With their unique progressive rock, Focus manifested themselves at the start of the seventies as the most successful and the most appreciated of all the Dutch pop-rock exports.
The band was fronted by the much admired duo of Thijs van Leer on the Hammond organ/flute and Jan Akkerman on the guitar. Their hit potential came in the form of a couple of instrumentals, "Hocus Pocus", "House of the King", and "Sylvia", but we shouldn't forget their timeless albums "Moving Waves", "Focus 3" and "Hamburger Concerto".
But like all good things, it couldn't last and internal wrangling ended this legendary group.
After an initial careful comeback which resulted in a well received album "Focus 8", the band are now back on the frontline, with a fantastic line-up! Of course the founder member and musical genius Thijs van Leer is still holding the fort.
Also back in his old spot is Pierre van der Linden, the drummer who is internationally renowned for his rhythmic skills, and who was and still is a defining factor in the whole Focus sound. Together with Bobby Jacobs who stems from a well acclaimed Dutch jazz family, they are responsible for the rhythm section and that unmistakable Focus groove. The talented Niels van der Steenhoven, who without any shadow of a doubt can hit the mark when it comes to the guitar completes the band's line-up.
A new Focus era has arrived.
There is a rejuvenated passion in the new compositions, that adorn the new album "Focus 9 / New Skin", which has been released on the famous Red Bullet label of Willem van Kooten.
This album - and the following gigs - will surprise the loyal fans. They will hear once again all the classic Focus tunes and they will be surprised at the strength and depth of the new material."Our music is evolution, not revolution", Thijs van Leer once said about the music of Focus.
Well now, the evolution is at full pace.
Focus official website
Monday, 21 July 2008
New Skin for Old Proggers
Friday, 18 July 2008
The Flower Kings
First a brief note on the album title and its slightly unusual history, because initially, the new Flower Kings opus was to be entitled simply ‘Love’. Main composer and producer Roine Stolt says… “I intended to call the recording just ‘Love’ until I read with a surprise that The Beatles were releasing a new album with that title, so I guess the universe wasn't big for that much ´love` in one year. So by twisting the idea a bit, I came up with the alternative title The Sum Of No Evil,which sort of equals ‘Love’. It also gave us a great platform for using some of Ed Unitsky`s surreal art for the cover, that ´fish-bus` is funny and in tune with the hippie and flower power vibe but yet a bit of surreal Monty Python style too. There are way too many dark serious melodramatic bands out there, we wanted to be the colourful, friendly alternative.”
Their latest album, The Sum Of No Evil, is a perfect example of a timeless prog rock release that easily lives up to classics such as Lamb Lies Down On Broadway or Yessongs. Stolt refers to the album as “Flower Kings to the max”, explaining: “We wanted to make a real hardcore symphonic rock and prog album. We took away all the pop, the jazz and the experimental or ambient stuff and concentrated on the pure prog that we do best.” An apt description of the almost 75 (!) minutes of playing time and the six expansive tracks. “To make all this a real trip for the prog rock fan we have worked in a studio that specializes on 60's &70's vintage recording equipment, plus we used lots of real vintage analogue keyboards, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer, Rhodes and grand pianos plus lots of Mini Moog and old tube amplifiers for the guitars,” says Stolt.
“Any fan of early 70’s prog up until the first UK album should love this album,” The Flower Kings mastermind reckons of the effective depth of The Sum Of No Evil. “The trademarks are the melodies, the mix of intricate, busy prog-fusion and grand symphonic pieces. The album has some hints of Stardust We Are and Retropolis perhaps, but also has a lot in common with the two Transatlantic studio albums.” The consistency with which The Flower Kings have translated their vision of atmospheric and multi-faceted rock music is unmistakeable. More than ever before, the musicians have relied on their self-imposed “purity law”, concentrating entirely on the symphonic and classic prog rock ideas. “I suppose the way I write is the trademark,” says Stolt. “I mean, you cannot get away from yourself, I cannot change that much. As usual I had way too much material. I also invited the rest of the band to contribute their songs, but this time they didn’t come up with much, they just seemed all very happy working mainly on what I had written, as it was sort of just what we were aiming for, it had all the elements that take us to Flower Kings to the max.”
Roine is referring to epic numbers such as the multi-layered ‘One More Time’ or the accessible, atmospherically dense ‘Trading My Soul’. At the centre of the album is the almost 25-minute ‘Love Is The Only Answer’, an eventful journey through the history of this musical genre, with contemporary arrangements and topical themes with both Stolt and Hasse Fröberg contributing vocals. “As always, my lyrics try to be uplifting, but they also try to understand every angle of human behaviour and portray us as we are: earthbound, yet divine.” On the other hand, there’s the unusual ‘Flight 999 Brimstone Air’, an instrumental track contributed by keyboardist Tomas Bodin. “It has quite a weird middle section, where our drummer Zoltan really shines in a sort of solo free-tempo thing, while bassist Jonas Reingold plays an ostinato in a mean atonal kind of Zappa/Crimson style and percussionist Hasse Bruniusson adds all his audio weirdness. Not easy to play, not easy to dance to but we wanna keep the audience on their toes, because that's the spirit of progressive rock.”
The discussion about the pure doctrine of prog rock is as old as the genre itself. Starting with King Crimson through Camel to Marillion, it has always been debatable exactly how progressive prog rock should be to deserve its name. For Roine Stolt, guitarist, vocalist and composer with Swedish band, The Flower Kings, all these considerations are unnecessary. Over the years, Stolt has developed his own, unmistakeable songwriting style, a unique signature that leaves no doubt and has found countless fans all over the world. Although the contemporary scene may be developing into a tougher direction, the media demanding innovation and new impulses, The Flower Kings are always at their best when they don’t give a damn about supposedly new trends but simply continue to do what they do best, grand vintage style symphonic prog rock and this album proves it, they indeed are the Kings of prog 2007, by a good margin.
The Flower Kings official website
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Definig the undefinable
Defining Progressive Rock, also known as Prog Rock or Prog has been an unsuccessful attempt since the beginning of the musical genre. No one has been able to achieve a complete and sufficiently comprehensive definition that depicts its growing range of styles.
In its core, progressive rock is a blend of styles, genres and musical trends that merge into an eclectic and ambitious result, full of harmonic complexity and challenging melodies.
Though initially combining Rock and Pop with Classical, Baroque, Folk and Jazz, progressive rock has been incorporating more and more styles into its architecture, overthrowing all the frontiers of style and shape, becoming, like Jazz, an experimental and virtuous exercise that depends on the ability of its musicians and the richness of the musical composition, in order to reach the main goal: music as a form of art!
From a pop phenomenon of the 70’s to an immense cybernetic underground, thus we summarize the evolution of Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Symphonic Rock, Psychedelic Rock, along these 40 years of history, which can be divided into three fundamental moments or waves.
First Wave:
Progressive Rock arose from a spontaneous movement born of the revolutionary fuzz of the 60’s. Popular music stopped obeying the song format and creativity was allowed to break all the limits. A group of virtuous and ambitious musicians, willing to raise their artistic and compositional capabilities, initiated a creative process, desirably without frontiers or barriers, rooted in Rock, but with total freedom to merge other influences and trends. Bands like Genesis, Yes, Camel, ELP, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and many others, were the founders of this movement.
Second Wave:
The second half of the 70’s brought punk and for the critics, avid for “the next big thing”, the cosmic voyages of progressive became rapidly in pure exercises of “innocuous vanity”. Progressive disappeared, thus, little by little, from the dictionaries of the dominant trend, with the specialized media continuously producing the most depreciatory adjectives and the radio comfortably sitting on 3 minute pop songs. In the beginning of the 80’s some revival brought a change in the predominant styles of prog, which not only followed new directions towards more underground sub-genres like Chamber-Rock, Avant-Garde, New Age and Rock-In-Opposition, but also to a more soft and popular sub-genre, which drank from the symphonic of the 70’s with additional punk and new-wave culture of the predominant trends of the 80’s - the Neo-Progressive.
This genre was based on a growing emphasis on long and melodic guitar and keyboard solos.
But progressive rock hid itself, by leaving definitely the stages and surviving in the artistic underground of the will of a few musicians who wanted to give continuity to artistic freedom and to the concept of the progressive “attitude” of their music.
Third Wave:
The 90’s meant the beginning of freedom. New technology democratized art. All around the world new independent projects flourished, based on the internet and the growing capacity of producing new content.
Prog fans, previously isolated, could now communicate and the news spread mail to mail.
Today progressive music is an immense cyberunderground. Little by little assumes its main characteristic of an alternative language that needs no more to obey the pop dictatorship, emancipating itself by the multiplicity of its proposals, especially (and curiously) fed by more heavier trends, like Metal, but also by a “retro” trend based on the remnants of musical architecture of the great bands of the 70’s.
The new Progressive is, therefore, a kind of game, ruled by its history and evolution, combining the will to conquer and experiencing, faithful to the artistic spirit of the founders of the genre. Thus, it is now, more than ever, a music style with no barriers and no definition, because it is, in essence, a free artistic attitude: Music (rock) as a form of Art.
Compiled from various sources by Nuno Lourenço (Portugal Progressivo)
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
The Art of Augusto Peixoto
Augusto Peixoto is 37 years old and lives in Oporto, Portugal, in his view the ideal and inspiring city for an art lover.
His work reflects the mystery and melancholy as well the vividness and joy of this town.
Though plastic arts play an important role he adds to his creative process the responsibility of playing drums in two metal bands Cycles and Headstone.
Among his favourite artists he mentions Travis Smith, Jerry Uelsmann, Dave McKean, Misha Gordin, Iron Maiden, Coroner, Opeth.
In his own words:
"When people contemplate my art, they are also contemplating my world and my mind as the principles of my creations are my essence, my inner being and my knowledge".
The artwork of Augusto Peixoto will be displayed on digital screen at Cascais Prog 2009 in an interactive fashion.
Note on the coming posts
During the coming months Cascais Prog will post biographies, videos and songs from the bands lined-up for the festival.
We have already posted bios of The Watch and Jeavestone. Other bands will follow.
This series of posts is intended for those who do not know the bands. For those who already know them it will be an opportunity to refresh the memory and keep up-to-date with the latest events by visiting the bands website.
The "SONG OF THE WEEK" will no longer play line-up bands. In turn, it will serve the purpose of remembering old proggers that either have disbanded or have been idle for some years.
We will also post biographies of the plastic artists who will exhibit at the festival.
Last but not the least, we invite all visitors to comment posts and make suggestions regarding this blog.
Saturday, 12 July 2008
The Dark Side of a Festival
According to the Lisbon's daily newspaper Diário de Notícias, 52 people, hired by Cleanevents to clean the facilities of the Oxegen 2008 Rock Festival near Naas - Ireland, are working under sub-human conditions.
One of the workers, Sónia Mendes, told the newspaper that they were living in a dirty and filthy stable. They have five showers, only one with hot water. Upon arrival there were only 17 meals and 20 beds for 52 people.
As festival promoter, the organization of Cascais Prog condemns this attitude and urges the promoters of Oxegen 2008 to do the same.
We invite the bands and public in general to take position against this kind of behaviour, which shows great disrespect for the basic rights of workers and a deep lack of respect for people in general.
On behalf of Cascais Prog,
Mário van Grichen
Related Links
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Let's Prog 'n' Roll
Prog’n Roll! That’s the definition that the guys in Jeavestone give to their music. And, indeed, it would not make them justice to cram this highly imaginative blend of musical styles into a more conventional and restricted category. By combining the unpredictable with the unlikely, Jeavestone has created a richly idiosyncratic alchemy of energy and beauty, which you could already hear on their debut album "Mind the Soup" released in 2005 but this new record is really bound to take every listener pleasantly by surprise. This bunch is not afraid to experiment and juxtapose... it´s a big hug between brazil-jazz, folk and stoner rock along with duty guitar riffs and the occasional ethereal flute solo.
Jeavestone was founded in 1999 and has since released one self-financed ep. With loads of gigs behind them, the group achieved a strong self-confidence equally matched by a subtle sense of irony at their own expense. In 2006 they had a gig in german Burg-Herzberg festival, one of biggest prog-festivals in Europe.
The band will perform at Cascais Prog 2009.
Watch out for next week's song!!!
