"Under A Mediterranean Sky" is the now seventh acoustic work of the ex-Genesis guitarist. This time he pours the experiences he and his wife Jo Lehmann-Hackett made on extensive travels through the Mediterranean region, which is characterized by different cultures, into colorful musical images. In Corona-Lockdown times, the album title also awakens the longing for destinations that are unreachable for the time being
Steve Hackett has repeatedly recorded acoustic albums centered on filigree, classical and folkloristic playing on the nylon guitar. With "Under A Mediterranean Sky" he has succeeded in this terrain his most beautiful work so far, which offers musical landscape and cultural descriptions vibrating with joie de vivre and also brings various ethnic instruments into the sound cosmos in rich orchestrations.
In the interview Steve Hackett and his wife Jo opened their travel diary for us.
Zoom calls are in and in Corona times one of the technical possibilities, so that you at least know what the other person looks like: Pablo van de Poel and his brother Luka, along with fellow Corona member Robin Piso, lounge on a sofa in their studio in Utrecht, Holland, looking a little pale, but the three, between their mid-20s and early 30s, rarely give their answers without a smug grin flitting across their faces. "We take the bizarre Corona circumstances as they are," they say in unison. "As long as we have each other and make music day after day, the virus can lick us anywhere else ..."
The collective around Stuart A. Staples is always good for surprises - be it with cover versions, soundtracks, solo and side projects or bold stylistic lunges. This is also the case on their 13th album "Distractions", on which the Brits try their hand at pieces by Neil Young, the Television Personalities and Dory Previn, but also at French chansons and a concentrated load of Krautrock. Why, why, why - eclipsed asked.
eclipsed: Is "Distractions" what the title implies: a little pastime during the lockdown?
Stuart A. Staples: There's something about it. Because at times like this you just have to block out reality because it can be so depressing and you can't let it take you over. When this window of opportunity opened up in the last few months, I used it to implement some ideas that I'd been carrying around for a while. So the album was a way to dream a little bit again, have fun and distract myself
If Ian Anderson established the flute in rock, the same could apply to Volker Kuinke's recorder on Syrinx Call's albums. Their new, now third work goes one step further. More prog than before, less world music and new age. With no less than three musicians from the Eloy camp, including mastermind Frank Bornemann himself, they are also musically prepared for a highly sophisticated work about the evolutionary step of an artificial intelligence towards human empathy. Volker Kuinke (flutes, wind instruments), Jens Lueck (production, keyboards, drums, vocals) and Doris Packbiers (vocals, concept) provide information. In addition, the three Eloy musicians involved, Frank Bornemann, Hannes Arkona and Klaus-Peter Matziol, deliver enthusiastic statements in conclusion.
eclipsed: "Mirrorneuron" has become a genuine and highly ambitious concept album, similar to Jens Lueck's Single Celled Organism project. How did this approach and idea come about in general?
Two flute solos simultaneously, one from the right, one from the left stereo channel - this is how the 48-minute track "Huchen 55", spread over LP sides 3 and 4, begins on Out Of Focus' third album "Four Letters Monday Afternoon" (1972, released on the Kuckuck label). As I said, 48 minutes and 1972. That's a minute longer and a year earlier than Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells"!
To avoid misunderstandings: Apart from the stringing together of various musical themes, "Huchen 55" has stylistically nothing in common with Oldfield's masterpiece. Out Of Focus were Anglo-American influenced. The band allowed for slight psychedelic influences, but also relied primarily on jazzy, progressive elements and a jam character that was evident in the sprawling solos on guitar, organ, flute and saxophone.
Whenever Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy, Roine Stolt and Pete Trewavas get together for Transatlantic, you're quick to use superlatives. This time, however, the prog supergroup has taken it to the extreme once again. Because "The Absolute Universe" is nothing less than the wet dream of every prog fan: a concept album in three different versions
Transatlantic relations are no longer what they used to be, thanks to the Trump administration. In music, however, they still work splendidly. Separate yet united - we bring three of the four prog protagonists to the big eclipsed interview table for you. In our extensive title interview Neal Morse, Roine Stolt and Pete Trewavas talk about the different album versions and the genesis of "The Absolute Universe" as well as about visa problems, the Corona pandemic and good food. Plus: memories of the first sessions over 20 years ago!
In the course of his 30-year musical career, the British songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson has constantly developed and tried out new things. His problem: part of his audience meets him with growing incomprehension. Yet the versatile musician has always remained himself, even if instruments and sounds have changed again and again. In the eclipsed interview he explains why he has no desire to live up to expectations
