viernes, 31 de agosto de 2012
viernes, 24 de agosto de 2012
Dream Theater: Underrated? Overrated? Mainstream? The Most Important Prog Band Now?
I guess that I have a complicated history with Dream Theater. They were definitely my favourite band through a long period of time. To be honest; DT was the band that changed everything for me: the way that I listen to music, they way that I perceive music and I know that this may sound as a complete exaggeration but they were the ones who introduced me to the whole genres of Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock, Avant-Garde and that's where everything began for me.
I remember, almost 5 years ago when I listened to them for the first time in the"Live At Budokan" DVD, I was completely blown away by this band. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but most importantly, I couldn't believe what I was listening: pure musical virtuosity, complex song structures, impossible solos, a complete new musical genre for me, that I instantly fell in love with combined with my two long favourite genres of my youth: Rock and Metal.
Dream Theater was like no band that I have heard before, they were completely different in every sense of the word. The first time that I listened to them, all the other bands look like amateurs, lacking all sense of musical skills with no other choice but to adopt a simplistic approach to music that I mocked of. Dream Theater were the greatest musicians in the world and period. And I know that's the exact attitude of a lot of youngster that have recently found this band or a lot of hardcore Dream Theater fans who only listen to them have. And yes I know, at first sight Dream Theater could seem as the greatest band out there, they are truly an amazing band, but they're not the greatest band ever (such thing doesn't exist) and another thing: they are not the only band in this genre. At first, is really easy to assume that Dream Theater is the only Progressive Metal band out there just by the simple fact that they are the most popular prog band out there and also, they have one of the most "in your face" styles of composition in Prog Metal music.
But no, there are a ton of Progressive Metal bands out there with different styles that you definitively should know about.(Pain of Salvation, Tool, Animals As Leaders, Cynic, Death is his later years, Fates Warning...) What I'm trying to say is that DT is not the only Progressive Metal band out there, you shouldn't lock yourself up and only listen to them. If you like the genre you should explore the whole genre.
The other interesting thing of DT in this modern age is the apparent course that they have spell into a lot of modern progressive metal bands of these days. I can see that a lot of recent prog metal bands want to create their own sound but; being heavily inspire by the genre itself (the genre that DT apparently conquer) they end up sounding like them. That's something interesting and I guess it most be hard to compose without being influence by the bigger and most popular band of the genre.
In my personal experience, when I listened to Dream Theater the first time, I completely fell in love with them and I kinda had the same attitude that I already describe before, but that attitude fade away quickly for me. And that's when the greatest thing that DT could have done for me happened. I began to investigate about this weird new genre that I have encounter: "Prog" and I quickly trail it back to its true origins: the Progressive Rock of the 70's and that's where it all began. Thanks to Dream Theater I discovered Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Rush, Yes, Camel, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator and my favourite of them all Genesis (of the Peter Gabriel Era of course!). Thanks to Dream Theater I discovered 70's Prog Rock then I moved on to Avant-Garde and this was important because Avant-Garde music made me more open-minded about music in whatever genre, then Jazz, then Classical, then Metal once again, then RIO, then Death Metal then Indie music until the stage that I'm right now in which I basically listen to everything Prog related, everything that sounds weird and interesting, 70's and 80's Pop, Indie rock, Death Metal and pretty much everything except modern mainstream music xD.
And I have Dream Theater to thank for that because they basically opened the doors for me. And I completely love them for doing that and I know that I'm not the only one, it's very probable that if you're a reading this to; you had a similar story with this band. A lot of people love them, a lot of people hate them, some people call their music epic virtuosity combined with everything that the world of music has to offer and other people call their music just a bunch of gymnastic compositions lacking true feelings, creativity or meaning.
Some people think that the old DT was the greatest one, other people thing that the new one is the greatest stage that they ever had. But despite whatever other people may think of them, for me, they are the most important prog band right now and the greatest achievement that they did and that they're still doing to this day is inspiring people and introducing them to this genre and that's something truly amazing and is also something that only they could do. Dream Theater is a relative "unknown" band if you want to compare them with the most mainstream bands out there. But without a doubt they are still the most mainstream prog metal band out there, at least they're mainstream enough to pop out in an MTV music video and catch the eye of a future fan. And believe me, just a few couple of Prog Metal bands can do this.
But after all of that, after all this prog journey, no, after all this musical journey that I had and that I'm still too far to complete, I look back once again at Dream Theater and now I realize that I look at them with different eyes and I listen to them with different, truly different ears. I listen to everyone of their albums once again in chronological order to answer these questions: Are they truly that amazing and unique demi-God band that surpasses the way that a lot of other bands create music? Is their music just a bunch of gymnastic compositions with lack of true feeling and meaning? Have they already done the greatest album that they could? Are they overrated? underrated? I will try to answer all of these question in this following series of album reviews that I'm going to do in the course of these weeks, I'm going to review every DT album with a completely new perspective and I'm going to be completely impartial about this giving my honest opinion of course.
So follow me (if you like) in this series of reviews that I'm going to do to rediscover a band that 5 years ago I looked at them like Gods but now I' not really sure how I look at them in a musical sense.
Thanks for reading :).
I remember, almost 5 years ago when I listened to them for the first time in the"Live At Budokan" DVD, I was completely blown away by this band. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but most importantly, I couldn't believe what I was listening: pure musical virtuosity, complex song structures, impossible solos, a complete new musical genre for me, that I instantly fell in love with combined with my two long favourite genres of my youth: Rock and Metal.
Dream Theater was like no band that I have heard before, they were completely different in every sense of the word. The first time that I listened to them, all the other bands look like amateurs, lacking all sense of musical skills with no other choice but to adopt a simplistic approach to music that I mocked of. Dream Theater were the greatest musicians in the world and period. And I know that's the exact attitude of a lot of youngster that have recently found this band or a lot of hardcore Dream Theater fans who only listen to them have. And yes I know, at first sight Dream Theater could seem as the greatest band out there, they are truly an amazing band, but they're not the greatest band ever (such thing doesn't exist) and another thing: they are not the only band in this genre. At first, is really easy to assume that Dream Theater is the only Progressive Metal band out there just by the simple fact that they are the most popular prog band out there and also, they have one of the most "in your face" styles of composition in Prog Metal music.
But no, there are a ton of Progressive Metal bands out there with different styles that you definitively should know about.(Pain of Salvation, Tool, Animals As Leaders, Cynic, Death is his later years, Fates Warning...) What I'm trying to say is that DT is not the only Progressive Metal band out there, you shouldn't lock yourself up and only listen to them. If you like the genre you should explore the whole genre.
The other interesting thing of DT in this modern age is the apparent course that they have spell into a lot of modern progressive metal bands of these days. I can see that a lot of recent prog metal bands want to create their own sound but; being heavily inspire by the genre itself (the genre that DT apparently conquer) they end up sounding like them. That's something interesting and I guess it most be hard to compose without being influence by the bigger and most popular band of the genre.
In my personal experience, when I listened to Dream Theater the first time, I completely fell in love with them and I kinda had the same attitude that I already describe before, but that attitude fade away quickly for me. And that's when the greatest thing that DT could have done for me happened. I began to investigate about this weird new genre that I have encounter: "Prog" and I quickly trail it back to its true origins: the Progressive Rock of the 70's and that's where it all began. Thanks to Dream Theater I discovered Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Rush, Yes, Camel, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator and my favourite of them all Genesis (of the Peter Gabriel Era of course!). Thanks to Dream Theater I discovered 70's Prog Rock then I moved on to Avant-Garde and this was important because Avant-Garde music made me more open-minded about music in whatever genre, then Jazz, then Classical, then Metal once again, then RIO, then Death Metal then Indie music until the stage that I'm right now in which I basically listen to everything Prog related, everything that sounds weird and interesting, 70's and 80's Pop, Indie rock, Death Metal and pretty much everything except modern mainstream music xD.
And I have Dream Theater to thank for that because they basically opened the doors for me. And I completely love them for doing that and I know that I'm not the only one, it's very probable that if you're a reading this to; you had a similar story with this band. A lot of people love them, a lot of people hate them, some people call their music epic virtuosity combined with everything that the world of music has to offer and other people call their music just a bunch of gymnastic compositions lacking true feelings, creativity or meaning.
Some people think that the old DT was the greatest one, other people thing that the new one is the greatest stage that they ever had. But despite whatever other people may think of them, for me, they are the most important prog band right now and the greatest achievement that they did and that they're still doing to this day is inspiring people and introducing them to this genre and that's something truly amazing and is also something that only they could do. Dream Theater is a relative "unknown" band if you want to compare them with the most mainstream bands out there. But without a doubt they are still the most mainstream prog metal band out there, at least they're mainstream enough to pop out in an MTV music video and catch the eye of a future fan. And believe me, just a few couple of Prog Metal bands can do this.
But after all of that, after all this prog journey, no, after all this musical journey that I had and that I'm still too far to complete, I look back once again at Dream Theater and now I realize that I look at them with different eyes and I listen to them with different, truly different ears. I listen to everyone of their albums once again in chronological order to answer these questions: Are they truly that amazing and unique demi-God band that surpasses the way that a lot of other bands create music? Is their music just a bunch of gymnastic compositions with lack of true feeling and meaning? Have they already done the greatest album that they could? Are they overrated? underrated? I will try to answer all of these question in this following series of album reviews that I'm going to do in the course of these weeks, I'm going to review every DT album with a completely new perspective and I'm going to be completely impartial about this giving my honest opinion of course.
So follow me (if you like) in this series of reviews that I'm going to do to rediscover a band that 5 years ago I looked at them like Gods but now I' not really sure how I look at them in a musical sense.
Thanks for reading :).
martes, 7 de agosto de 2012
The Conformist Beauty: An observation of 90's cinema
None of the images used in this post are mine but from the films that I discuss.
In the late 90's a new wave of seeing and portraying life through fiction started to emerge in the world of cinema. A new fiction that revolves around common human beings, living a mundane life. The type of people who you usually ignore when you're walking on the streets: the common day slacker, the common day office man, the common day clerk and the common day writer. Which in our minds, in our world, they are there, they are always there but do we really think about them? Not really, since they are so common, their lives must be equally common and equally uninteresting.
Some people prefer to see the story of a movie star, some other people prefer to see the story of a successful musician, some people prefer to see the story of a famous serial killer or a gangster. When in reality the greatest protagonist that could ever exist in the history of fiction is indeed the common day human being living in a common day life and having mundane existence.
When you see trough the eyes of a common day man, you see everything that his environment has to offer, because he is his own environment, he is the person who is contact with the real world every single moment of its existence and he comforts it. He adapts to it, and they suppers their own self, to adapt and comfort in this society, they become this society, they do that and they stay that way. And that's when the conformity domain emerges. And it's time to look a those people, because when we do, we look at our real world. And that's what these movies did:
The main four movies that I will be discussing here: Clerks, American Beauty, The Big Lebowski and Fight Club were all release in that same time and era: the 90's, an era that people are just learning to appreciate until now. And by watching those films nowadays, you can really grasp and see those feelings of unhappiness through conformity, numbness, frustration, materialism and crisis of existence that attacked the youngsters, the middle-aged men and even the oldsters of that era until these days. I'm not saying that the 90's where the time when all of these feelings , ways of thinking and emotions started to arise, but it was the time when we actually started to analyze them in a more deep and meaningful way. Stories, with a powerful message for the common guy inside a satirical, comical, extreme and even surreal exterior.
What I found to be the most interesting aspect of all of these films (yes the themes that they explore, which are themes that we all have live and we all have experience) are the actual protagonists and the age that they have. All of them suffer from the same kind of repression despite being of different ages and going through different stages of their lives. Showing us that those feelings are present in every age, every social status and every period of our lives.
The four main protagonist of these films deal with these several themes, but every one of them reacts in a different way and every one of them has their own resolution: Some of them positive, some of them neutral and some of them completely negative.
In Clerks we have Dante, a young clerk working in a small convenience store who couldn't be any more unhappy with his current life and his current job, despising almost everything that he has to do, but without the actual will to change his situation despite having several chances to do so.
In Fight Club we have the Narrator, a common young middle-aged man, who suffers from insomnia and who's also trapped in a world of consumerism and materialism. When suddenly he "liberates" himself from that world, doing this in an extreme, radical, violent and nihilistic way.
In American Beauty we have Lester, another middle-aged man, a magazine writer who also hates his job. But Lester is a little bit different because his the only one who has a family, well a dysfunctional family to be more honest: He has a neurotic materialistic wife who is obsess with success and a low self-esteemed daughter. But suddenly after experiencing a series of uhh... revealing moments with a young lady, Lester's life begins to change when he blackmails his boss for $60,000 and quits his job, and he then goes to live the life that he wants to live.
And in The Big Lebowski we have none other that "The Dude", the slacker and arguably the most triumphant of all of these characters. The Dude is a middle aged man, and in contrast with all the other characters: his unemployed (or at least he never has a job in the entire film), he is a conformist person and he's actually happy with his current life and status. But things begin to change for the Dude when he gets involve into an underworld criminal scam that he originally had nothing to do with.
We have our main characters but not only that, in every single one of these films we also have characters who are the complete anti-thesis of these protagonists.
In Clerks we have Randal, Dante's best friend and his complete antithesis, he's arrogant, misanthrope, has no respect for authority and despite being in the same situation as Dante he's completely OK with his job in terms of conformity and he's overall happy with his current situation in comparison with Dante.
In American Beauty we have Carolyn, who I already described as been materialistic but not only that, she's also extremely superficial, always trying to "emit an image of success", completely guided into what other people (more successful than her) think of her.
In The Big Lebowski we have none other than... The Big Lebowski, and old man who is also the complete antithesis of the Dude and really similar to Carolyn if you start to think about it. He's also extremely materialistic, he has a trophy 20-year-old wife, he's also obsess with success, but he's not actually interested in achieving success, he's interested in pretending that he has achieved success. He is so obsess in keeping an image of success that he goes as far as planning a complex criminal scam so that his image and reputation could be intact while earning a few thousand dollars. Oh yeah that's right! the guy is not even a millionaire, he actually has no money and everything that he has is property of his late wife. So the guy is a complete delusional materialistic hypocrite and a fraud.
And in Fight Club we have none other than Tyler. He's everything that the narrator wants to be, all his anger, hate, and inner dark desires repressed. Emerging as a nihilist terrorist with a desire of senseless destruction masked as an anarchic revolution.
As I said before, the outcome of these characters is completely different to one another:
Clerks ends when Dante has survived possibly one of the worst working days ever, he has seen what this horrible job is doing to him, his best friend Randal and his Girlfriend (well Ex) Veronica, they give him enough motivation to change his job and his life completely: Randal implies that Dante has to be qualified for at least another more decent job and Veronica tries to convince him to return to College. At the end of the movie we don't know what decision we makes, but the most probable thing is that he decides to keep working at the convenient store after all.
Fight Club ends in a climatic rampage, when the Narrator realize that his is actually the one who's destroying the city, Tyler is actually the outcome of all The Narrator's repressive life surrounded by a materialistic, superficial, consumerist society that he decided to comfort in.
American Beauty ends in a redeeming note, when Lester has a final encounter with Angela, the young girl who he fantasized about. Lester viewed her manly as a sexual object, but he finally finds out that she's just a frustrated little child who tried to be popular and unique hiding who she really was and lying about herself and her life. After comforting her, Lester finally manages to see all the true liberating beauty of the world for a brief eternal moment of his life.
And The Big Lebowski ends with The Dude's confrontation with the Big Lebowski revealing that instead of the successful, hardworking, first class man that he pretends to be, he's only just a low hypocrite con man. And that's when we realize that the Dude, despite been a slacker and a conformist man, he actually has higher values, a better sense of morality and a better way of seeing and living life than the whole crazy dark world that surrounds him.
One of them doesn't reacts at all, another reacts in a complete destructive and hateful way, the other one manages to truly free himself from that life for a brief period of time and the other one has an inner balanced slackery life who we all... at certain moment of our lives, want to live.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The Dude abides![/caption]
Thanks for reading.
"It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about."
Although the sense of conformity and natural unhappiness in our daily life is something really common in our overall society. (The notion of conformity really visible, the notion of unhappiness, sometimes really well hidden) Is an aspect of life that cinema has only decided to truly analyze in these recent decades in a deep psychological, dramatic, surrealistic and even funny ways.
In the late 90's a new wave of seeing and portraying life through fiction started to emerge in the world of cinema. A new fiction that revolves around common human beings, living a mundane life. The type of people who you usually ignore when you're walking on the streets: the common day slacker, the common day office man, the common day clerk and the common day writer. Which in our minds, in our world, they are there, they are always there but do we really think about them? Not really, since they are so common, their lives must be equally common and equally uninteresting.
Some people prefer to see the story of a movie star, some other people prefer to see the story of a successful musician, some people prefer to see the story of a famous serial killer or a gangster. When in reality the greatest protagonist that could ever exist in the history of fiction is indeed the common day human being living in a common day life and having mundane existence.
When you see trough the eyes of a common day man, you see everything that his environment has to offer, because he is his own environment, he is the person who is contact with the real world every single moment of its existence and he comforts it. He adapts to it, and they suppers their own self, to adapt and comfort in this society, they become this society, they do that and they stay that way. And that's when the conformity domain emerges. And it's time to look a those people, because when we do, we look at our real world. And that's what these movies did:
The main four movies that I will be discussing here: Clerks, American Beauty, The Big Lebowski and Fight Club were all release in that same time and era: the 90's, an era that people are just learning to appreciate until now. And by watching those films nowadays, you can really grasp and see those feelings of unhappiness through conformity, numbness, frustration, materialism and crisis of existence that attacked the youngsters, the middle-aged men and even the oldsters of that era until these days. I'm not saying that the 90's where the time when all of these feelings , ways of thinking and emotions started to arise, but it was the time when we actually started to analyze them in a more deep and meaningful way. Stories, with a powerful message for the common guy inside a satirical, comical, extreme and even surreal exterior.
What I found to be the most interesting aspect of all of these films (yes the themes that they explore, which are themes that we all have live and we all have experience) are the actual protagonists and the age that they have. All of them suffer from the same kind of repression despite being of different ages and going through different stages of their lives. Showing us that those feelings are present in every age, every social status and every period of our lives.
The four main protagonist of these films deal with these several themes, but every one of them reacts in a different way and every one of them has their own resolution: Some of them positive, some of them neutral and some of them completely negative.
In Clerks we have Dante, a young clerk working in a small convenience store who couldn't be any more unhappy with his current life and his current job, despising almost everything that he has to do, but without the actual will to change his situation despite having several chances to do so.
In Fight Club we have the Narrator, a common young middle-aged man, who suffers from insomnia and who's also trapped in a world of consumerism and materialism. When suddenly he "liberates" himself from that world, doing this in an extreme, radical, violent and nihilistic way.
In American Beauty we have Lester, another middle-aged man, a magazine writer who also hates his job. But Lester is a little bit different because his the only one who has a family, well a dysfunctional family to be more honest: He has a neurotic materialistic wife who is obsess with success and a low self-esteemed daughter. But suddenly after experiencing a series of uhh... revealing moments with a young lady, Lester's life begins to change when he blackmails his boss for $60,000 and quits his job, and he then goes to live the life that he wants to live.
And in The Big Lebowski we have none other that "The Dude", the slacker and arguably the most triumphant of all of these characters. The Dude is a middle aged man, and in contrast with all the other characters: his unemployed (or at least he never has a job in the entire film), he is a conformist person and he's actually happy with his current life and status. But things begin to change for the Dude when he gets involve into an underworld criminal scam that he originally had nothing to do with.
We have our main characters but not only that, in every single one of these films we also have characters who are the complete anti-thesis of these protagonists.
In Clerks we have Randal, Dante's best friend and his complete antithesis, he's arrogant, misanthrope, has no respect for authority and despite being in the same situation as Dante he's completely OK with his job in terms of conformity and he's overall happy with his current situation in comparison with Dante.
In American Beauty we have Carolyn, who I already described as been materialistic but not only that, she's also extremely superficial, always trying to "emit an image of success", completely guided into what other people (more successful than her) think of her.
"This isn't life, it's just stuff. And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts"
In The Big Lebowski we have none other than... The Big Lebowski, and old man who is also the complete antithesis of the Dude and really similar to Carolyn if you start to think about it. He's also extremely materialistic, he has a trophy 20-year-old wife, he's also obsess with success, but he's not actually interested in achieving success, he's interested in pretending that he has achieved success. He is so obsess in keeping an image of success that he goes as far as planning a complex criminal scam so that his image and reputation could be intact while earning a few thousand dollars. Oh yeah that's right! the guy is not even a millionaire, he actually has no money and everything that he has is property of his late wife. So the guy is a complete delusional materialistic hypocrite and a fraud.
And in Fight Club we have none other than Tyler. He's everything that the narrator wants to be, all his anger, hate, and inner dark desires repressed. Emerging as a nihilist terrorist with a desire of senseless destruction masked as an anarchic revolution.
As I said before, the outcome of these characters is completely different to one another:
Clerks ends when Dante has survived possibly one of the worst working days ever, he has seen what this horrible job is doing to him, his best friend Randal and his Girlfriend (well Ex) Veronica, they give him enough motivation to change his job and his life completely: Randal implies that Dante has to be qualified for at least another more decent job and Veronica tries to convince him to return to College. At the end of the movie we don't know what decision we makes, but the most probable thing is that he decides to keep working at the convenient store after all.
Fight Club ends in a climatic rampage, when the Narrator realize that his is actually the one who's destroying the city, Tyler is actually the outcome of all The Narrator's repressive life surrounded by a materialistic, superficial, consumerist society that he decided to comfort in.
American Beauty ends in a redeeming note, when Lester has a final encounter with Angela, the young girl who he fantasized about. Lester viewed her manly as a sexual object, but he finally finds out that she's just a frustrated little child who tried to be popular and unique hiding who she really was and lying about herself and her life. After comforting her, Lester finally manages to see all the true liberating beauty of the world for a brief eternal moment of his life.
And The Big Lebowski ends with The Dude's confrontation with the Big Lebowski revealing that instead of the successful, hardworking, first class man that he pretends to be, he's only just a low hypocrite con man. And that's when we realize that the Dude, despite been a slacker and a conformist man, he actually has higher values, a better sense of morality and a better way of seeing and living life than the whole crazy dark world that surrounds him.
One of them doesn't reacts at all, another reacts in a complete destructive and hateful way, the other one manages to truly free himself from that life for a brief period of time and the other one has an inner balanced slackery life who we all... at certain moment of our lives, want to live.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The Dude abides![/caption]Thanks for reading.
jueves, 2 de agosto de 2012
Beardfish - Prog Rock of Our Time: Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se
Beardfish is definitively one of my favorite modern progressive rock bands right now, they resemble everything that I love from the original 70's prog bands, Frank Zappa and modern hard folk rock. They are one of my favorite bands nowadays because without a doubt; Beardfish is one of the most solid and productive bands out there. In a lifespan of only 10 years they have released 6 albums and their 7th album is coming out this month. Many people called them the "Scandinavian Spock's Bread", jeje, this comment is a little ironic for me since I don't like Spock's Bread, their style is heavenly inspired by 70's prog rock and a lot of people may think that they don't have a lot of new things to offer, but they're wrong.
What I love about Beardfish is not particularly their music style or their musical skills but more like the musical atmosphere that they manage to create in their music: that melancholic, folkish, eclectic, odd nocturne atmosphere they manage to create is the soul of their music and that's what I love the most about them.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="425"]
Rikard Sjöblom, David Zackrisson, Magnus Östgren, Robert Hansen[/caption]
Beardfish was formed in Sweden in the summer of 2001 as a small garage prog band, it was two years later in 2003 that they established themselves as a true band releasing their debut album: Fran En Plats Du Ej Kan Se.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="320"]
From A Place You Can't See[/caption]
1. Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se (7:55)
2. Today (6:42)
3. Spegeldans (8:04)
4. Brother (2:54)
5. Poison Ivy And The Full Monty (6:28)
6. A Good Excuse (5:01)
7. Om En Utväg Fanns (6:48)
8. A Psychic Amplifier (15:01)
Beardfish is an ascending band, which means that every album that they release just gets better and better, their first release is a really solid debut album and it doesn't look like the first album of a band at all.
Is really well produced, and you can see that they had their atmospheric style already define, the music is solid and consistent through out almost all the album, however there are several low points.
The album starts with the dramatic, heavy and melancholic title track, a perfect opening for the album and for the career of this band.
Today is also an amazing song, a little bit more rock-oriented and melodic than the last one.
Spegeldans (The Dance of the mirrors) by far is one of the highlights of the album, it's the first major progressive rock song from the album and it has all the music and atmospheric prog changes of that you love so much, despite been a great song altogether.
Brother and Poison Ivy and The Full Monty which are basically just one song. The first part is probably the most melancholic song of the entire album but it has an amazing intro bass line showing that Robert Hansen is probably one of the underrated bassist out there. The second part is symphonic rock at its finest and will remind you of Jethro Tull and early Genesis and then it turns into a funk jazzy zappa song ending with the amazing bass line that I already described.
A Good Excuse is a good song but I consider it the lowest part of the album, mainly because of the main riff of the song, they use it a lot and I just don't like that riff, but overall is a good funk prog song.
Om En Utväg Fanns you can call this a melancholic folk punk song with an amazing acoustic intro.
A Psychic Amplifier is obviously the highest point and climax of the album, all that you would expect from a true prog band is just right there, musical virtuosity, changing odd compositions, amazing signing and the characteristic Beardfish style all over the place.
Overall and amazing debut and a solid album but there's more yet to come.
What I love about Beardfish is not particularly their music style or their musical skills but more like the musical atmosphere that they manage to create in their music: that melancholic, folkish, eclectic, odd nocturne atmosphere they manage to create is the soul of their music and that's what I love the most about them.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="425"]
Rikard Sjöblom, David Zackrisson, Magnus Östgren, Robert Hansen[/caption]Beardfish was formed in Sweden in the summer of 2001 as a small garage prog band, it was two years later in 2003 that they established themselves as a true band releasing their debut album: Fran En Plats Du Ej Kan Se.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="320"]
From A Place You Can't See[/caption]1. Från En Plats Du Ej Kan Se (7:55)
2. Today (6:42)
3. Spegeldans (8:04)
4. Brother (2:54)
5. Poison Ivy And The Full Monty (6:28)
6. A Good Excuse (5:01)
7. Om En Utväg Fanns (6:48)
8. A Psychic Amplifier (15:01)
Beardfish is an ascending band, which means that every album that they release just gets better and better, their first release is a really solid debut album and it doesn't look like the first album of a band at all.
Is really well produced, and you can see that they had their atmospheric style already define, the music is solid and consistent through out almost all the album, however there are several low points.
The album starts with the dramatic, heavy and melancholic title track, a perfect opening for the album and for the career of this band.
Today is also an amazing song, a little bit more rock-oriented and melodic than the last one.
Spegeldans (The Dance of the mirrors) by far is one of the highlights of the album, it's the first major progressive rock song from the album and it has all the music and atmospheric prog changes of that you love so much, despite been a great song altogether.
Brother and Poison Ivy and The Full Monty which are basically just one song. The first part is probably the most melancholic song of the entire album but it has an amazing intro bass line showing that Robert Hansen is probably one of the underrated bassist out there. The second part is symphonic rock at its finest and will remind you of Jethro Tull and early Genesis and then it turns into a funk jazzy zappa song ending with the amazing bass line that I already described.
A Good Excuse is a good song but I consider it the lowest part of the album, mainly because of the main riff of the song, they use it a lot and I just don't like that riff, but overall is a good funk prog song.
Om En Utväg Fanns you can call this a melancholic folk punk song with an amazing acoustic intro.
A Psychic Amplifier is obviously the highest point and climax of the album, all that you would expect from a true prog band is just right there, musical virtuosity, changing odd compositions, amazing signing and the characteristic Beardfish style all over the place.
Overall and amazing debut and a solid album but there's more yet to come.