Marillion: it's their world...

...we only live in it.

Yet another adventure in harnessing the power of the internet, courtesy of the boys from Aylesbury:


We have decided to take a brave step - to record every night of our Happiness on the Road tour straight off the mixing desk, and upload it for you to buy THE NEXT DAY. But this is an experiment for us, so here's what you need to know:

If you are familiar with the Front Row Club, these recordings will be of similar quality. The source will be the main outputs of the live mixing desk - so while the audio will be of high quality, it is being mixed for the venue, and each release will have a slightly different character. But you will be getting the entire show from start to finish as it happened!

Next, because many venues we are playing do not have high-speed reliable internet connections, we will be compressing the audio as 256 kbps MP3 audio before uploading it to our server. This is to help speed up the process and avoid a lot of potential errors and problems - so we won't be able to offer the shows in any other (i.e. FLAC) audio format.
Minimal artwork including a track listing will be provided with each download - we intend to list the individual track listings on this page rather than creating individual 'discography entries' for each show; you can also check the 2008 Tour History web page for updated set lists from the show.

We will do our best to make every show available - but there may be technical problems or other issues that arise meaning some gigs may not be available. In the same way, there may be a delay of a day or two before some gigs are on sale due to the availability of an internet connection at or near the venue.

Finally, the band will have ultimate 'veto' power. Should the decide that for some reason they don't want a show to be made available, well, it won't be! But they have all said they want to make every show - no matter what goofs, hiccups, or error may happen! - available.
This is an experiment for us, so we will be learning as we go along, too... bear with us! If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to post on the Marillion Forums or contact us directly via email.


Three shows are currently available (ABC, Glasgow - 9 November 2008; The Basement, Newcastle - 10 November 2008; Colston Hall, Bristol - 11 November 200), with the most recent show from Leeds due to be available sometime this evening.

News Briefs: Phideaux, Syzygy

Phideaux has announced the completion of his/their newest release:

"It is called "Number Seven" (although if you've been reading the Phideaux blog you've known this since February). It is our seventh album. It is not the concluding chapter in our trilogy (begun with "The Great Leap" and "Doomsday Afternoon"). Instead, this is an album that developed out of rehearsals and concerts leading up to our performance last year at Festival Crescendo in France.

For this album, we have stayed within the ranks of Phideaux. There are no guest stars and all music is generated by the live band. The music is complex, twiddly, murky, depressing, mysterious, jazzy and sometimes just a little bit goth. Right now we are mixing the album, hoping it will find its release before the end of the year.

Stylistically, this album fits more with "Doomsday Afternoon" and "Chupacabras" in our canon. It is a keyboard heavy album. We are indexing it with 18 titles, but that is misleading because there are really only 9 songs. This will allow you to access particular sections of the somewhat lengthy pieces.

The names of the songs:

1. Dormouse - a theme 1:05
2. Waiting For The Axe To Fall 19:20
3. Darkness At Noon 4:00
4. Gift Of The Flame 6:00
5. Thermonuclear Cheese 2:30
6. The Search For Terrestrial Life 8:30
7. Love Theme from "Number Seven" 14:20
8. Infinite Supply 5:05
9. Dormouse - an end 2:00

As promised, no animals (surf or turf) were harmed in this production. And the best news of all is that this album contains no 20 minute epics (we stopped at 19). Let us all hope and prey that this album can be mixed and mastered before the end of 2008. We don't want to break our run of an album every year!

Also, be sure to book your tickets for 3 Rivers Progressive Rock Festival in Pittsburgh, PA, USA in August 2009 for we will be performing there."



Syzygy has been announced for the second 3 Rivers Prog Festival:

"This very talented and diverse band will be performing at 3RP 2009. Their material is interesting and refreshing, and also will take your music memories back to many of the King's of Prog from the 1970's.

They are in the process of completing a new Double Album/CD called "Realms Of Eternity". This will be their 3rd album/CD.

Checkout their website at www.syzygymusic.com
While at their website, checkout the reviews section.
Especially read the reviews by
Progressive Ears - "The Allegory Of Light"
info@seaoftranquility.org - "The Allegory Of Light"
Looking forward to their performance at 3RP 2009."

discipline./Matthew Parmenter show in Ferndale

Horror Express CD Release Show
Discipline. & Matthew Parmenter
Sunday November 16 at the Magic Bag in Ferndale, MI

special solo appearances by
Matthew Parmenter & Ryan Parmenter

Advance Tickets Available only through TicketMaster
www.ticketmaster.com

Ryan Parmenter solo set starts at 7PM
Matthew Parmenter solo set starts at 8PM
Discipline. starts at 9PM (sharp)

The Magic Bag
22920 Woodward Avenue
Ferndale, MI 48220 (USA)
Phone: (248) 544-3030

$10.00 - 18 and older

The Magic Bag is located on Woodward Ave. in Ferndale, Michigan, just north of 9 mile road, south of I-696.

For more information visit the Magic Bag web site:
www.themagicbag.com

REVIEW: Days Between Stations (s/t debut)

So a day or three ago I mentioned that I’d gotten in a batch of discs to listen to and review. I’m still working my way through them, but wanted to take a few moments to talk about one which has gotten quite a little bit of play here the past few days.

The band is Days Between Stations, and I am currently on what must be my tenth or twelfth listen to their self titled debut release. I’m not sure what keeps me coming back to it, and I’ll be honest…I’m not sure I want to dig that deep. One never (well, not never, but perhaps shouldn’t) questions how a magician performs their feats of illusion and prestidigitation, and I think there’s a little bit of that magic sprinkled throughout this album.

Days Between Stations is primarily the creation of Sepano Samzaden and Oscar Fuentes Bills, with a rotating cast of musicians that includes horn players, various guitarists and bassists employing a variety of instruments and styles, and vocalists mostly providing wordless vocalese in a manner that makes the voice more an instrument than an agent of lyrical delivery. Musically…wow. There are so many elements that come into play here that it is a bit difficult to point out specifics. I’ll give you a list of bands I hear in their music:

The Cure
Pink Floyd
Radiohead
Perhaps a touch of Godspeed You ! Black Emperor
A bit of a current fave, The Ascent of Everest

There’s a constant sadness/sombreness pervading most musical nooks and crannies in much the same way Pink Floyd’s best material evoked a detached sense of alienation and loss, tempered with a bit of the glistening darkness that Robert Smith’s best work with the Cure shows. The songs are lengthy…the album opens with a 13-minute opus titled “Requiem for the Living” and closes with a 4-part 22-minute epic under the aegis “Laudanum.” Those titles, more than anything, should give you an adequate idea what kind of musical waters we are exploring. I love the band’s diverse use of keyboard sounds…ornate, spiritual organ tones create pillars of sound, around which synth tones (including some very nice sounding Moog patches done on digital synth) wind and hum and buzz. “Either/Or” is a great example of this, with female vocals out of the Claire Torrey/”Great Gig in the Sky” school giving way to some of the fattest sweeping Moog tones I have heard in quite some time.

I’m going to suggest skipping track 5, “Radio Song.” It’s a pleasant enough track, but it is so different from the rest of the album that it stands out in a way that is far from positive. Gone are the mellow, sustained synth lines, the bluesy Gilmour/Latimer-esque guitar chords and bent notes. Replacing them is a jaunty digital synth line and a beat that could only be described as perky. It’s probably a fine enough track, but sandwiched between “How to Seduce a Ghost” and the closing double shot of “Intermission 2”/”Laudanum,” it simply doesn’t work at all.

(EDIT: OK, I am still going to say skip track 5. But I will add this...I absolutely love the horns on this song, which take me right back to the Byrds and Hugh Masekela and "So You Want to be a Rock & Roll Star." So yes, there is certainly some good stuff in the track. But I still think it stands out in a not-quite-positive way.)

But that’s a small quibble. When you have songs as solid as “Laudanum” and “Requiem for the Living,” filled chock-a-block with impressively restrained playing allowing for solos and breaks to feel even more passionate and powerful as a result of that restraint, you have a recipe for musical success. I am even more impressed that this is their debut release…it’s almost frightening to consider what their second album can do to surpass this.

Highly recommended. And I don’t say that lightly.



Days Between Stations – Days Between Stations

1) Requiem for the Living
2) Either/Or
3) Intermission 1
4) How to Seduce a Ghost
5) Radio Song
6) Intermission 2
7) Laudanum:
a: A Long Goodbye
b: Every One Is Here But You
c: Nowhere
d: The Wake

Sepand Samzadeh: lead guitars, synthesizers
Oscar Fuentes: keyboards, synthesizers
Jon Mattox: drums and percussion
Jeremy Castillo: guitar
Jeffrey Samzadeh: vocals
Hollie: vocals
Vivi Rama: bass
Jason Hemmens: tenor sax
Sean Erick: trumpet
Kevin Williams: trombone


Find out More at the Following Links:
http://www.daysbetweenstations.com/
http://www.myspace.com/daysbetweenstationsband

Scattered Planets reunion gig announced for tomorrow!

Once again, SCATTERED PLANETS rises from the ashes of decay for a rare reunion gig!

This Friday, November 14, the 'classic' Scattered Planets lineup will reunite for Landing Pad VIII, a Space Rock Festival.

Spatial Coordinates:
The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St. Phila., PA (near U Penn campus)

Temporal Coordinates:
Friday Nov. 14, 7 PM

ALL AGES!! FREE!!

Scattered Planets Classic Lineup, performing your favorite Scattered Planets psycho ambient space rock classics such as Dead and Moving, Vogon Invasion, and more!!

Invasion Fleet: Jeff (Alien Flutes, Glissando Guitar), Cyndee (Viper Space Violin), Doug (our Evil Dictator, Synths, Vocals, Programming), Rich (Guitar, Vintage Sound Generators), Ken the Extremist (Theremin), and others.

Other Assault Teams:

Audiophyle
Radio Eris
Baptist Preachers
Plus videos, visuals, etc.

Mitch Mitchell, 1947-2008

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/jimi_hendrixs_drummer_mitch_mi.html

Mitch Mitchell, the hall-of-fame drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, widely considered the legendary Seattle guitarist's most important musical collaborator, was found dead this morning in his Portland hotel room...

Hugh Hopper benefit show announced

Hugh has been suffering ill health for some time and MoonJune Records have arranged for a Benefit Concert to raise funds to help make life for comfortable for Hugh. The idea was generated by Hugh's colleagues in Soft Machine Legacy and made possible thanks to John Etheridge and The 100 Club. All profit from the evening will go to Hugh and his family along with percentages of the profits from albums on sale from the evening.

Hugh Hopper Benefit Concert
14th December 2008
The 100 Club, London

SOFT MACHINE LEGACY (filling for Hugh: FRED BAKER on bass)
DELTA SAXOPHONE QUARTET
PHIL MILLER IN CAHOOTS
BASH QUARTET feat. ALEX MAGUIRE, PATRICE MEYER, FRED BAKER & LIAM GENOCKEY
SOPHIA DOMANCHIC & SIMON GOUBERT DUO
YUMI HARA-CAWKWELL

Saga to release final show with Michael Sadler on DVD/CD

The long expected final Saga European show with singer Michael Sadler will be released on January 26th, 2009. 'Contact - Live in Munich' will be available as double CD, double DVD and limited edition with both DVDs and CDs housed in a lavish package with slipcase.

DVD DISC ONE:
01. The Interview (live)
02. That's As Far As I'll Go (live)
03. You're Not Alone (live)
04. I'm OK (live)
05. Can't You See Me Now (live)
06. Book Of Lies (live)
07. The Perfectionist (live)
08. Drum Solo (live)
09. The Flyer (live)
10. Mind Over Matter (live)
11. The Security Of Illusion (live)
12. Time's Up (live)
13. Piano Solo (live)
14. Scratching The Surface (live)
15. We've Been Here Before (live)
16. On The Air (live)
17. On The Loose (live)
18. Careful Where You Step (live)
19. 10,000 Days (live)
20. Wind Him Up (live)
21. Humble Stance (live)
22. Don't Be Late (live)
23. What's It Gonna Be? (live)

DVD DISC TWO:
01. Documentary
02. Underground TV Live in Mannheim
03. Photo gallery


CD DISC THREE:
01. The Interview (live)
02. That's As Far As I'll Go (live)
03. You're Not Alone (live)
04. I'm OK (live)
05. Can't You See Me Now (live)
06. Book Of Lies (live)
07. The Perfectionist (live)
08. Drum Solo (live)
09. The Flyer (live)
10. Mind Over Matter (live)
11. The Security Of Illusion (live)
12. Time's Up (live)
13. Piano Solo (live)
14. Scratching The Surface (live)

CD DISC FOUR:
01. We've Been Here Before (live)
02. On The Air (live)
03. On The Loose (live)
04. Careful Where You Step (live)
05. 10,000 Days (live)
06. Wind Him Up (live)
07. Humble Stance (live)
08. Don't Be Late (live)
09. What's It Gonna Be? (live)

Upcoming Riverside and Lazuli webcasts

(thanks to Chris Bekhuis for bringing this to my attention)

On December 10, 2008 Lazuli and Riverside will be giving a concert at the well known Paradiso in Amsterdam. A lot of shows in that club are filmed and recorded for the excellent Fabchannel website where you can watch these gigs but they have also now branched out into live webcasts. Lazuli and Riverside's gig will be webcast live on that evening:

http://www.fabchannel.com/lazuli_concert/2008-12-10/
http://www.fabchannel.com/riverside_concert/2008-12-10/

10 Questions With...Henry Ptak

(Shunji of Kenso with Alan Benjamin, Henry Ptak and Mark Ptak of Advent)

Today we complete our look at the NJ-based symphonic band Advent with a profile of keyboardist Henry Ptak. Henry and his brother Mark form the core of the band along with multi-instrumentalist Alan Benjamin, and with Mark and Alan previously interviewed, the time was right to get one more take on the band's past, present, and burgeoning future.


1. How did you get your start in music, and with Advent?

HP: My mom used to make me sing in front of her lady friends at the beauty parlor when I was about 4 or 5. Mostly Elvis Presley renditions of popular Italian songs that were in the charts around that time, like "It's Now or Never" ("'O Sole Mio") and "Surrender" ("Return to Sorrento"). My specialty was an expertly deadpan rendition of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"--including the spoken part in the middle, word for word, delivered with the earnest gravity only five-year-olds can manage with a straight face. I was perfectly adorable, as you might readily expect. She also was unwittingly involved with my attraction to the piano, when she discovered she could get some of her cooking and cleaning done by putting on The Liberace Show, which seemed to fascinate me long enough to keep me out of mischief while she went about her business. My first music lessons were on the guitar at about eight or nine, and within a year or two I was proficient enough to hook up with similarly minded classmates to be playing at local CYO and recreation-night functions at the schools in my hometown. The switch to keyboards came a few years later, leading to high-school dance gigs, parties, and similar events that were the first paying gigs I ever did. My musical education was a sporadic, if ongoing, succession of start/stop interests that were usually triggered by the discovery that I would need to study this or that discipline as I began to get more of a sense of what I wanted to do musically. I was very fortunate in the fact that every time I realized the type of instruction I needed, I always lucked into people that were absolutely perfect for me, who knew exactly what I was interested in, and always directed me to even better examples of what they knew I already liked. Most of these men intuitively understood what excited me most about the music I was listening to (like Procol Harum; Blood, Sweat & Tears; and Fairport Convention), and were very astute about directing me to J.S. Bach, Maynard Ferguson (and also Giovanni Gabrieli's brass works)--and Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, in order to get more of a historical perspective. I continued playing in bands and singing in various church choral groups throughout the '80s, and making "one final attempt" at putting together a project which embodied the spirit of the aforementioned influences (which by now included Genesis, Gentle Giant, and a ton of Renaissance and classical stuff), I hooked up with Alan Benjamin (who I later discovered had delivered himself a similar ultimatum) and voila! ... Advent.


2. Advent's music tends to sound very carefully composed. Are there particular influences that drive or inform this style?

HP: If by "carefully composed" you mean deliberate in the traditional sense, as in not an outgrowth of collective improvisation or jamming, I'd say that's probably correct. Since for most of its existence, Advent has been more of a songwriting collective rather than a performing entity, the compositional process has, of necessity, been one of individuals working on their own, coming to rehearsal with what they've prepared, and then arranging and orchestrating what we bring to the table as we go. This would tend to produce the impression you allude to. We're not opposed to the jamming approach--when it works really well, like in Weather Report, or some similar situation, the results can be quite exhilarating, although it's often hard to discern how much of what you finally hear is the result of deliberate composing. There's a spontaneity and excitement in that approach that's almost impossible to premeditate--however, it's difficult to produce the kind of depth that prolonged reflection and development can inspire which, for me, usually occurs away from my instrument. We're also big fans of contrapuntal work, which (for me at least) is tough to manage in a jam setting. My guess is that the ideal would be a combination of both, of the kind that Genesis seemed to excel at. As for the influences, I'd say that in Advent, we tend to lean more in the direction of what has traditionally been understood as ensemble writing, so that would probably mean primarily the classics, and any popular artists who draw upon them as part of their style.


3. How do you divide up keyboard parts between you?

HP: I think Mark addressed this point pretty accurately from a performance standpoint. Certainly minimizing how much we have to think about while performing has a lot to do with how the keyboards parts are distributed, though the way the instrumental textures come in and out often has as much to do with the limitations of our respective setups. For example, since Mark's gear includes an 88-key and 76-key instrument, there's more flexibility in the number splits he can manage, so wherever the range of the parts exceeds what I can get to comfortably in mid-performance, Mark usually takes those, and I usually take the ones that don't require a lot of button-pressing while I'm singing. My keyboard has a five-octave range and, while there's a lot you can do by switching octaves, you don't want to be doing a lot of that if you don't have to--I still do a lot more of it than I'd like, and when you're in the middle of something like "Ramblin' Sailor," where quite a few different keyboard setups are necessary, you want to minimize as much as possible the danger of accidentally ending up on a wrong patch.


4. Are there particular keyboard sounds that you feel are essential to your style?

HP: We definitely use a lot of the sorts of sounds that have an orchestral scope to them--and since, as I mentioned earlier, sounds for the songs are conceived with a particular sonic palette in mind, we try to get as close to what we imagine would be there if we were writing for more traditional instruments. The nice thing about the keyboards is that you don't just have to go with the exact sound, but something that approximates what you have in mind and moves and flows like the real thing.

We also use a lot of piano and organ--at one point we'd considered the possibility, for simplicity's sake, of arranging our live setup so that the songs could be performed by a standard piano-guitar-organ-bass-drums-vocals type of band.


5. Advent's debut release has been sadly out of print for years. Is there any possibility that rights may be regained for a future re-release?

HP: Yeah, I'd definitely like to see it re-released, though at the moment we're more involved in working on our third album, so I suppose for the time being it's on the back burner. With all of its obvious imperfections, it was really fun to make. (I found Mark and Alan's seemingly endless resourcefulness at overcoming the technical limitations of what we had to work around particularly entertaining and fascinating.)


6. While Cantus Firmus has been widely acclaimed by critics, some people have felt that the band's sound is a bit overly pastoral. Do you feel this is a fair criticism, or does it miss out on some of the influences that may have informed the band's sound?

HP: I'm not sure what "pastoral" means--judging from the way I've seen it used, I'm guessing that some of what we do sounds too "stringy," excessively symphonic, too slow in overall tempo and mood, insufficiently hard-edged or "rocking," or some combination of the above. If I'm missing something, please excuse my misunderstanding of the term. I think that perhaps we listen for different kinds of things in the music we tend to favor. For one thing, most bands that incorporate more traditional instruments (like string and brass) into their songs tend to use them decoratively, to augment an arrangement that might just as easily have done without it and still worked. The two versions of The Beatles' "The Long and Winding Road" come to mind to illustrate the point. We tend to do the reverse, which is to regard the timbral possibilities inherent in rock instruments as an extension of the orchestra, so that rather than dominating the arrangement as you would expect in a rock setting, the guitars-bass-drums-keys are sort of on an equal footing with the strings, brass, winds, and so on. The orchestral textures are more integral to the arrangement, not just an ornamental afterthought. That's what first excited me about not just the early prog stuff, but also things like Dick Halligan's arrangement (on Blood, Sweat & Tears 3) of "Symphony/Sympathy for the Devil." When I first heard that, it seemed about as near-perfect and seamless a fusion of rock, jazz, and 20th-century concert music as was possible. It was like Milton's Paradise Lost set to music, and it made me wonder how I'd have categorized it if I'd never heard the original version by the Stones. It sounded like a whole new genre to me at the time, and it must have really took, because of the three of us, I tend to be the one least concerned about whether our stuff "rocks" or not. I think the set of lyrics we used on the CD also contributed to the overall mood somewhat, but in retrospect, I doubt I would have changed anything if I had it to do again. All of lyrics communicated something that struck some chord with me personally, and I'm sure that my considerations had more to do with matching music to text, which I thought we did pretty successfully.


7. If you could arrange any classical composition for the band to play, what would it be and why?

HP: I tend to like music that has strongly national character to it, something that powerfully reflects the soul of the people that produced it. I don't go in much for the "internationalist" or "world music" approach that was fashionable a few years back, so for me that means music with primarily European (and by extension, American) points of reference and place of origin. I do like a lot of Ives's stuff--it's extremely quirky at times, and for its time very experimental, but it still sounds very American. Possibly "Central Park in the Dark" or some portion of "Three Places in New England" would be high on my list. I like a lot of British music, so I think something by Vaughan Williams--perhaps "The Running Set," Sea Songs, or the first or third movement of the English Folk Song Suite would interest me also. Honegger's "Pacific 231," excerpts from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, or from Praetorius's Dances from Terpsichore, for reasons unrelated to interests specified earlier. And also, if you can overlook the excruciating title, "Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper" by Jaromir Weinberger. I've wanted to do this one, especially the fugue section, ever since I saw it performed live for brass, organ, and percussion. I promptly ordered the music the next day, to study it ... it's waiting!


8. It's been about 2.5 years since Cantus Firmus was released. How is work coming along on the next Advent album?

HP: Well, as usual it's already comprising a balancing act--ambitious goals vs. limited time, much burning of the midnight oil, while trying to fulfill the responsibilities necessary to maintain solvency. Among the works already in progress is an arrangement of a major work by a 20th-century American composer, but not Copland or Bernstein. Overall, I think this CD will have a bit more of an American flavor to it than its predecessors.


9. Are there any potential surprises for listeners?

HP: No R&B used in getting an American sound, as far as I can tell so far.


10. Do you have any final thoughts for us?

HP: A deep and heartfelt thanks to everyone connected with the prog scene for providing the climate, opportunities, encouragement, and sustained interest we've needed to continue to do this--and particularly to those people who've helped to support our efforts by purchasing our CDs, or by coming out to see us perform live. God bless to all of you.



Websites of Note:
http://www.adventmusic.net/
http://www.myspace.com/adventmusicnet

(above photo from Advent website.)