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There ought to be
some gifted talents in the rock world who suffice with a few hours
of sleep every night. Above all they are active in more than one
way, as a musician as well as producer, shone out by their ingenious
dedication. I’m thinking of three of them this particular moment :
Peter Tagtgren, Steven Wilson and last but not least Dan Swanö. Is
it a coincidence that two of these guys were involved in Opeth
creations.
My first
acquaintance with the sympathetic well looking Dan Swanö took place
in 1996 with the CD ‘Crimson’ of Edge of Sanity, he was part of that
group at that time. Beside this death metal band Dan was active in
another project called ‘Nightingale’. These CD’s showed us some
traditional rock with a clean warm voice which Dan used incidentally
in ‘Crimson’, by the way an epic song of 40 minutes. This project
is called Nightingale, it started in 1995 with ‘The breathing
shadow’ (reminding me of some Deep Purple tracks) and is ready for
the fourth release now, with the subtitle ‘The breathing shadow part
IV’. On the first release Dan Swanö did everything by himself,
nowadays he’s got a real group formed around him with his loyal
brother Tom Nouga as a constant factor in all these years. The
talent of Dan was also noticed by Arjen Lucassen with the result of
a fantastic vocal contribution on the ‘Star One’ CD. Arjen appears
on this CD on guitar in a track called ‘Fallen’, as a gift to his
friend.
The album has a
remarkable peaceful atmosphere. It shows a hidden energy in most of
the tracks, ‘Shadowman’ even got some modern ‘loops’. It’s a
feeling of homecoming I get when I listen to it, from time to time
we can discover some David Coverdale and Whitesnake sounds in it.
Precious moments are those when Dan sings in a melancholy mood. But
the raw charm comes ahead in ‘Glory days’. This track opens with
dashy keyboards while during ‘Fallen’ all Ayreon fans will prick up
their ears when Arjen gets loose on his guitar.
Where the classic
‘Bohemian rhapsody’ ends, there begins ‘Eternal’ : with the sentence
‘anyway the winds blows …’ In this 11 minutes epic creation you can
taste the ‘grandeur’ of ‘Crimson’. It shows us many different parts
and feelings, all together mixed in one piece of music which is hard
to describe but easy to swallow when you’re part of it by hearing
all these lines. It just sounds natural and homogeneous. Also the
vocal parts show Dan at his best, his warm voice lights up your fire
place spontaneously. It’s a piece of non-hidden melancholy. Piano
and keyboards are the main instruments we hear, beside this we can
hear some long symphonic influenced guitar lines.
The temp’s rising
in the Uriah Heep alike ‘State of shock’, with some delicious guitar
breaks. Strings go ahead in ‘The one’, while the ghost of
Whitesnake wanders through ‘Shadowland serenade’. Sometimes I got a
feeling that it’s too American sounding, going into the direction of
some good old FM rock, but this is only a personal thought because I
was expecting a harder product of Nightingale. But we all know Dan
can deliver his demons in ‘Infested’ now. (also one of his bands)
After
a few times listening, just when you start to recognize some things,
it will be obvious to you that the songs are sublime, that this is
real nice music with a lot of diversity and, we couldn’t expect
anything else, a perfect production. |
