Nova Cascade - Above All Else

I don't know about you, but when I'm looking for new music (which I must confess I do from time to time) one of the avenues that I explore is through the 'tags' on Bandcamp. My tastes are reasonably broad, though they tend to hover mainly in the areas of Jazz and Progressive Rock, but every now and then I stray into other areas, particularly that of ambient music. Much of this can, at times, be seen as nothing more than aural wallpaper, though there are occasional diversions from this analysis.

It was because of this interest in these somewhat diffuse musical styles that my curiosity was piqued by Nova Cascade, who tag themselves as both Progressive Rock and Ambient. The latter seemed to be to the fore, as the band has had 3 tracks that have topped the UK ambient chart, but on further listening their progressive credentials showed forth as well.

Above All Else is the band's debut album, and comes as a result of three of the band members meeting by chance in an on-line chat room, swapping files and eventually creating this collection of 37 minutes-worth of music spread over 12 tracks. It is, in the band's words, 'an unashamedly home-made album', and the sounds are 'retro, and proudly so! Not through any contrivance on our part, but because that is just in our DNA.'

The band are: Dave Hilborne - synths, lead & backing vocals; Dave Fick - bass and Alessio Proietti - guitars & backing vocals. They are joined by Charlie Bramald on flute and Heather Leslie on violin, and there is a special appearance by David Anania (Blue man group) on drums on the track 'Epiphany'. The music they produce is mostly instrumental, but 4 of the 12 tracks have lyrical content, of varying amounts.

The cover art (above) seems to be inspired by (or the inspiration for) the opening title track, which has a nice poetic quality to it, wanting the rapture of love to never end. The track opens with a ticking clock, which then reverses to give that sense of time standing still. Dave Hilborne's vocals are not prominent and are quite breath-y, which gives the song an ethereal quality. Continuum continues that dreamy theme with a gentle rhythm and guitars to the fore, but not overpowering in a mix of multi-layered instrumentation. Prophecy, the longest track on the album at just over 5 minutes, has a more brooding feel to it, with the bass a little more prominent. We Never Spoke is more up-beat with flute and piano vying with each other, before an almost metal feel, and a feeling of motion and hurry about it, which perhaps is fitting as we move into Hurtled. This has an almost industrial feel to begin with before Hilborne's vocals come in in their usual understated way. Lo-Fi is a soaring instrumental piece, that, like a number of the tracks on the album, seems to want to give more and go further - perhaps there's scope for developing some of the musical ideas in further releases. One Hundred & Fourteen is a quiet, meditative piece mainly on piano, with atmospheric keys in the background. Epiphany (as stated above) is the track with live drums on, which gives it a vibrant, energetic ambiance, albeit briefly, as the track only lasts just over 2 minutes. Imago is wistful and thoughtful, and then hopeful and emergent, perhaps relating to the sense of the last stage of metamorphosis that the title suggests. Swept Away has a strong driving beat to it - perhaps the least 'ambient' track in the collection - and some good bass work in the middle stages of the song. Icarus is, for me, the strongest tune musically of the set, and perhaps the most 'progressive' with hints of Tony Banks in it at times. The album ends with Wilted, a quiet piano-led piece that layers many sounds and has an almost mantra-like quality to it. Again there is a feeling of wanting more at the end, but also of tranquillity and peace.

This is an album that repays multiple listens, as each iteration brings more depth and interest from this simple yet complex suite. You can give it a listen here, and if enamoured even purchase a copy, which will encourage the band to create and develop more ideas. Above all else, do check it out!

Mike Kershaw - Arms Open Wide

Progressive music is a strange beast. The name seems to cover so much ground these days, from material that is obviously influenced by, and even seeks to ape, the music of the 1970s heyday of the genre, to more avant garde, experimental tunes. And one of the finest places to find this latter example of Progressive music over recent years has been the wonderfully eclectic Bad Elephant Music label, whose roster is 'progressive' in the widest sense of the term.

From the Bad Elephant 'stable' comes Mike Kershaw's new album, 'Arms Open Wide', his fifth LP - his second with BEM - along with 2 EPs previously released (all available through Bandcamp). One thing is clear from the start of this disc, and that is that this is 'progressive' in terms of Mike's canon: there is clear development of ideas and song structure here from previous releases.

Part of that development is that Mike is not alone on these songs: as he did on his last album, he has gathered a collection of musicians to play guitar, bass and drums, which gives a certain depth and completeness to the music that would be lacking without them. Each brings their own twist to the music, but this doesn't detract from Mike's trademark style, which permeates all the songs, even where Stu Nicholson is singing instead of Mike in places.

The first half of the album is 'The Fear Quartet', a four part suite of songs that takes up 22 minutes. By virtue of the subject matter, but also in keeping with Mike's style, there is a dark melancholy about much of the material, but not in a negative way. The musicianship throughout is spot on, and Gareth Cole's guitars in particular have a depth and maturity to them that lifts the music. That darkness continues throughout the collection, but there are occasional glimmers of something a little more optimistic and hopeful. I've commented before, I think, about a subtle spirituality in Mike's writing and this is evident here in places too. One stand-out example for me is the song 'I Wish Your Eyes Were Mine', in which Kershaw bemoans an inability to see the good that another cannot miss: "I see desperation on the lines of every face, but you, you see courage and a love that leaves no trace." Is it an adult looking at the innocence of a child, or a search for a more positive world-view in general?

The rest of the album is a kind of enigma, as the next tracks - 'A Promise', Keys To The Kingdom' & 'Dark Spaces' - all have an up-beat feel to them, yet also all have a feeling of menace and foreboding which almost feels at odds with that mood. The album closer 'Curtains', though, leaves us in no conflict: "We ring in every new year so we cannot hear the screams. Eyes open we approach the abyss that lies ahead: it's time to close the curtains now."

To be fair, perhaps with the exception of 'I wish...', this not an album to put on to cheer yourself up, (despite the up-beat nature of some of the songs) but music has many roles in life and this is a well-crafted collection of songs, both musically & lyrically, that address some of the darker areas of contemporary life with insight and creativity. Now that there is a band to play this music, maybe we'll see a live performance some time...?

Download 2018 - a 'Vicar's' experience

"Are you really a vicar?" is not a question I get asked a lot, I must confess, but it cropped up on more than one occasion over the last weekend. When I moved to Castle Donington last autumn, one of the things I was asked to do by the church was to explore the possibility of setting up some kind of chaplaincy presence at the Download Festival, the largest Heavy Metal gathering in the UK, which has made its home at Donington Park, and as a first step towards that I attended the festival for the first time last weekend.

I'm not a complete stranger to festivals such as this: I attend Greenbelt regularly, but Download is something a little different to that. At its peak on the Saturday evening there were estimated to be abut 100,000 people on site, plus staff etc: this is a HUGE event. Even my last festival - Leeds in 2006 - was nothing compared to this, and my previous experiences in my youth - Glastonbury 1981, Reading 1980 & Knebworth 1979 - had not prepared me for the scale of Download. This field becomes a small town for the weekend, focussed on one thing: heavy metal music.

Anyone who's read this blog will know that my particular preference is for more progressive sounds, and on the whole these were few and far between. I did manage to find some bands who were a little different from the bass heavy, loud, drum-laden, shouty (and usually sweary) fare that was generally offered - much to the average punter's delight it seemed. von Hertzen Brothers, Plini and Koyo were all a little more progressive, though the latter two were playing in a small tent and were a little too loud for me, though they left me wanting to check out their material at a later date and perhaps with a little more control of the volume. Of the main bands, Temperance Movement were as good as I remembered them from their appearance at Greenbelt a few years ago, and I was delighted to discover Greta Van Fleet, with roots in Led Zeppelin and the East Coast sound of the late 1960s.

Of the headliners, Avenged Sevenfold were solid, and I recognised a few tracks from my wife playing their stuff in the car, though they did have a slight pyrotechnical problem during their set when the stage caught fire! Guns 'n' Roses pulled the biggest crowd on Saturday night, and gave a 3½ hour set of their own material and some covers, but I was left a little nonplussed and flat, and left after about 2 hours (as did a few others). The musicianship was fine, but it seemed to me to be more of a performance than a show. Ozzy Osbourne, Sunday's final act, on the other hand, had the crowd from the off and stormed through his solo material and classics from Black Sabbath's catalogue: for me the highlight of the weekend.

Ozzy, of course, is hailed (marketed) as The Prince of Darkness: so should a Methodist Minister really be partaking in such matters? The festival was interesting in many respects, but one for me was the blatant at times use of pagan and satanic symbolism, and a downright antipathy, rather than the usual apathy, towards aspects of the Christian faith. At one point Marilyn Manson was advocating allegiance to Satan in one of his songs, and on more than one occasion I spotted a t-shirt with the legend "Jesus is a C***" on the back. That said, I came under no personal attack, and even had a number of interesting conversations with people in various stages of inebriation about why I was there, and what life and faith was all about, though I can't claim any miraculous conversions.

Although I didn't get to meet everyone on site, I think I was the only one there in clerical garb -  a decision I made consciously as I was there as a guest of the Festival on behalf of the church. But I'm sure I wasn't the only Christian there: part of the work of the Welfare team was being done by a group from an Anglican Fresh Expression in Chesterfield which goes by the name of "The Order of the Black Sheep", and it will be good to confer with them about any future work that the churches do on the site. Other believers off-site were no doubt praying for the work there, and some tried to get the message to festival goers by flying over the site with a banner pulled behind a small aircraft declaring 'Jesus loves every 1 of U' - which had scant if any response, other than someone asking me later whether I'd been flying the plane (well, I am the SkyPilot!). That kind of scatter-gun approach may make them feel better, but maybe it would be better to show the crowd just how much Jesus loves them by serving them rather than by bombing them?

I think my biggest mistake this year was going alone: there were times when I needed someone to be with and talk to and no-one was there other than complete strangers. But I think there are things that can be done at future festivals for the sake of God's Kingdom: there is a great need, and I am convinced that, were Jesus here today (which, through his Body, the Church he is, of course...) he is more likely to be at Download than he is to be in the Methodist Church (or any other). And maybe I need to explore more ways of bringing my two worlds of music and God together...

Spock's Beard - Noise Floor

I came to Spock's Beard quite late in the piece. The first album of theirs that I heard was 'X', and I have to say that I was quite bowled over by it, and from then on I started to dip into their back catalogue, and through that discovered the talents of Neal Morse. With Neal at the helm, they were a different band, and I was saddened to hear that he had left the band following his 'conversion' to evangelical Christianity - he didn't want to foist his new-found beliefs on the band, which I suppose is quite gracious. Perhaps some of Neal's intensity had gone from the sound, but the music was still good.

Of course I was getting into the band just as another major change was afoot, as shortly after 'X' was released Nick d'Virgilio left the band. With Ted Leonard taking on the vocal duties and Jimmy Keegan occupying the drummer's chair, the sound of the band changed again, and, if I'm honest, they seemed to be lacking something for me. After two albums with this line-up, Keegan left the band, but last year it was announced that d'Virgilio would be coming aboard again as drummer & backing vocalist for their 13th album, 'Noise Floor', which has just been released.

This strikes me as a very positive album, and for me the best they've produced in the last eight years. The opener, 'To Breathe Another Day', rocks with a firm ease, but midway through shifts into 7/8 time and produces some unconventional drumming as a result, but all to the good. Leonard's voice has a strong rock quality to it and helps to drive the song along well. 'What Becomes of Me' starts with a gently ticking clock, and begins in a more thoughtful vein, before kicking off into a steady rhythm with good interplay between guitars & keys. This is unmistakably Spock's Beard, with good vocal harmonies and numerous time signature changes. 'Somebody's Home' moves between acoustic guitars and what sounds like a oboe effect on the keys & electric full band building for the chorus. The bass comes through strong, and even sounds like a double bass at times: again, a good, solid song. 'Have We All Gone Crazy Yet' starts with good interplay between guitars, bass and keys, before moving into the main section of the song which is mostly in 5/4 but with numerous changes into 3/4 & 4/4 - maybe they have gone crazy! A catchy tune, though perhaps not a dance song, and at 8:07 it's the longest song in the collection - perhaps a little too long, for me, as it does drag a little towards the end.

'So This Is Life' sounds, not unpleasantly, like Sergeant Pepper-era Beatles from the off, and this just increases as the double bass comes in: just like the Beatles, but with better drumming! In contrast to the lightness of this song, 'One So Wise' is markedly darker, with first keys and then guitars taking a lead, and later sparring with each other. The Prog purist will warm to the Melotrons, and this tune displays for me a strong Kansas feel to it. 'Box of Spiders' is an instrumental, and from the off is an interesting and enthralling amalgam of all kinds of patterns and rhythms working in counterpoint with each other, from keys, guitars, bass and drums. Maybe a hint of arachnophobia...? 'Beginnings' is the album closer (?) and from the start has a feel of a classic Spock's Beard song, harking back to the Neal Morse days (what I know of it, which is limited): I can certainly hear Neal singing this, and it certainly has his intensity to it.

A bonus Disc has a small collection of songs from the 'Cutting Room Floor', all quite short (under 5 minutes). 'Days We'll Remember' is a pleasant-enough acoustic-y waltz-time song, which may, in days gone by, have been a possible single - may've got some airplay on BBC Radio 2. 'Bulletproof' has a good melody and the slightest hint of Genesis for me at one point. 'Vault' is probably the strongest of the four, and begins with some good duelling guitars and builds into a solid rocker, even in challenging time signatures. 'Armageddon Nervous' (seriously...) is another instrumental and is temporally all over the place, but pleasant enough. Perhaps rightly not first choice material.

This is an album of good, AOR-tinged pop-y Progressive Rock, as are most of Spock's Beard's output. I was going to say that this is, to my mind, the best the band have done since Nick d'Virgilio left, but technically he's back, and that may be the reason why I enjoy this album as much as I do. Yes there are flaws, but very few bands are producing perfect albums and this is certainly worth an hour or so of your time.

Burntfield - Hereafter

One of the benefits of the modern age is the number of avenues that there are for discovering the plethora of new music being released these days. I discovered Burntfield through Peter O'Niell's show 'Check It Out' broadcast on Progrock.com, and enjoyed what I heard so much I had to buy the album.

Burntfield are a band with their roots in Finland, but who now based in Amsterdam. They describe themselves as "an alternative progressive rock band, whose music is spiced with elements of AOR and hard rock", and as I listen to the album it's clear that this is the case. They are: Juho Myllylä (vocals/guitar/blockflutes), Valtteri Seppänen (guitar/vocals), Maarten Vos (bass) and Steven Favier (drums/percussion), and their sound is augmented by Arttu Vauhkonen on keyboards & programming; Aurora Visa on kantele, and string quintet ANSos - violinists Eeva Vesmäki, Taija Kangaskokko & Matti Fredriksson; viola-ist Heikki Vilpponen; cellist Tatu Ahola & double bassist Ilkka Leppälä.

Although they formed in 2012, Hereafter is the band's debut album, released on Progressive Gears records on 7 May 2018. Describing their music, the band says that "strong melodies and powerful harmonies are linked to create unique musical atmospheres", but is this the case?

The album opener is 'Now', a quiet, thoughtful instrumental piece, starting with piano and building as layers of strings build with harmonies developing. Simple, moody and leading well into 'Sub-Zero',  which contrasts well with the opener, coming in with a bang, before settling into a solid AOR feel with an equally solid melody enhanced by harmonies. My initial feeling about the song would be that it would be a good single. Fuzzy guitars backing provides a good framework for  a short but effective solo, and vocal harmonies  build towards the end, and the drums give the song substance.


'My Grief'  starts with guitar & piano arpeggios, and the whole song has a strong hint of Anathema about it, increasingly as the vocal harmonies come in, not that this is particularly a bad thing, but for me the similarities are quite pronounced. 'Feeling of Love' is a slower more thoughtful song, with low-pitched piano & guitars opening into the strings. This is quite a beautiful ballad, with particularly 'breathy' vocals at times, and a delightful acoustic guitar solo towards the end.

'Q&A', one of the longer songs in the collection, starts with some interesting chord progressions on guitar. Another slow, thoughtful song with hints of Moon Safari in its harmonies though not quite as intense as the Swedes. Half way through there's a good guitar solo, and then the pace picks up and the song develops a more bluesy feel before falling back to a more ponderous, meditative tempo before a segue into 'In The Air', another slow song of strings, piano and vocals, with more than a passing salute to Anathema again. 'The Failure' opens with a hint of Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers, and overall has a darker sound to it than hitherto. Some moody harmonies and crunching guitars, along with brooding strings enhance the dark mood of the song, and there are times when the drums appear stronger than they have so far.

'What Remains' is perhaps the proggiest song in the collection, and begins with a guitar motif that put me in mind of Joan Armatrading which vies with the bass before the vocals come in. There are some subtle changes on time signature within the song from 6/8 to 7/8 and back again, and some wonderful contrasts in mood and intensity, alongside some excellent musical dexterity from the whole ensemble. This is probably the stand-out track for me of the album, which closes with the title track, 'Hereafter'. Acoustic guitars & flutes lead in to piano with voice and what sounds like 12-string before again building to end with a spoken word section.

I have to say that I enjoyed this album, and each successive listen brought new light to it and from it. This is a fine collection of well-crafted and equally well-played songs: my only comment may be that perhaps these songs could benefit from a female voice in the mix along with the others, but then perhaps that may increase the similarity to Anathema...

Why not check them out for yourself - go to their website for more details.