Rich and Chris Robinson have been sailing under the same flag again since the end of 2019: The Black Crowes. What was unimaginable just a year ago is now back to everyday life. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of their debut album "Shake Your Money Maker", the brothers have put aside their years of animosity and opened a new chapter in the band's history. In the interview, which was written before the Corona crisis, Rich sounds as euphoric as one has seldom heard the band's guitarist and main songwriter in recent years
Seven years after "A Closer Inspection" Mrs. Kite now releases her third album "Flickering Lights". It was worth the wait: The album presents a modern progressive rock that doesn't need to hide from the big names of the scene. Florian Schuch (vocals, keyboards), his brother Ferdinand (guitar), Philipp Verenkotte (bass) and Lukas Preußer (drums) have now released three albums - the first in 2006 still under the old band name It's Us.
Like its two predecessors, Flickering Lights" won the German Rock and Pop Award in the category "Best Progressive Band". But the prize didn't bring Mrs. Kite much luck, as the band remained rather an unknown quantity in the local prog scene despite their undeniable great qualities. That should and can now change with the new album that eclipsed talked about with the Cologne quartet.
eclipsed: For three years you worked on the album. Why did it take so long?
In 1872 Peter Nicolai Arbo painted his picture "The Wild Hunt", which shows a scene from Nordic-Germanic mythology with dramatic light-shadow contrasts. Sebastian Lee Philipp, producer and songwriter from Berlin, was so impressed by this painting that he named his musical project after it. That was around 2015, and after the untitled debut, in which Die Wilde Jagd still consisted of the duo Sebastian Lee Philipp and the Düsseldorf producer Ralf Beck, "Uhrwald Orange" (in which Beck was only co-producer) followed in 2018. "Haut", the new, third work of Die Wilde Jagd, is as rich in contrast as Arbos picture: electronics, medieval sounds, krautrock, avant-garde - all this comes together here in four long tracks, in a magical triangle of subtle melodies, hypnotic rhythms and indefinable sounds. eclipsed spoke with Sebastian Lee Philipp.
In 2004 singer Robert James Moulding and keyboardist David Eaton founded the band Anubis, named after the ancient Egyptian god of death, in Sydney, Australia. They immediately released "230503", a modern prog concept album influenced by Pink Floyd and Co. "Homeless", which is the band's first album to be released on high-quality 190g vinyl, moves in this direction. The question of what can be home in 2020 gains a whole new urgency, not only in view of the worsening climate crisis and poverty worldwide on the one hand, and increasing nationalism and populism in many countries on the other, but especially in the middle of the Corona crisis.
eclipsed: What do you understand by "homeless", and doesn't this phenomenon get a new meaning in the sign of Corona?
Duos are still quite rare in the history of rock music. But you don't even notice this minimal line-up on their debut album "Demons Of The Mind". Completely without guitars, Thomas Teufel (drums, vocals & percussion) and Rob Vitacca (vocals, organ & synthesizer) let the shreds fly with their mega-groovy retro sound. The two musicians are at home
in the extreme south of Baden-Württemberg, in Waldshut-Tiengen, from where you can almost spit over the Rhine into Switzerland.
At the end of March the boys don't get too much out of the general corona hysteria. "We are actually completely surrounded by forests and Alps here," smiles Vitacca. "That's why it's not quite as conspicuous as in the big city, of course. Nothing has changed for us except that the tour as opening act for Horisont, for example, had to be cancelled. We either stay at home or bunk in our studio and continue to be creative, as always ...
In times of progressive formatting of almost all areas of art and society, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find "uncalculated" music that is not due to the absurd need for search engine optimization or click numbers. The American band Other Lives proves on their new album "For Their Love" that the search for an alternative is still worthwhile
Organic arrangements over slowly spreading melodies and a sonorous, sensitive baritone testify to a strong sense of human emotionality. The Other Lives are not about the rapid consumption of a sound product produced for a target audience, but rather about musical states and processes in which the listener is present and expanding, which can be experienced first hand. Immediately before the lockdown, bandleader, singer and guitarist Jesse Tabish made his way to Berlin to talk about his band's new album.
The Englishman Steve Thorne is a headstrong, non-conformist spirit, but also a strange contemporary. Strongly rooted in the progressive, he combines different styles like folk and indie with it without blinkers, but lets the holy (puristic) Prog-Gral pass by. With his latest album "Levelled - Emotional Creatures: Part 3" he follows up his debut "Emotional Creatures: Part One" (2005) and "Part Two: Emotional Creatures" (2007). Musically, it's definitely an exciting new work - but in terms of content he addresses highly controversial, even strange topics, criticizes science as an authoritarian religious community, considers the moon landing a "fake" and discusses long outdated theories such as the one that the earth is flat ("level") and does not revolve around the sun ...
eclipsed: Stylistically you move on "levelled" from Indie and Folk à la R.E.M. to Prog in the tradition of Pink Floyd and Genesis. A desired mix?
When guitarist Axel Rudi Pell recorded his 18th studio album in winter - if you don't count "Diamonds Unlocked" with its cover versions - he wouldn't have dreamed that the title "Sign Of The Times" would come across as particularly pregnant with meaning in these Corona times. All live activities are on hold for now. "When you have a new album out, you naturally want to get out to present it live. In normal mode we would already be in the middle of the first part of the tour. We have now postponed it for one year. So the planned second part in October and November will be Part One. At least I hope so..."
