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It was bound to happen once: the musical paths of 2 protagonists of
today’s progmusic have crossed and the result is much more
accessible than Parallel or 90 Degrees, less complex than the Flower
Kings and blessed with a larger and fuller sound spectrum than
Transatlantic. (If you really need a comparison.) A few years ago, a
solo project of Andy Tillison (Po90) saw the light and evolved
little by little into a cross-pollination with the musical brain of
another main musician of the present progscene: Roine Stolt (The
Flower Kings). Genuine progressive rock of the purest quality,
that’s what The Tangent’ is presenting us and just take a look at
the list of guest musicians before removing the water out of the
corners of your mouth. David Jackson (VDGG), Jonas Reingold & Zoltan
Csorsz (FLK), Sam Baine (Po90) and Guy Manning… these are the
true-born artists who gave shape to the musical dream of Tillison
and changed “The Music That Died Alone” into a real masterpiece.
‘In darkest dreams’ starts the party and does that in a great way,
with a blink of an eye to the Transatlantic debut and with some
discrete references to Yes. The big difference with our
transatlantic friends is the lack of big egos which leads to a more
authentic and organic sound and sounds less as a hotchpotch of
individual flashes of quality.
You can expect from a quartet, which consists for three quarters of
Flower Kings members, some music with an obvious Swedish tone, but
Tillison succeeds in keeping the trio in harness. Especially the
contributions of the other 3 members are the ones that deliver an
extra Michelin-star to this banquet. Baine conjures beautiful, jazzy
sounds out of her piano, Manning is handling the acoustic guitar in
a very subtle way and what Jackson is playing on sax and flute is
sometimes from another world. Especially his contribution puts
literally and figurative new life into this song, that’s full of
references to the high days of progressive rock.
After such an eruption of symphonic sounds, it’s time to have a
welcome break with “The Canterbury Sequence”, which will certainly
rejoice the fans of the genre. (the title of this track doesn’t beat
around the bush). Jackson on the flute and Baine on the piano
deliver a sample of their skills and Stolt and Reingold seem to feel
extremely well with this kind of music.
“Up-hill From Here” takes us resolute into a higher gear and is
being played in a tight and witty way. Tillison (on Hammond) as well
as Stolt are freaking away and this delivers quite some sparks.
The initial purpose of Tillison was to write a real progressive
album in the spirit of the seventies. To extra emphasize all this,
he wrote an ode to the pioneers of the symphonic/progressive rock
and he gave an expression to his desire to cherish this music, in
spite of all the opposition to this genre at the end of the
seventies. “The Music That Died Alone” is a splendidly chosen title
and represents in a striking way how much Tillison is devoted to
this style. A heart-warming, honest and sublime song, that knits an
appropriate final chord to this fantastic musical journey through
the progressive patrimony of old times.
Albums like “The Music...” prove once more that beautiful music is
from all times and never sounds dated. Seldom has a band succeeded
in this manner to convert the spirit of old times into a
contemporary, far from old-fashioned sounding variant like The
Tangent with “The Music That Died Alone”. An absolute topper in this
genre! |
