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Since last year’s “Tricks of time”
release by Grand Stand and Galleon mainman Göran Fors’ offspring
Spektrum, luckily more attention has gone to the Swedish label
Progress Records label as run by Hansi Cross. Although the band
Galleon has been going strong for some time now they seem to grow
and develop with each release. Their last studio release “Beyond
dreams” was a big step forward in the development of the band but
once I was able to listen to their latest offering, boy what a
pleasant surprise this was. You can clearly hear that Galleon has
finally found it’s niche fusing authentic vintage sounds with a
contemporary feel. In fact you immediately get the proof with the
first song on the album, ‘Three colours’ where from a musical
perspective the band kind of delivers a Genesis feel from around the
“Wind and wuthering” era (just listen to those synths !) whilst
Göran Fors’ vocals in a way remind me of a cross between Simple
Minds’ Jim Kerr and Saga’s Michael Sadler. All the drama is there
yet the band is able to inject the right dose of acceptable rock
with the right amount of prog elements to make everyone happy.
Towards the end of ‘Three colours’ Galleon even delivers a battle
between guitar and synth.
I wouldn’t like to use the label
‘neo-prog’ when I have to describe Galleon’s latest product although
of course the rhythm section often sounds ‘simpler’ than your
average seventies prog icon. During ‘Fall of fame’ drummer Dan Fors
really delivers a simple, stompin’ rock’n roll rhythm whereby the
song itself could easily have been written by Saga or It Bites. Sven
Larsson even introduces some wah-wah guitar as if he possesses
sampled parts out of the mighty ‘Shaft’ by Isaac Hayes ! Listening
closely to the Galleon music one has to admit it’s mainly
keyboardplayer Ulf Pettersson who introduces the Genesis feel with
his strong Tony Banks-like playing and chords. The other musicians
however try to focus more on the rock idiom at times as the weird
entitled instrumental ‘Liopleurodon’ proves. As the song evolves it
leaves the rock structure in search of fusion containing kind of a
jamming feel. A different cup of tea is noted by means of ‘Land’.
Due to the inclusion of flute and acoustic guitars this song
unleashes a decent amount of folk flavours ending in true ‘jig’
fashion. The grand piano in the opening section of ‘The price’ for a
minute reminds me of Supertramp but the rest of the arrangement soon
stops that comparaison as to my ears it’s once again Saga all over.
However the atmosphere changes when Ulf Pettersson unleashes some
Dave Stewart synthsounds against an everchanging background. Towards
the end the style of the music also contains a fair bit of IQ
references so all in all Galleon does tackle loads of different
styles in order to create it’s very own music. Pitty they ‘borrow’
such a large chunk of authentic Genesis towards the end !
Recorded over a period of nearly three years the album came together
as an idea from Göran, a concept he had been thinking about for
quite some time. In the end it became a double album with one album
dedicated to The land and the second to The Ocean. To make it even
proggier than it already is, the second disc only contains one
composition but then again it lasts for the duration of a whole
album clocking in at around 52 minutes ! The beginning of this epic
kind of evokes a similar feel as Yes’ “Close to the edge” with
synthsounds creating a different world. Again it becomes rather
difficult for a reviewer to desribe what to expect as after all this
concerns one single track. The information inside the booklet learns
us that this epic is actually put together by means of no less than
nineteen subdivisions. In order to keep it interesting throughout
the band has been clever enough to place little instrumental
sections in between the vocal tracks. That way it becomes more
diversified which makes listening to this monster track easier.
Again Ulf Pettersson’s keyboards lift the music to directions the
band has never unearthed before. Listening to ‘Atlantis’ with it’s
repeating ambient structure is almost like listening to some older
Simple Minds material. ‘Blood waters’ unleashes a lot of energy both
from the almost tribal drums and the powerful guitars whilst distant
mellotron gives it a great finish. This is the kind of material
bands like Mars Volta, Opeth and Pain of Salvation could master.
Slight fusion with George Benson-like guitar and a funky slapping
bass mingle during ‘Blue richness’ creating kind of a song within a
song. Absolutely delightful is the almost chaotic flow of synths and
extremely clear and ‘dry’ drums during the instrumental ‘Swirl’.
Galleon then introduces some nice slide guitar before the general
atmosphere slides down to a rather predictable nature before ending
in a similar way like it all began 52 minutes earlier. It often
happens that a band releases a lengthy epic and very often I find
myself falling asleep halfway through. Some musicians simply have
this idea that the longer a song becomes, the more it becomes
progressive. Here every single second is worth listening to
resulting in endless replays of the same song revealing new details
time after time the way true progressive rock should sound. In the
career of Galleon “From land to ocean” is their absolute high and
the kind of calling card we have all been waiting for in order to
finally introduce them the world over as one of the bright hopes of
the great prog revival ! |
