roger Waters, ‘Why has it all got to be so terribly loud?’ The opening song, which wasn’t so terribly loud, was The Scarecrow from Pink Floyd’s debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, played for the first time by Mason’s band on this tour, with its whimsical vocal line reminding us how strange some of Barrett’s melodies were, in songs that appeared simple on the surface. Fearless, from Meddle was introduced in a much jazzier version, with a languorous keyboard solo from Dom Beken. Childhood’s End from Obscured by Clouds featured a lovely, heavy blues guitar solo from Lee Harris. In Lucifer Sam, also from The Piper, Pratt and Gary Kemp almost locked horns as they faced each other in a heavy rock’n’roll version, whilst Beken added a bluesy Hammond solo.
But the highlight of the second half was the final song, Echoes (Meddle), first introduced to the band’s set on the previous tour. The distinctive piano note at the very start raised an immediate cheer; this was a majestic but vital version of a song that showed Pink Floyd beginning to move towards the rich style of TheDark Side of the Moon, while still embracing some of their early psychedelia. There was a stunning funky section where Beken on Hammond organ again and Kemp on delicate lead guitar Kemp duetted above superbly syncopated drumming from Mason. The song attracted a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.
The encore featured two songs. First, familiar swirling winds introduced a blistering version of the instrumental One of These Days (Meddle) in which Pratt’s bass descended into the stygian depths, and Mason’s stentorian drums seemed to be knocking on the gates of Hell. The concert ended with an enthralling version of A Saucerful of Secrets, moving from an avant -garde, almost King Crimson-like anxiety with skittering guitars and spidery keyboard lines – accompanied by Mason’s military drumming – to a calm, anthemic section, a secular wordless hymn, with a melodic bass solo from Pratt and a timeless guitar solo from Kemp. A stunning ending to an excellent evening.
Malcolm Galloway is a former neuropathologist who took medical retirement due to the chronic condition Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. He is lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the prog rock band Hat’s Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, who have released seven studio albums, with another one on the way. The band is based in London, and was formed by Galloway and Mark Gatland who have been playing together since school. They are sometimes joined by Galloway’s wife Kathryn Thomas on flute.
In the first part of this in-depth interview, Galloway talks about the band’s unusual name, researching material for his songs, concept albums, and living with chronic pain.
Part II of the interview will be posted shortly…
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland
The Band’s Name
Nick Holmes Music: The first question is about the band’s name. Do you regret it being a slightly flippant, jokey name? I’m thinking really of bands like Porcupine Tree. Steven Wilson started Porcupine Tree as a teenage joke and gave it the name.
Well, I think there are some fair concerns about the band name. I think it has an element of self-deprecating English humour to it, hopefully, but I chose the name a long time before what the band evolved into, and there’s a danger that it can sound like a comedy band and although I hope our gigs are fun and friendly and inclusive, and the chat between the songs is quite playful, the music itself is often fairly bleak and thematically grim.
We don’t take ourselves very seriously, but I think we take the music seriously and it’s not a kind of comedy band, which it easily could give the impression of being. So I think that’s a fair question.
Do I regret it? I imagine people who have to put our band name on festival posters, I’m pretty sure they regret it because it’s very difficult with the number of letters. Either it doesn’t fit on the poster, or it has to be done at such a small font size and nobody can read it.
On the other hand, there is something about the band name that does feel quite us. Also, we’ve got used to it, so it’s difficult for us to imagine being called something more sensible.
Nick Holmes Music: So have you ever thought about changing it?
Not really, although I can see that it could cause confusion. We did get once criticised, ‘You didn’t even bother to dress in a steam punk outfit.’ That’s fine. We’ve got nothing against steampunk, but we’ve never claimed that’s what we are.
I suppose once you’ve already developed a branding, you’re taking some steps back to then lose that and change it. And some people really like the band name, although it does confuse some people.
The quote is from what [German composer] Schumann said about [Polish composer and pianist] Chopin,
“Hats off, gentlemen—a genius!”
Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin. Photograph by Louis-Auguste Bisson (1849). Source: Wikimedia Commons
The image I had was these Edwardian gentlemen throwing their hats in the air. Not about something being amazing, but about something being average. And it was just that image that led to the band name.
Research
Nick Holmes Music: In your previous career as a neuropathologist and a medical tutor you did a lot of research, and your name is on several research papers online. Do you enjoy the research you do for songs for your albums?
I listen to a lot of audiobooks and quite often a song seems to just jump out from a phrase, or sometimes we’ll start with the theme and then research around the theme.
So for example, the current album we’re working on relates to the uncertainty principle and the history of quantum physics. I did a lot of listening and reading around that aspect of history and physics. How much of that actually ends up directly in a song, I mean, I suspect it’s maybe like somebody writing a novel who might do a lot of research, which then is helpful for them having in their mind when writing something, rather than necessarily directly contributing to a lyric.
But I do enjoy that sense of exploring and looking for situations, ideas and bits of history that might turn into songs. It’s a bit of a different process to the medical stuff because there’s much more room for subjectivity in songwriting. I quite like songs as a performer, where it’s from a character’s perspective and I want it to feel like that is genuinely what that character would be thinking or feeling. But their feeling doesn’t necessarily have to be true, they don’t have to be right. Whereas with the medical research, I’d feel a very strong sense of needing it to be accurate and objective because it has real-world consequences. If you put something into the medical literature that’s incorrect, that can affect patient care, which hopefully doesn’t happen so much with the songwriting.
Nick Holmes Music: So your research isn’t peer reviewed, except by your band mate Mark Gatland?
We will talk through the ideas for songs, but the research is an inspiration. If I was writing an academic article, I’d feel the need to cover all the evidence for and against and weigh it up. Whereas in the song you can take the perspective of a character and you don’t have to be so balanced.
Concepts
Nick Holmes Music: Do you always start with the concept when you’re writing a new album? Does the music come first or is it organic?
It’s a mixture. The first one we did, Invisible (2012), the theme of that was about invisible disabilities. And that was very much influenced by my experience of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and coming to terms with a changing life because of the chronic pain associated with that.
It’s not a concept of in terms of directly telling a story, but it’s aimed at having an arc emotionally in terms of the response to that situation. I think most of the songs for that album I’d written separately, but they felt like they came together under that theme.
Our second album When the Kill Code Fails (2016), follows a story about a virus that has been created by an employee of a security service. The virus is supposed to have had a kill-switch built into it, so that it can be controlled. The former hacker who created the virus wasn’t entirely honest with his employer, with the intention of blackmailing them. He dies during interrogation, leaving an out of control virus threatening any infrastructure dependent on networked computers. The album opens with an official begging for help from an experimental artificial intelligence, which turns out to be quite benevolent. It agrees to help in exchange for being freed from its virtual confinement.
Apart from the opening song, the album follows the story, rather than directly trying to tell the story. I hope being aware of the story might be of interest to listeners, without being essential to enjoying the music.
The story helps when I’m writing in terms of giving me a sense of what shape I’m aiming towards. With the concept albums I’m very happy if people want to engage with the theme and the concept. They may get something more out of it if they do, but it’s also fine if they don’t. I think the primary beneficiary of the concept is me when I’m writing it because it helps me structure what I’m trying to do.
Then the third one, Broken but Still Standing (2017, that very much had a sort of chronological narrative of following human evolution basically from the bottom of the ocean by the thermal geothermal vents through the boring billions of years when life was just slime before it got round to doing anything very interesting, and particularly focusing on evolution. When we think of evolution, it’s often thought of in terms of competition, which is biologically important, but sometimes the importance of cooperation as a technology is underappreciated.
So when we went from being slime to being multicellular organisms, that was only possible because two completely different organisms ended up becoming symbiotically dependent on each other. And then later on, when we go from being individuals to being communities and allowing subspecialisation within human communities, a similar kind of concept to what happened in the development of multicellular organisms.
And that album carries on into a sort of posthuman future where you’ve got symbiosis between machines and the humans. And so it’s basically going on that arc, not necessarily in as depressing away as we might have expected from most of our stuff.
Nick Holmes Music: Do you find it hard to remove your scientific hat?
I would find it hard to put in a lyric something that I knew was scientifically untrue, or some of our historically related songs… If I was writing just text, I would have lots of footnotes and clarifications, which doesn’t really flow as a lyric. So I realise that we do have to simplify a narrative for a song. Or at least we may want or allow a certain ambiguity that you may not want in a more academic context.
There is a tension between the artistic and the academic. I wouldn’t feel comfortable in something that portrayed itself as a historical or scientifically themed song to write anything that was actively untrue, so I hope in our research we’ve avoided that, but also while accepting that there are gross simplifications to make something fit into the structure of a song.
Nick Holmes Music: The most recent album, The Light of Ancient Mistakes (2023) felt like a series of themes rather than an overarching concept?
That’s one that doesn’t have a story, but it has got several interlocking themes. One is the idea of tragedies that then have repercussions through history. We might use science fiction stories as a way into those themes, although they are themes that are very relevant in real life. It gives you a little bit of a sense of distance to explore them thousands of years in the future rather than now – so that that theme of the ongoing harm from past atrocities.
We’ve also got a similar thing in terms of the childhood of the writer [David John Moore Cornwell] who became John le Carré and had a traumatic childhood, and he felt that very much influenced his ongoing relations with people around him throughout his life.
Then also, at the end of the album, exploring environmental damage and the ongoing harms from the carbonification of our economy.
Nick Holmes Music: Are you ever worried that the songs or the albums might just fall over under the weight of the concept? And I’m not saying that they do, but do you see it as a risk?
[Pauses to think] I haven’t really thought about that in terms of our stuff previously, but I have had previously ideas that could have formed albums or songs where I said, ‘Well. I can see that giving an arc of say two or three songs, but if we try to make that into an album, I feel I’d then be padding it out and I wouldn’t want to feel I was doing that’, and so there are plenty of concepts that don’t become albums.
For example, for quite a lot of our albums, there’s a theme rather just an individual story. I wouldn’t necessarily want it to be just a hackneyed sequence of, you know, inciting incident and then the hero is knocked back, and then the standard story flow for everything. But for us it very much depends on what the inspiring concept is, so if it’s a general thematic concept then I think we can bring in a wide range of different styles and ideas. If it’s a particular story, then there’s maybe a clearer thematic path, but you’re also a bit restricted from veering off [down] side alleyways on the way there.
It perhaps would be harder if we were doing it like a musical, where it’s literally telling a story, but I think our albums are more, when there’s a story, it’s more they’re following a story rather than telling a story. So sometimes people have said it’s like watching a film, if they’re listening to an album from start to finish and it’s got a shape and a flow. You wouldn’t necessarily know what the story was without reading the notes because we’re not necessarily making it very explicit.
I’d quite like the idea of doing a musical as a separate kind of thing. I do like musicals, but there the storytelling is more overt, whereas [on our albums] maybe the story is sometimes more like a landscape that you’re following, and then that helps guide the writing rather than necessarily having to say, ‘look, that’s a tree, that’s a mountain.’
Pain
Nick Holmes Music: If it’s ok with you, I’d like to talk to you about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome?
That’s fine. I try to raise awareness of invisible disability issues.
Nick Holmes Music:What effect does it have on you?
It’s a genetic disease that causes problems with collagen. Collagen is the most extensive protein in your body and it basically holds everything together. For me personally, chronic pain, fatigue, vomiting, problems with blood pressure regulation, autonomic dysfunction…
Nick Holmes Music:Which means that the basic nervous system isn’t working?
Well, yes, you sometimes get not enough blood going to your brain.
Nick Holmes: And brain fog?
Brain fog is a really important one which I was forgetting then, which is a nice example of it!
And then it gives peripheral neuropathy. So you know, I don’t feel my where bits of my body are so accurately as might be nice. The tendency to trip up like does make doing things like looping on your pedalboard difficult – my feet really aren’t very reliably agile!
Nick Holmes Music: The classic Pain Scale [in America] is one to 10. Do you see your pain in a visual way, rather than just being on the medical pain scale?
I don’t normally think of it in terms of scale. And it does vary from day-to-day which bits are working better or not. And so there’s a huge difference between when I was still doing the medical work that involved sitting at a microscope, which is probably one of the worst positions for people with spinal problems. And then I was getting recurrent slipped discs, and acute slip disc is a very different pain to the kind of more general chronic muscle pain I might get, or where the muscles insert into the tendons and the bones.
Sometimes it’s more of an acute pain. Like when you’ve got an acutely slipped disc that’s just agonisingly awful or then there’s the more chronic pain, which just grinds you down. It’s a very different kind of experience.
Nick Holmes Music: What’s the relationship between creativity and your pain. Is music an escape from pain?
Being able to express some of the less positive feelings in life through something constructive I find really helpful. In off stage life, I’m not necessarily very expressive of these things. I might explain in rational terms what I experience, but I don’t think I express it much in a very emotional way. Whereas when I am singing, I get to express those things in a what for me is a safe environment. Even the songs that aren’t about my bad back – I might be singing a song about being an angsty robot or something – even though the causes might be different, the sense of distress of the character might be similar, and for me being able to express those kind of feelings in a song makes me not have to deal with them so much in the off stage bits of life.
The cover of the charity single I’m Tired And Everything Hurts
Nick Holmes Music: Do you find when you’re songwriting and producing songs, can you, to an extent, forget the pain?
It certainly is very helpfully distracting. I think the music is really important for me in terms of how I manage my pain. I would be in a much worse state, particularly mentally, I think, if I didn’t have a creative outlet.
Nick Holmes Music: Do you feel there’s a medical reason for the enjoyment you get out of music. Does it produce chemicals such as dopamine in your brain?
For me with the kind of scientific background ultimately, I would think there’s neurochemical and biological underpinnings for this. But I do think there are a lot of people who find music hugely helpful with dealing with difficult situations, whether that’s as performers or through listening. Often at concerts we get people coming up afterwards and saying that they really appreciated such and such song, it made them feel understood. That sense of being able to actually communicate with somebody who might have difficulty explaining how they feel, that feels significant to me.
Artificial Intelligence and Creativity
Nick Holmes Music: On the recent single, One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov) you used AI to create the cover, is that right?
I’ve had a long-standing interest in AI, going back to our second album, some of which is sung from the perspective of an AI that thinks it is conscious, or at least acts as if it thinks it is conscious.
For a while, artificial intelligence in the arts became fashionable, and now there is a reaction against it. On the creative side, I do understand the arguments of people who are against AI being used in art. There are certainly issues about recompense for people whose art has been used in training models. I’m not disputing that, but from our perspective, as people who see the album artwork as an integral part of the album, we find it a useful tool. Like any tool, it can be used well or badly. We use AI assisted imagery as part of a process that generally involves combining elements from multiple images, sometimes combined with photography, and manipulation in Photoshop.
It’s not just that we put a prompt of say ‘Prog Rock album cover’ and then just take the first one that comes up, but I don’t want to give a misleading impression that I can draw or paint, and I greatly admire those who can. I think some of the problem relates to terminology. Generating, selecting, editing, and manipulating AI generated imagery to produce something that resonates with you is perhaps more like being a curator, director, photographer, or collage artist, rather than being a painter.
The cover of One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov)
I’ve never hidden the fact that some of our album covers do have AI elements, but then again, as somebody who’s been interested in AI, I’m interested in the weaknesses of some of these models, as well as their strengths. I think sometimes you can learn something interesting when an experiment fails.
Many years ago, I was involved in a project trying to train AI to diagnose brain tumours and it was better than chance at it, but nowhere near good enough at that stage to replace a pathologist. But by going through the process of trying to teach something artificial how to do a task, it made me realise that how I thought I was doing that process wasn’t how I was actually doing it.
Often when you have a certain expertise in something, what you think are the processes you go through to make a decision may not actually reflect what you’re really doing. By trying to teach a machine by giving it certain rules and then seeing where it’s going wrong, you can learn about how you really do something. Similarly, I think sometimes it’s interesting when you give a prompt to an AI and it comes up with something that’s not quite right in that kind of uncanny valley way. I’m interested in those aspects of the failures of the system as well.
I am concerned about the material that is used to train AI models – both language and images. In addition to the problem of fair payment for use of copyright material, I think anybody who has spent more than a few minutes on the Internet will be aware that not all attitudes expressed therein are great exemplars for how you might want to train a future intelligence!
Nick Holmes Music: Steven Wilson surprised everyone – including himself! – last year by writing a Christmas song, using lyrics that had been generated by AI. How do you feel as a musician about collaborating with artificial intelligence, either lyrically or musically?
I’m not against it principle, but I think if I did, my interest would be in that aspect where what is generated is somewhat flawed. So if it was openly that this is in collaboration with an AI that doesn’t actually understand what the words mean, but they’ve put together, probabilistically, in terms of predicting what words likely to come next, that also may be telling you something which may or may not be interesting about that huge swathe of data on which it’s trained.
So far it hasn’t hugely appealed to me for our actual songwriting. For me, the lyrics are really important, 50% roughly of the creativity, and often explore scientific and historical themes. The stuff we’re writing is not the kind of thing on which AI models will currently have been trained. But then again, a lot of lyrics throughout history have not been particularly original. How many variations of love songs are there without repeating a concept?
I can imagine AI being good at making variants within the constraints of standardised, formulaic forms. For example, if you wanted to have a Concerto Grosso in the style of a prolific composer, you could probably get an AI to produce something that would sound like a decent mid-ranking composer of such things. I’m not saying I’d necessarily want to listen to it though!
Similarly with visual art, you might be able to generate an image similar to some that already exist, but it would currently struggle to produce something original. Although you could argue that when we think we’re producing something new, it’s largely about juxtaposing existing contrasting elements. I think humans are currently better than AI at producing artistically interesting new combinations of ideas, but I don’t know if in principle that will always be the case.
Perhaps it depends on whether we think intentionality is essential for something to have artistic meaning. At the moment, there is no suggestion that AI have a sense of self with which to care about anything they produce. There is a philosophical debate to be had as to whether that matters. A landscape can be moving without having been generated with an artistic intention.
Nick Holmes Music: Do you ever see yourself using artificial intelligence in the production process?
I have no problem with that in principle. For example, when we record the vocals I spend quite a lot of time cutting out mouth noises and plosives. If there was software that did that reliably for me without messing up the character of the rest of the sound, that would be fine by me. I wouldn’t miss that aspect of it. There are certain tools that I do use as part of that process, but I tend to have them on quite subtle settings and then work on the worst bits by hand. I’d have no problem delegating that to a reliable AI.
Some people use AI based mastering. So far when I’ve tried it, I haven’t liked it as much as what we do by ear but then again, I might be quite biased because I’m choosing what I do when I’m doing it by ear, and maybe somebody else would prefer what the AI is doing. I don’t know. I could imagine in the future, though, it could well be better than I would do. I mean, mastering was something that I learned to do in order to release my stuff rather than because it was something that I had a natural affinity for.
Nick Holmes Music: What have you learned about producing? Do you feel you’ve improved over the years?
I do. So the first album we did, Invisible, I didn’t really imagine it would be listened to by anybody other than me. It was just like a ticking off a thing for myself, ‘I’ve made an album. Good. That’s an achievement. I’ll do something else next’, but without really thinking that it was likely to be heard by anyone. And I was just mixing that and mastering it on the laptop with £30 little Sony earbuds, which apparently is not the done thing in a pro level studio!
I think fortunately when I listen to it on things that aren’t £30 earbuds it sounds right. I haven’t had any kind of particularly negative feedback about it, but I think that’s more by luck than because of my skill there, I think that that was a fortunate accident that worked out OK. It could have been that I put it on proper speakers and it was just this massive low end [makes low bass noise] which I would never have heard on these earbuds, because the frequency just doesn’t go low enough. And I think as our albums have gone on, technically the producing I think has got better as I’ve learned more about what I’m doing hopefully.
Nick Holmes Music: In what sense? Is it about the equipment that you put in your home studio?
No, not really. My home studio is me and the laptop. I’m lying down in bed because I have to spend most of my time lying down. And so I do most of my music work just with the laptop on my chest and lie down.
Nick Holmes Music: But with a decent pair of headphones?
I now have a decent pair of headphones. But actually the equipment is not particularly different to what I was using, but the way I listen hopefully has evolved and you know I’m more aware I think of carving out space for particular instruments and think about the EQ and certain technical things with the reverbs. But the actual facilities aren’t that different, it’s just hopefully how you use them!
Eclectic remixes of Steven Wilson’s first solo album from 2009
Steven Wilson has recently issued two remix albums based on The Harmony Codex, his seventh solo album – Harmonic Distortion and Harmonic Divergence. It’s fifteen years since the release of Nsrgnts Rmxs, a remixed version of Steven Wilson’s first solo album Insurgentes (2008). The vowels were removed from ‘Steven Wilson – Insurgentes Remixes’ to create the title, rendered on the front cover of the CD as STVN WILSON NSRGNTS ↑ RMXS. Sensibly, the CD spine provided the full title including vowels.
A remix competition was launched in January 2009 for the track ‘Abandoner’. Wilson chose eight of the resulting mixes and the winner, Łukasz Langa, was selected in a public vote that ended in May 2009. A 12-inch single featured the first track from the CD, ‘Harmony Korine (David A. Sitek Magnetized Nebula Mix)’ and two remixes of ‘Only Child’ by Pat Mastelotto (drummer from King Crimson) that don’t appear on the CD but did appear on the digital download that was released later. Mastelotto also remixed ‘Abandoner’ which was available to download to inspire entrants to the remix competition.
Harmony Korine (David A. Sitek Magnetized Nebula Mix)
Harmony Korine is the first track on Insurgentes, remixed by David Andrew Sitek (from American rock band TV on the Radio) and Jneiro Jarel (American producer and DJ Omar Jarel Gilyard). This remix replaces the loose-limbed, relaxed drumming of Gavin Harrison from Porcupine Tree in the verse with trip hop rhythms and rasping tenor sax (Stuart Bogie) and trumpet (Todd Smith). In the second verse, the level of distortion on the backing track is pushed to the limit so that the sound almost breaks up, giving the song a more intense feel. But the most radical change is in the chorus, where the chord structure beneath the vocals is completely changed, giving it a more optimistic feel. Towards the end of the track, there’s an additional resonant synth line which drifts downwards to mark the end of the song. A subtle but satisfying remix.
Get All You Deserve (Dälek Mix)
Get All You Deserve is track nine on Insurgentes, remixed by MC Dälek and Mike Manteca from American hip hop band dälek. This is the first of two remixes of this song, the second being by Fear Falls Burning (see below). This mix strips out the piano part from the first couple of minutes, and replaces it with mesmerising vocal samples, reminiscent of the multilayered backing vocals on the 1974 single I’m Not in Love by English art rock band 10cc. At around 2.00, Harrison’s drums are replaced by a resolute hip hop beat. In the chorus, Wilson’s voice, drenched in echo, is almost lost beneath the beat. From around 4.00, the song is largely instrumental, reaching a climax with military snare drums and heavy percussion flourishes. It continues in this style until near the end, unlike the original which features an unrelenting descent into noise. The song ends with a brief fade, with some of the piano motif from the original song. An evocative remix.
Abandoner (Engineers Mix)
Abandoneris track two on Insurgentes, remixed by British pop band Engineers, who were described on the record company website as ‘Kscope’s newest act’ at the time. This is the first of two remixes of the song, the second being the Danse Macabre mix by Łukasz Langa (see below). The most significant change is the addition of piano chords in the opening section, and an extra piano motif at around 2:50 which can be heard again later in the track but much lower in the mix. This has the effect of grounding the track, as does the extra guitar in the rhythmic instrumental section from around 2.10. The vocals are given much clearer definition, starting on the left-hand side of the mix with an added hi-hat pattern, then moving to the right, giving a more intimate but less dream-like feel to the track.
Salvaging (Pat Mastelotto Mix)
Salvaging is track three on Insurgentes, remixed by drummers Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson) and Pat Manske (Rhythmic Statues). On his website, Mastelotto says that he changed the time signature of the song (which he refers to as ‘Salvager’) from 4/4 to 5/4 and slowed it down so that he could bring the vocals closer together; in his view, ‘the lyrics were too far apart in Steven’s version.’ Mastelotto has fun with this mix, as he does with the others (see below). His version begins with eerie electronic noises, played on the theremin by Pamelia Kurstin, which gradual resolve into the opening chord of the original. Thunderously funky bass parts, played by Markus Reuter on ‘an abundance of basses’, soon appear. As promised, the vocals are much closer together than on the original. From 1.30 there are brief additional string flourishes and some wayward bass lines. The instrumental break from around 2.50 adds ‘Turkish Strings’, provided by Cenk Eroglu. As the instrumental section morphs into the quieter section with orchestral strings, Mastelotto adds additional vocals, and an energetic percussion part which completely changes the contemplative nature of the original. A high melody is added by what sounds like a theremin. Unlike some other remixers on this album, he embraces the ‘noise’ section at the end, removing the heavy drums from the original and replacing them with a bass line that spirals upwards forever. A suitably dystopian ending to a richly fascinating version.
Not content with one version, in 2012 on his double CD Recidivate, Mastelotto released a five-minute version called Salvaging Remix Mash under his own name, a hybrid of the Mixes 2 and 3.
Abandoner (Danse Macabre Mix)
Remixed by Polish musician and software engineer Łukasz Langa. As a classically trained pianist, Langa may well have taken the title of his mix from Danse Macabre (1874) an orchestral piece by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Wilson himself listened to all 200 or so entries to the remix competition, of which this was the winner. The mini website, hosted by Wilson’s record label Kscope, allowed entrants to download individual parts (or ‘stems’) from the original song, including ‘behemoth guitars’ and ‘evil piano.’
Langa brings his classical piano skills to this mix, completely transforming the track into an epic piano ballad. It begins with a lovely deep synth intro, soon joined by insistent piano chords and complex percussion rhythms. Wilson’s introverted vocals work well with the completely different mix, sounding more confident in this context. The track builds to a magnificent climax until at around 3.00 there’s a lovely contemplative piano passage with syncopated, rolling drums and a free-flowing bass line, and at 4.15 a melodic string part is added. The distinctive sound of a vibraslap (a percussion instrument) at around 4.30 announces the final, climactic section. A lovely, powerful remix – it’s easy to see why it won the competition.
Get All You Deserve (Fear Falls Burning Mix)
Remixed by Dirk Serries (aka ambient musician Fear Falls Burning). The first two minutes of the song are only subtly different from the original. There is more echo on the piano, and processing is applied to Wilson’s voice to make it feel less intimate, as if heard in a distant dream. At around 3.00, the track seems to be ending, as what sounds like a final chord is restated several times. Unlike the Dälek Mix, the descent into noise from the original track is retained, but without Harrison’s powerful drumming. This ambient version contrasts with the other tracks of this album but retains the essence of the original.
Only Child (Pat Mastelotto Mix 3 and Mix 1)
Pat Mastelotto. Image from Wikimedia credit Avraham Bank used w permission
Only Child is track seven on Insurgentes. These two remixes appear on the B side of the 12-inch single, with Harmony Korine (David A. Sitek Magnetized Nebula Mix) on the A-side. On his website, Mastelotto quotes an email from Wilson asking him to keep the original vocals from the song and to,
‘reinterpret the song [as] if you’d been producing it. And keep it twisted!’
Mastelotto’s response was ‘to really go nuts’ and, with the help of bassist Markus Reuter, superimpose a new meter on the track by breaking it down into its smallest rhythmic elements. So, a song in 4/4 at 100 bpm would become a song in 6/8 at 75 bpm. Mastelotto originally planned to do three remixes for every song on the album, hence the fact that there were three versions of the song.
Despite Wilson asking him not to remove his vocals, Mastelotto did exactly that on Mix 3. The only thing that the original track and Mix 3 appear to have in common is that both have a prominent bassline. But whereas the original has a smooth, majestic bassline that gives the song a sense of inevitability (as many of The Cure’s basslines do) the remix has a series of jerky frenetic lines which don’t use the same notes as the original. Mix 3 has a fractured structure, with several brief breaks that add to the unsettling feel. At around 4.00, there’s an interesting rhythmic effect, sometimes described as an ‘auditory illusion,’ where it is playing at half speed. Mastelotto used similar auditory illusions when playing drums for King Crimson, as on the track ‘Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream’ from Thrak(1995) in which he and the band’s other drummer, Bill Bruford at one point play in two different time signatures at the same time, as Bruford explained to Trevor Cox in the BBC Radio 4 documentary Auditory Illusions in September 2019 (full disclosure: the author of this Blog produced the programme while still working for the BBC.)
Mastelotto’s Mix 1 is equally radical and disjointed. It begins with what sounds like an ending, a very low bass note (similar in timbre to the low note that ends ‘Happy’ from Storm Corrosion’s 2012 album of the same name, a collaboration between Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth). In the Radio 4 documentary, Bruford told Cox that in King Crimson’s music, there was always ‘a sense of a threat of impending doom’, and Mastelotto creates that mood here. The original track appears at 0.25 but it is destroyed after a few seconds by an explosion. There’s another explosion at around 1.05 and the track falls apart on another few occasions until finally we hear a snatch of a human voice which is sampled and used as a human beatbox. Wilson used the same technique on ‘Actual Brutal Facts’ (The Harmony Codex). The track ends with a Floydian guitar solo. Although the track is very dark and dystopian, there’s a strong impression that Mastelotto is having fun being so subversive.
Abandoner – Pat Mastelotto Mix
The mini website set up for the remix competition included free downloads of the Engineers’ remix and the Pat Mastelotto mix of ‘Abandoner’ to inspire entrants. The Engineers’ remix is track three on Nsrgnts Rmxs (see above), but the Mastelotto mix was never released elsewhere. It opens with shimmering guitar, and a new guitar part. The rhythmic breathing that appears at 0.40 is another technique that Wilson used on The Harmony Codex, on the opening track, ‘Inclination.’ At 1.00 a new, dirty-sounding bassline appears. At 1.20, the original Steven Wilson vocal tries to break into the track. The grungy, King Crimson-like backing track continues regardless of Wilson’s attempts, and for a while the two elements seem to exist in completely different musical universes, resolutely ignoring each other. Then at 3.00, the high synth parts of the original finally succeed in breaking into the song. Of the eight lines of lyrics of the original song, five appear in the remix. It’s significant that the words, ‘I am restless, I am lost’ are left out as they are an apt description of the remix – Mastelotto appears to be having fun again! The track ends with a fairground organ that seems to come from a fever dream. Many years later, in his short story The Harmony Codex on which the album of the same name is loosely based, Wilson describes his protagonist Jamie imagining he sees a ‘magnificent fairground carousel’ which plays ‘queasy pipe-organ music.’ Could there be an unconscious link in Wilson’s mind?
‘Inclination’, the first track on Steven Wilson’s seventh solo album, The Harmony Codexwas released in a limited edition 12 inch single, remixed by Ewan Pearson, on 19 January 2024. Pearson describes himself on his website as a ‘Producer, Mixer and Remixer.’ Pearson previously remixed Wilson’s upbeat pop song ‘Permanating’ (from 2017’s To the Bone) in a dance version.
Pearson has had a lengthy career as a remixer, having worked with Tracey Thorn, Goldfrapp, Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode among many others. His dance version of ‘Inclination’ couldn’t be described as prog rock. As Jerry Ewing of Progwrote in January 2024,
‘Gatekeepers and those of a sensitive disposition look away now!‘
Pearson’s version is reminiscent of dance music pioneers New Order at their most electronic, in tracks like ‘Tutti Frutti’ (from Music Complete, 2015). Pearson’s mix begins with the chorus that appears much later in the original song, with the original beautifully mixed harmonies; but the sparkling synth loops suggest we are heading in a different direction. This soon happens, with the introduction of a heavy disco beat with added hand laps and a chunky disco bassline. The handclaps are an example of the ‘disco double clap’, two claps in very quick succession described by Hugh Morris of The Guardian in July 2023 as, ‘The infectious disco rhythm heard from Barbie to Kylie…cheeky, silly and faintly magical.’ Pearson’s remix achieves the difficult feat of taking Wilson’s contemplative song and driving it along with a propulsive beat, even in the parts of the song that were originally downbeat, to create a joyous new version that moves the feet in the way that the original moves the soul.
Record Store Day exclusive remix album completes the Harmony Codex trilogy
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Steven Wilson’s Harmony Codex trilogy is complete. The original album was released in September 2023. The Deluxe Edition of The Harmony Codex included a remix album, Harmonic Distortion. The new remix album, Harmonic Divergence was released on 20 April 2024 as a limited-edition Record Store Day exclusive on vinyl only. According to the Discogswebsite, only 2200 copies were released, and purchasers in England had to queue up on an unseasonably cold Saturday morning to buy it from their local record store, or hope that it would be available to buy online a few days later. As Wilson said on his website,
One of the most fun and rewarding aspects of The Harmony Codex has been the opportunity to have the music remixed by so many other artists and musicians I admire. The material seemed to lend itself so well to reinterpretation.
Wilson adds a small amount of his own material, in the form of the short Codex Themes #10, #4 and #13, just as he does on the previous remix album.
Time Is Running Out Remix – Ewan Pearson Remix (9:20)
Ewan Pearson is an English producer, mixer and remixer. His remix of ‘Inclination’, another track from the original album, was released as a single on 19 January 2024. In January 2024, Alexis Petridis wrote in The Guardian that Pearson’s joyful remix ‘sprinkles sunlit Balearic euphoria’ on the original.
Wilson describes Pearson’s remix of ‘Time Is Running Out’ as a, ‘euphoric and propulsive reworking.’ It begins with bells, like the opening of ‘High Hopes’ from Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell (1994). The bells in both songs are metaphors for the passing of time, and the ephemeral nature of human life. The Pink Floyd song describes nostalgia for childhood, a common theme in Wilson’s work, a time when ‘the grass was greener’ before, ‘ a life consumed by slow decay.’ On his Harmonic Distortion remix, Mikael Åkerfeldt, lead singer of Opeth, replaces Wilson’s vocals with his own yearning, nostalgic vocals, but Pearson’s remix retains the original vocals.
An electronic voice at the start and the end of the track gives a time and date; the date appears to be 4/29/92, or April 29th 1992. It’s easy to fall down an internet rabbit hole trying to find out the significance of the date, but it was the day when the Los Angeles riots began following the acquittal of four LAPD officers who were charged with using excessive force in the arrest of Rodney King. The American rock band Sublime wrote a song about the riots called ‘April 29, 1992 (Miami)’ from their album Sublime (1996). The lyrics refer to 26th of April but apparently when the band realised their mistake, they decided to keep the take as it was so good. In April 1992, Pearson was 20 years old (he was born on 1 April 1972), and Wilson released the first ‘official’ Porcupine Tree album, On the Sunday of Life around that time (12 May 1992), but although these were important times in both men’s lives the dates don’t seem precise enough.
Pearson develops the clattering rhythm track of the original song and turns it into a joyous dance song. He completely abandons the piano introduction and adds rich synths, followed by a hefty kick drum and a pulsating single-note bass line. An ethereal synth melody floats above, giving the track a hopeful feel as additional percussion is added. A delicious percussion breakdown features Wilson’s voice tuned down to create a human beatbox, which appears a couple of times on the original track. Pearson makes the beatbox theme much more of a feature, tuning it up and down and massively extending it. It’s unclear whether there are any decipherable words here, but the heavily processed voice is still strangely moving. Pearson’s remix is almost twice as long as Wilson’s original, giving it a 12- inch single extended remix feel; it’s not until five minutes in that the first verse arrives, accompanied by metallic keyboards rather than the original piano. Pearson sensibly retains the complete guitar solo by Niko Tsonev, a highlight of the original track.
The Harmony Codex Remix – David Kollar & Arve Henriksen Remix (5:10)
This is the first of two remixes of the title track, by Norwegian jazz trumpeter Arve Henriksen and the Slovakian guitarist David Kollar, who provides guitar solos on ‘Inclination’, and ‘Actual Brutal Facts’ on the main album. It’s not so much a remix as a complete rewriting or radical re-imagining; all that remains of the original track is the voice over by Wilson’s wife Rotem. It becomes a contemplative duet between trumpet and acoustic guitar, with what sounds like Kollar on bowed mandolin about half way through. Henriksen’s trumpet is soft-grained, similar in style to the playing of Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær on the opening track of the main album, ‘Inclination.’ As Nate Chinen said in an article in The New York Timeson 18 June 2009, the two trumpeters, ‘share a fondness for fragile lyricism and rippling atmosphere, building on a 40-year tradition that began with the Miles Davis album In a Silent Way [1969]’, although he goes on to say that their live performances are very different. The remix provides a very different perspective on Rotem’s spoken words. Whereas on the original track it appears that the music is beamed from a distant galaxy, here we sit much closer, and the words feel much more intimate as if we are sitting with the protagonist rather than hearing her from afar.
Actual Brutal Facts Remix – Craig Blundell Remix (5:09)
Craig Blundell plays drums on most of tracks on the original album. He was also Wilson’s drummer on the To the Bone tour in 2018 and 2019. This was Wilson’s most recent solo tour as the tour to support the 2020 album The Future Bites was cancelled due to Covid. Blundell is also a member of Trifecta, which was formed with two other Steven Wilson band members, Nick Beggs and Adam Holzman (who has remixed ‘What Life Brings’ – see below) were sound checking during the tour. They have released two albums to date – Fragments in 2021 and The New Normal earlier this year.
Blundell’s remix is fairly subtle, more of a reworking than a complete re-imagining like some of the other tracks on the two remix albums. It retains the structure of the original song, although the introduction is slightly longer.
The track begins with the original guitar introduction, but the surrounding instruments are distorted and manipulated to create a sense of dread. There’s a disturbing added bass drum, like an irregular heartbeat, and creepy whispering voices as if from a nightmare or a horror film. A slightly eerie synth or mellotron sound hovers above, like something from the soundtrack of a 1950s sci-fi movie. When Wilson’s voice enters, Blundell adds very heavy compression, a vocal effect Wilson often uses on earlier Porcupine Tree tracks.
At one minute in, the track suddenly opens out and Wilson’s vocals return to normal. The original bass line is replaced by a heavy dubstep bass throughout the rest of the song. The use of dubstep in a prog rock song is reminiscent of ‘Unsustainable’ by Muse from their 2012 album The Second Law, which combines elements of classical music, dubstep and prog rock. The overall effect is to increase the already aggressive feel of the track, and Blundell sensibly retains the brutal guitar solo from David Kollar to enhance this feel.
Economies Of Scale – Manic Street Preachers Remix (4:03)
The Manic Street Preachers’ remix of ‘Economies of Scale’ was released as a single on 24 November 2023. It also appears on the first remix album, Harmonic Distortion, released as part of the Deluxe Edition of The Harmony Codex. It’s the only track from Harmonic Divergence which is currently available to stream.
The Manics’ lead singer/guitarist, James Dean Bradfield, quoted by Jerry Ewing of Prog, said the original track reminded him of The Police in the early 80s – the ‘bareness of the vocals, the steely percussion and slight detachment’ of tracks like ‘Walking in Your Footsteps’ and ‘Murder by Numbers’from Synchronicity(1983), and Police drummer Stewart Copeland’s soundtrack to Rumble Fish (1983)released in the same year. He said that the Manics’ bass player, Nicky Wire, ‘immediately sought to push the second half of the track in more of a Holy Bible[the Manics’ 1994 album] direction.’
Wilson told Graham Fuller of the arts desk in December 2023the original song is an ‘electronic soul ballad’, whereas the Manics’ version is a ‘rock guitar anthem.’ It’s fascinating to compare the two versions, particularly as they both use the same vocal melody and the complete set of lyrics (unlike some of the other tracks on this album) showing what a huge difference the chords and instruments used beneath a melody can make. The Manics’ version adds a lovely extra set of guitar chords at 1.50 and a driving earworm of a riff in the chorus, effectively creating a new track which stands up very well on its own.
Rock Bottom – Adam Holzman Remix (5:01)
Adam Holzman has been Steven Wilson’s regular keyboard player since he joined the Grace for Drowning tour in late 2011 in support of Wilson’s second solo album. He has his own band, Brave New World who released a live album The Last Gig (2021). Holzman played with Miles Davis’ band from 1985 to 1989, eventually becoming Davis’ musical director. He can be heard on Davis’ Tutu (1986) and Live Around the World (1996), and the live DVD That’s What Happened: Live in Germany 1987 (2009).
Miles Davis died in 1991 when Wilson was in his mid-twenties and just finding his musical feet with Porcupine Tree, so the prospect of the two artists working together was always extremely remote. But Holzman convincingly channels the keyboard sounds of Davis’ backing band, from the late 1960s onwards when he moved from an acoustic band to an electric band, beginning with A Silent Way in 1969.
The track begins with a jazzy hi-hat rhythm, spacey electric piano and syncopated bass. Holzman retains the original vocals sung by Ninet Tayeb which still soar above, but the track has much more laid-back feel than the cinematic epic on the main album. The demo version that Tayeb first sent to Wilson was much more downbeat, so this version gives us some sense of what a low-key version of the song might have sounded like.
The original track develops into an epic power ballad, and Holzman’s remix also has a sense of movement towards a climax. A pulsating bass line is added, with full drums, and towards the end of the track fiercely rhythmic, driving synths add to the momentum. Appropriately, the guitar solo by Niko Tsonev is replaced with a sparkling synth solo.
The Harmony Codex – Mogwai Remix (9.51)
On his website, Wilson described this remix by Stuart Braithwaite, guitarist of Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, as a ‘claustrophobic treatment of the title track.’ The remix retains most of the original elements, but it has a very different feel. As Wilson says the mix, ‘adds layers of sheet noise to the original.’ The pristine clarity of the original synth chords is gradually buried beneath a sea of noise and feedback, plunging us into a dark and disconcerting world of storms at sea rather distant stars. The track begins with a juddering sound which continues as the original track fades in. A guitar wails nervously in the background. Mournful, ponderous drums are added. The only respite comes at the end with a gentle piano theme. The overall effect is as if Mogwai have taken one their atmospheric pieces written for a film score such as ‘Ghost Nets’ from the soundtrack for Before the Flood (2016) and overlaid it on top of Wilson’s song. Wilson himself has previously flooded his crystalline sound worlds with noise, particularly on his first solo album Insurgentes (2008) on tracks such as ‘Salvaging.’
‘any of several night-blooming convolvulaceous plants, especially the white- flowered Calonyction (or Ipomoea) aculeatum.‘
Two moonflowers, copyright Ed! (Photography). Source – Wikimedia Commons
But the new single from the Dutch gothic metal band Blackbriar (featuring singer songwriter Marjana Semkina who is also a member of iamthemorning), uses the moonflower not in its literal sense but in its poetic sense, associated with mystery and romantic love,
‘Beautiful moonflower/Wandering under the night sky…Mystical sleepwalker…’
Moonflower by Blackbriar, with Zora Cock and Marjana Semkina
Zora Cock, Blackfriar’s vocalist, quoted by Ghost Cult magazine, says this about the new single,
‘‘Moonflower’ tells a love story between a female vampire and a mortal girl and transports you to a bygone era where darkness and desire intertwine. It’s inspired by the 19th-century gothic novel Carmilla, a timeless story that predates even the infamous Dracula.‘
Carmilla, by the Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu, was published in 1872, and Bram Stoker (also Irish) published Dracula 25 years later in 1897. Le Fanu’s novella is narrated by Laura, 19 years old at the time of the story, who lives in a schloss (‘castle’) in Styria, Austria with her father. Carmilla appears at the schloss following a carriage accident as a teenager who is the same age as Laura. In fact [spoiler alert] Carmilla, also known as Countess Mircalla, died 150 years before the events of the story and became a vampire, preying on young women such as Laura and Bertha. The latter is the niece of General Spielsdorf, who tells Bertha’s story to Laura and her father to their increasing horror. Le Fanu’s story is notable for creating the prototype of the lesbian vampire. The novella gradually and subtly introduces the themes of lesbianism and vampirism, so that we share Laura’s creeping realisation of Carmilla’s true nature.
When Laura is six, a ‘very pretty young lady’ appears at the side of her bed, caressing her back to sleep until she is awoken by the sensation of ‘two needles running into my breast very deep at the same moment’. The needles don’t leave any physical marks, although Laura is haunted by the incident. Much later in the novel, a minor character remarks that Carmilla, ‘has the sharpest tooth…like a needle.’ When Carmilla arrives at the schloss, now in her late teens, the two young women realise that they first met 12 years earlier – Carmilla says she saw Laura ‘in a dream’, but Laura is unsure whether it was a dream or reality, ‘Twelve years ago, in a vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face.’
The two young women quickly become fast friends, but there is an undercurrent of fear and disgust in the way Laura views Carmilla, perhaps sensing Carmilla’s true nature, ‘I did feel drawn towards her, but there was something of repulsion…however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed…she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging.’ As the story progresses, it appears that Carmilla is beginning to treat Laura more as a lover than a friend,
‘…my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me…’
But beneath Carmilla’s ardent and attractive exterior, there’s a much darker creature, as described by Bertha’s uncle,
‘…I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl…over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl’s throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great palpitating mass.’
An image by David Henry Friston from Carmilla, originally serialised in The Dark Blue magazine in 1871-72
The video for the Moonflower single concentrates on the early part of the relationship between Laura and Carmilla, although neither character is named. It was filmed at a schloss that evokes the setting of Carmilla, Dussen Castle in the Netherlands. Cock plays Laura, and Semkina plays the sleepwalking Carmilla, (the ‘mystical sleepwalker’ in the song). References to vampirism include a little blood trickling down from the side of Carmilla’s mouth, and her kissing Laura on the neck. The lesbian inferences are relatively subtle, as they are in the original book.
In the lyrics to the song, there are other specific references to the book, including the shared ‘childhood dream’ of the two protagonists. The words ‘ardour of a lover’ are taken directly from the book, from the passage quoted above. Carmilla whispering in Laura’s ear relates to Carmilla’s ‘murmured words [which] sounded like a lullaby in my ear’,
‘With the ardour of a lover/You whisper in my ear’
Carmilla is also seen walking in the moonlight in the book, ‘how beautiful she looked in the moonlight.’ And Laura’s father is convinced that Carmilla sleepwalks at night. The song adds dark humour to the possibility of vampirism, ‘I promise I won’t bite.’ And vampirism and lesbianism are combined in the suggestion that ‘you could lay in my garden forever.’ This combines the fact that vampires are immortal with the sexual imagery of a garden that dates back to temptation in the Garden of Eden and the Biblical Song of Songs, ‘Let my beloved come into his garden/And eat its choicest fruits.’ (Song of Solomon 4:16)
Musically, the single is a perfect match for the video and the book. The two women’s voices are similar, but subtly different, suggesting the close relationship between the two young women in the book. Instrumentally, the song has the same compelling mix of heavy metal riffs and symphonic rock, combined with strong vocal melodies, which made last year’s Blackbriar album A Dark Euphony so compelling. Moonflower can be streamed as an individual track, but physical copies include two extra tracks – a powerful instrumental version and a gorgeous a cappella version in which the two voices, drenched in echo, sound beautiful together.
Moonflower is out now. Blackbriar tour North America with Black Beast in May and early June 2024 and will be supporting Kamelot on their European tour in October. They then tour the UK in November 2024, playing in Wolverhampton (1st) London (2nd) and Manchester (3rd). Marjana Semkina’s second solo album Sirin is out on 31 May 2024.
Myrkur (Amalie Bruun) brings an eclectic set to Islington
The venue for tonight’s gig was Islington Assembly Hall, a Grade II listed building from the 1930s. Behind its Art Deco façade lurked a dark, Nordic forest. On closer inspection, it became apparent that the trees on the backdrop at the back of the stage formed the word Myrkur, which means darkness in Icelandic. A sign of things to come? Well, perhaps not quite – certainly the music wasn’t all dark…
The gig began with an ominous throbbing drone and atmospheric purple lighting before Myrkur (singer and songwriter/instrumentalist Amalie Bruun) came to the stage. She was flanked by her band, guitar to the left and bass to the right, apparently ready to do heavy metal battle. Above and behind sat the drummer who provided robust support when needed, including some fearsome double kick drum work. Bassist Maja Shining (Forever Still) also provided gorgeous backing vocals and occasional vocal duets with Bruun, and some evocative keyboard textures.
Bruun, surrounded by exotic foliage, immediately demonstrated her impressive vocal range, singing a haunting vocalise on opening song Bålfærd (‘Viking Funeral’). And the range and exoticism of her songwriting was soon evident, too. 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 this evening, including a run of six songs at the start of the show. Like Humans, a plea for humanity not to be overtaken by Artificial Intelligence, began with a pummelling heavy guitar riff but had an earworm of a chorus, ‘Talk to me like humans do’, more pop than heavy metal. Mothlike, with its bubbling sequencers, was the child of New Order and black metal. A highlight of the first part of the set was a beautiful rendition of My Blood is Gold (#6 in the Off the Beaten Track series elsewhere on this blog), a spellbinding track that showcased the lower part of Bruun’s vocal register.
Bruun then delved back into her catalogue, with a couple of tracks from her 2017 album Mareidt, starting with The Serpent which wouldn’t be out of place on one of the later Opeth albums with its industrial riff at the start and its winding chorus melody. Crown again featured the very lowest part of Bruun’s vocal range at the start, followed by a soaring chorus two octaves above. In it stately majesty, it could have been from a soundtrack to a film about Vikings. (Bruun scored the Netflix series Ragnarock, partly based on Nordic myths). There was a brief return to the new album, with a lovely duet on Devil in the Detail between Bruun and Shining, both singing and playing keyboards, preceded by a rocky version of Blazing Sky.
The set ended with two songs from Bruun’s 2020 album Folkesange. First, Leaves of Yggdrasil, with its folk-inspired reference to the Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life. Then Bruun was then joined by Swedish folk singer Jonathan Hultén who was also the support act. Hultén came on stage wearing a magnificent head dress, reminiscent of the headgear worn by Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother in the recent Dune films, and a darkly gothic outfit. There was momentary confusion while Hultén searched for a capo for his acoustic guitar. Bruun saying she wasn’t good at speaking, despite her impeccable English, explained that she and Hultén had premiered a song together in Manchester the previous evening. The two went on to perform a gorgeous version of House Carpenter, a traditional Nordic folk song, attracting the most excited applause of the evening.
The encore consisted of two more tracks from Mareidt. The first, Ulvinde, again featured a vocal duet, and a deliciously dark, sinister drop of a semitone in the guitar parts. Bruun stepped onto the drum riser to perform vocal pyrotechnics and the song ended with a rousing cry of ‘Norge, Norge, Norge’ (‘Norway, Norway, Norway’). Finally, Death of Days, a bonus track from Mareidt, the gentle piano chords of the original replaced by guitar chords, the melismatic vocal styles of the chorus reminding us yet again what a versatile singer (and song writer) Bruun is.
The latest single from London-based prog rock band, Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate is taken from their eighth studio album The Uncertainty Principle due to be released later in 2024. It’s called One Word That Means The World (Vasily Arkhipov).
The band enjoy a high concept for their songs – their previous album The Light of Ancient Mistakes included songs on the Cold War, English MPs’ discovery of Hitler’s atrocities, and the miserable childhood of author John le Carré.
The new song is dedicated to the Soviet naval officer Vasily Arkhipov (pictured below). During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Arkhipov was onboard a B-59 submarine, part of a flotilla stationed near Cuba, hiding so deep in the sea that it hadn’t received radio signals from Moscow for several days. When the US Navy began to drop depth charges to try to force the submarine to the surface, the captain and the political officer, assuming that they were now at war with the US, made the decision to launch their T-5 nuclear torpedo. Arkhipov managed to persuade the others not to launch the nuclear weapon but to surface and obtain orders from Moscow. The submarine was then ordered to return to Soviet territory. Arguably, Arkhipov’s brave action saved the world from nuclear war – the simple Russian word ‘nyet’ (‘no’) was the ‘one word that means the world’.
Arkhipov’s clear-headed decision is even more remarkable for being taken in extreme physical conditions. The submarine’s batteries were failing; there was no air conditioning and the heat was extreme; high levels of carbon dioxide caused feelings of suffocation and panic. Yet on their return home the crew were treated as if they had let their country down, although Arkhipov did rise to the rank of vice admiral in the Soviet navy before he retired in 1988.
Vasily Arkhipov – Image courtesy of Olga Arkhipova
Arkhipov’s predicament is soon turned into a much wider existential crisis in the song’s lyrics which begin with specifics but soon widen to the haunting refrain,
We don’t know who we are till we’re forced to decide/We don’t know what’s inside
The song begins in medias res, with a spiky, slightly frenetic guitar solo, immediately evoking the claustrophobic setting, ‘trapped beneath the waves … The burning lifeless air…’ The sense of intense claustrophobia is enhanced by the octave doubling on the vocals, similar to the vocal effect on Pink Floyd’s ‘Welcome to the Machine’ from their 1975 album Wish You Were Here. There’s also a rising synth motif which has a similar tonal quality to the treated piano part at the opening of Echoes from Pink Floyd’s Meddle (1971), evoking the sonar from the submarine.
Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland
The doubling of the vocal line stops during the chorus, creating a more intimate feel, showing that the words ‘We don’t know who we are…’ are more personal to Arkhipov’s situation, whilst at the same time being of more universal relevance by using the word ‘we’ rather than addressing him directly. That changes again at the end of the chorus when Arkhipov is directly addressed with the poignant words, ‘That was the day when you said no.’
There’s a further shift in of point of view with the words ‘That was years ago, and now I’m told I’m a hero.’ We are now seeing events from Arkhipov’s perspective, and the vocals become more restrained and thoughtful. The point of view then switches to the universal ‘we’ and back to Arkhipov again in the first-person singular. There’s a powerful guitar solo, again suggesting the anguish Arkhipov must have suffered when making his decision. The song ends with Arkhipov’s poignant words, ‘I found out when I said no.’ It’s a fine song, a worthy and passionate tribute to a brave man. to whom the single is dedicated.
Mark Gatland – bass guitar, co-producer, vocal engineer
Artwork by Malcolm Galloway, made with DALLE-3 (AI art) and Photoshop.
The B-side of the single is the instrumental ‘Music For Dancing’ – Written and performed by Malcolm Galloway (guitar, synths/keyboards, producer, mastering) and Mark Gatland (bass guitar, synths, co-producer).
