Tangent Posts VM
News From the Hard Shoulder!
The Tangent release their new album "Songs From The Hard Shoulder" on June 10 2022. Packed with music, the album is surely the most technical and lovingly constructed of their career so far - as usual taking major steps forward without ever forgetting their roots. 3 long format songs (one of which is an instrumental) confirm the Tangent as masters of the "epic" and brings their total of songs longer than 15 minutes to more than 25, Socially aware, musically spirited, the Tangent's 12th album is a fitting and joyous celebration of the 20 years they have been working together. They even treat us to a cover version - their first studio recording of one, and it's a corker... "In The Dead Of Night" by UK will grace early editions of the CD release and all vinyl editions. As Lorne Murphy of Velvet Thunder says.... "The Tangent -- there is no-one else like them". Order (and a lot more info) here or at our Full Store
Tillison - Reingold - Tiranti (-TRT-)
Reingold Records are delighted to announce the forthcoming Release of the debut album by TILLISON REINGOLD TIRANTI (-TRT-).
The Lineup of Andy Tillison (The Tangent/Po90) Jonas Reingold (The Flower Kings/Steve Hackett Band/Karmakanic) and Roberto Tiranti (New Trolls/Ken Hensley/Labyrinth) is a pan European Progressive Rock Band project and the album was recorded during lockdowns in Italy, Austria and the UK.
The album "Allium: Una Storia" is a concept album which takes as its subject a real band "Allium" that Tillison saw play and jammed with in Italy when he was a teenager in the mid 1970s.
"One afternoon spent with this band was enough to decide my career for the rest of my life" says Tillison, who subsequently spent a long time searching for any information about them.
"It was the first time I saw and touched a synthesiser; it was the first time I ever saw an electric band play. It was a golden moment on a holiday camp in Italy that has been an influence on every recording I have ever made in the past 46 years."
The new band -TRT-'s album is an imagining of the record Allium might have made. Written in the style of the music that they played, the band were joined by Italian lyricist Antonio De Sarno (Moongarden Barock Project, Mangala Vallis) who, in keeping with Tillison’s original music, wrote the kind of lyrics that might have been penned by Allium at that time.
All members of the band have contributed to the songwriting since inception. The album, whilst paying homage to this and many other forgotten Rock Progressivo Italiano bands, is all original material written in 2021.
The album features full-on European style progressive rock music and of particular note are the incomparable Italian language vocals of Roberto Tiranti which bring a new dimension to the established work of Tillison & Reingold.
Personnel: Andy Tillison: Keyboards and (Real) Drums. Jonas Reingold: Electric Guitar and Bass Guitar Roberto
Tiranti: All Vocals Antonio De Sarno: Lyrics with guest Ray Aichinger: Soprano & Tenor Saxophones
The album features three songs the side long epic "Mai Tornare" and two shorter tracks "Ordine Nuovo" and"Nel
Nome Di Dio" The album will be released on CD and features 2 mixes of the whole 40 minute album. "Original Mix"
by Andy Tillison strives to be authentic to the sound of the times and "2021mix" by Jonas Reingold in the style of a
"Respectful Remix" made with modern technology.
The album is set for a SUMMER 2021 release and is available on Reingold Records. Pre-orders are available at
www.jonasreingold.se/shop
The Tangent in the UK Top 10 Rock albums
It was an eyebrow raising moment for all members of the band when exactly one week after release, on Friday the 28th of August 2020.. "Auto Reconnaissance" was sitting at number 8 in the official UK Rock album charts sandwiched incongrously between Nirvana and Led Zep. Although the "success" was short lived and was "out with a bullet" the following week leaving Nirvana and Zep asking each other "Who the hell was that?", everyone at The Tangent was in great spirits after having accomplished something that they had never even considered might happen. A Fourth Gen Prog band in the top ten. It' doesn't happen every week.
Tangent News Update Aug 6th 2020
I have been told that the Auto Reconnaissance CDs and Vinyls have arrived in the warehouse in Dortmund... so they EXIST!. This has to be good news. Of course I haven’t seen any of them yet. Most of you guys know the drill, we’ll get them delivered here with only a heartbeat in which to get them to you on time but we’ll do our very best. One of our local Post Offices is On Alert - bizarrely I’ve had this watercolour painting of the very post office your CDs will be shipped from - for 10 years or so.
Some really good stuff happening, we seem to be gathering some radio play from our first Single “Life On Hold” on Radio Caroline... that’s pretty cool actually hearing the band on the Medium Wave AM... the first reviews came in in the latter part of last week and we’re off to a cracking start.“The Tangent are a British progressive rock institution and every new album is eagerly awaited by the fans and, while every fan will have their own opinion, ‘Auto Reconnaissance’ is my favourite album from the band yet. Andy is on top form, his song writing is as sharp and clever as ever and he has gathered around him a group of musicians who seriously have no peers. A superb release and one which cements The Tangent’s already exalted reputation.” Read the review by Martin Hutchinson in full here.
“What you will always get is superb musicianship from some of prog’s most respected artists, a sense of melody that creates insistent, sticky earworms, and lyrics that are sometimes personal, sometimes political, but always thought-provoking and seasoned with self-effacing humour.” Read the full review by Kevan Furbank, here.
In case you missed them, we’ve had a couple of videos out recently, including one for our second “single” release “The Tower Of Babel” which was released on Friday last week.
Plus the “Teaser Trailer” for our epic track “Lie Back & Think Of England” (read the reviews above) and of course our first Single “Life On Hold”
COMING SOON
A new website that features all these links and info/articles about the album will go online later this week, Chris Elliott has been beavering away at it and thanks to him from all of us.
A 20 minute plus video interview with some new song snippets that I filmed for Insideout last month. IO will be showing it in bite size portions, but we’re hoping to have the full interview here for you very soon and of course on the website.
There’ll also be a look at the albums INNER picture (vinyl gatefold and CD Booklet) which is a portrait of the band by a new artist to the genre.... More soon!
In the meantime, best wishes to everyone on the group, so looking forward to this dropping on doormats - hopefully something to lift spirits in this rather odd summer/year.
Andy talks about the new album
Hi, Andy Tillison here to tell you about our new album "Auto Reconnaissance."
I have always TRIED to work on the basis that a band does not always have to be a series of releases one after the other. And of course that is somehow inevitable, but it's not always necessary to see it that way. You can see a band as a "piece of art" as a whole. One that took many years to finish perhaps, one where at certain stages in the procedure the work might have sounded incomplete.
I think I've been approaching this whole band since 2002 as more of a TV serial type of affair - telling many stories with a uniting over-arching theme. This, as opposed to a series of stand alone movies or one offs. I think the right word must be "Episodic"
One thing I've often done though is to bring everything around to a kind of "Familar Territory" so that temporary "endings" are almost evident in the pieces. So that, if there's some kind of sequence of episodes in say "Star Trek" that focus on some expedition on a planet, or on the adventures of one member of the cast, it is not long before we get an episode where we are in the familar surroundings of the Bridge of The Enterprise, or in The Engine Room.. and the audience can feel they have made a journey and now returned home.
With Auto Reconnaissance, I feel we have an episode of The Tangent where Kirk is on the bridge with Spock looking into his screen, Uhura has that thing in her ear, Chekov and Sulu are driving and Scotty is moaning that he needs moorr poooerr. Something unexpected has turned up and Kirk wants it on the screen. And from that familiar vantage point we know we can take off anywhere where the writers want to go.
There have been Tangent albums that do this before. In my eyes, there were "Down & Out" and "A Spark In The Aether" where we kind of re-set the scene and were then able to branch off from it. Like "Star Trek" there's a kind of Canon approach in The Tangent in that we've often revisted themes, followed stories up (because they are not finished yet) and had the re-appearance of several characters in subsequent songs. There is an article about our sequels and how they relate to the originals HERE.
So, I wanted to put all our fave characters on the bridge to start this album. That's not just Luke, Jonas, Steve, Theo and Myself, but the whole "What The Tangent Do" thing. So we had something "on screen" in the Enterprise bridge and we just had to deal with it. A good start to any episode. So we kicked off with a tuneful, upbeat prog and roll track called "Life On Hold" and it gives all the musicians a chance to shine and we hope it gives the audience chance to tap feet, drive too fast, sing along and annoy teenagers and all the lovely things that progressive music can do for us. Life on Hold is a song about self education, the fine art of teaching ones self loads of stuff- by reading, browsing, watching and inputting data to our heads... a lot of which will not save us from jeapoardy, but is often very pleasurable to know. (Like which order the Van Der Graaf albums were recorded in or the wheel arrangements of British Steam Locomotives, Doctor Who actors in order, etc etc). This song fits into the Tangent Mould from which we made "Uphill From Here", "Spark In The Aether" and "A Crisis In Midlife".
Next up is "Jinxed In Jersey". This is also familiar territory. It's an account of a journey on foot through a large city and ther various places I passed through and the characters I met on that journey. Like its predecessors, various landmarks are named and checked off the "list" in much the same way as The Albert Hall, The Eiffel Tower and Brent Cross Shpping Centre were mentioned in earlier pieces. This is a pretty long song at over 15 minutes and incorporates many Tangent tricks of the Trade, it's just that we have more tricks than we used to, so although there is a certain "Canterbury" style about it, there are sections where things we learned how to do on "The Adulthood Lie" just on the last album come into play, so there's this slightly odd mix of 70s UK Jazz fusion and Electro Drum & Bass. It's the first multi-sectioned piece on the album and has some astonishing playing from everyone - and I think Luke scrapes the laurels here.
"Under Your Spell" is next. There is precedent for love songs in The Tangent, but the last notable one was the multi-sectioned epic "The Full Gamut" which was the no holds barred story of a relationship breakup. I wanted to write something way way different from that, something that was romantic, mature (pointless a 61 year old singing about a stolen kiss behind the school bike shed unless dodgy nostalgia is really your thing) and... well actually, just really nice. I wanted it to sound a little like a cross between "I'm Not In Love" by 10cc, (one of our former members Paul Burgess actually played the Fender Rhodes piano part on that very recording) and "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" by Rose Royce, a song I loved at school having detected a synthesiser in it (and an early electro drum). Luke wanted us to bring that package a bit more up to date and with the use of more modern AND retro electro drum sounds we got the result we did. Theo takes the honours here with a glorious romantic Tenor solo at the end. As such we have by now set the stage for the episode in the first two tracks and are now into the meat of this episode. And we are slightly off track....
"The Tower Of Babel" is also a less obvious choice for a band normally seen as "Prog". It's a pop song, quite jazzy and certainly more than a little influenced by Steely Dan. Short and sweet it will only take 4 minutes of your life away. It's about modern burocracy and the gradual erosion of identity and personality by electronic form filling, box ticking and unmanned baggage check in frustration. "They want you to tick the box so that you can think outside it" is one of the lines in it, the notion being that you have to tick the boxes to qualify for the job, in which they purport to want you to ignore the box. Machines that answer phones, robot help boxes, push advice is a nightmare for many of us who remember being able to walk into a shop and say "My Mum asked if she could have some bacon, she'll pay you on Saturday" and walk home a minute later WITH the bacon. There's a nice little synth solo in this that I'm quite fond of.
And now we move to "Lie Back And Think of England". There's little doubt that this is being served up as a main plot line as it is the longest song we've ever released on Insideout - clocking in at just under half an hour. It has a similar role to "Where Are They Now?" from our "Down and Out" album, in that it is a spiritual sequel to several of our earlier songs all at once. First and foremost it's our second song that concerns "Brexit", and as such it is related to the first one "A Few Steps Down The Wrong Road". It is however, completely different in style, tone and message in almost every way conceivable. Rather than address the issue of Brexit directly in any way, the song is a sad look at the way our nation divided itself into camps and started shouting playground taunts at one another, be those taunts "Remoaner", "Brextremist", "Snowflake", "Fascist" or just making undeserved comments about peoples' intelligence levels... i.e. just about as low as we could get. If the military tactics for the Iraq War wer "Shock And Awe" then surely for the Brexit debate the tactics were more like "Cut And Paste". The line from our earlier song "The Wiki Man" - "Your matter of opinion is the main point of the show in these strange days" seemed to be more than vindicated in the years surrounding the referendum, and as such a fair chunk of this song continues the themes of that song from "COMM". "Lie Back" is at its heart a plea, a possibly naive plea, for forgiveness (a major theme in "Where Are They Now too) from both sides of the debate, and a realisation that neither side of the argument had the final say to what Britain was in relation to Europe. Because the rocks, stones, hills and Dales are this island. What we choose to do with them for a few years or even a few generations, is but one un-noticed second hand tick on the clock face of history. And somewhere in all of this, the character "Earnest" became involved again in my head. This man, his spitfire had become this icon for "Englishness", and I had to wonder if you'd played him a recording of the debates in 2019 whether he'd have had the same resolve when he took off all those years ago. This is the most challenging piece we ever took on, both lyrically and musically. The production of it was way beyond our capabilities just a few years ago, and even now for a band of our standing in the world with an annual budget less than the catering for a behind stage crew party at a Genesis gig - it was a tough one. The band, and I are supremely proud of this. Order Tissues. This one may get your emotions....
The album chooses to finish with the most uplifting of songs. A song that once apon a time in a galaxy far far away might have made the charts. A song of hope based around the Winter days that come every year, where the sun comes out and illuminates the world in the most exquisite light and shows you the colours of the world in all their magnificence. These days have the most positively inspiring effects on me, and I think that this song is the most cheerfully optimistic piece of music I have ever written. As the world needs a bit of hope at them moment, I hope that this song will, in particular, have an effect on all our listeners that is inwardly warming in a cold time.
This is our 11th album. But, as I said, you don't need to see it that way. You could call it The Tangent S01 E11. Episode 11 of the series. And, I very much hope, not the last. "Second Star to the Right and straight on until morning" as Kirk quoted from Peter Pan.
The Adulthood Lie : Lyric Video
The Adulthood Lie (Album Track). Taken from the album "Proxy", out November 16th, 2018. Click Read More to view the video.
Tangent side-project "Kalman Filter"
Exo Oceans is the new album from Kalman Filter a new project from Tangent keyboards player and PROG Magazine's 2017 Readers Poll Keyboards Player of the Year Andy Tillison Diskdrive. Three pieces make up the album, each one named after an exo-planetary ocean somewhere in Andy's universe.
"Life on Hold" Video Released
Taken from the album "Auto Reconnaissance", out August 21st, 2020!
New Album Announced for 2020
The Tangent, the progressive rock group led by Andy Tillison are pleased to announce the release of their 11th studio album ‘Auto Reconnaissance’ on the 21st August 2020.
A State of Renovation
We're in a state of renovation here now as we switch our website to be more focused on our new album "Auto Reconnaissance" which is nearing completion and scheduled for release at the end of Summer this year. So apologies for the building work that's going on here, and we look forward to a brand new site in the not too distant future.
The Tangent have had a busy 2020 so far with the recording of this new album, the 11 th studio album. It includes 2 long pieces, one of which is a shade off half an hour long, and has 4 shorter pieces and shows more aspects of the band and its abilities than ever before. Some of the most compex arrangements and musical passages they've ever done rub shoulders with some of the strongest melodies and sing-able hooks the band have ever brought to the table. Influences from Steely Dan to Frank Zappa, to Aphex Twin, Marvin Gaye, Hatfield and the North all jostle for your attention. Subject matter includes a conversation with a traffic cop in New Jersey, the world of "box ticking", a song Andy wrote for his partner Sally, the thirst for knowledge, and the hopeful reconciliation of the opposing sides of the Brexit debate in the UK. Possibly most relevant at the moment though is an uplifting song that welcomes the return of the sun to the sky after grey clouds have dominated for so long.
Not only that, but Andy Tillison is assembling a series of out-takes for a third "Fan" album, another of his Kalman Filter albums is on its way.
Pre_pre orders (at premium prices) are available on this site right now for the new album... :don't worry, there will be opportunities to pre-order at regular prices in the weeks leading up to release. We're going to keep updating the site with Andy's bulletins on the album's progress... and we'll give you news when there is some. You can always join our lively and friendly Facebook Group here!
Tangekanic - Scandinavia 2018
Tangekanic are coming out to play again this year... after last year's tour that saw the band cross Europe and The USA - it's only fair that we go back to play Sweden where the band has so much history.... and while we're there... Denmark awaits for the first ever show we have done there.
This time the band will include Lalle Larsson on Keyboards - and Luke Machin who is sadly not available to play owing to earlier commitments - will be replaced by Sven Cirnski - a great guitarist from Sweden who has performed as a Karmakanic musician in the past.
The ticket links are below as is the EasyJet website!
Book Here fof Kometen I Hvidovre Here for Musikend Hus EasyJet Website
Tangekanic Video Release
Tangekanic, the hybrid band featuring members of The Tangent and Karmakanic who play songs from both bands' repertoire have recently completed a live "bootleg" style recording of one show recorded at the New Jersey Proghouse in the USA last October.
The album, "HOTEL CANTAFFORDIT", features material from both bands' more recent output rather than a procession of golden oldies, so tracks from Karmakanic's "Dot" and The Tangent's "The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery" dominate the proceedings.
Not only that but while on the tour, the band wrote a new song together, this being a piece they wrote in reaction to the third concert massacre in recent years at the Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, USA. This track is also on the new live album.
"We were at the Summer's End festival just a few days after the shooting" says Tangent leader Andy Tillison, "in the middle of a tour which was the most important thing in our lives at the time. We were among friends wherever we went, and walking around the festival that day I just knew we had to say something about the special place that music holds for us and everyone in that audience. I went behind stage and scribbled some lyrics out and the band agreed to come on and join in at the end of the piece - which they'd never even heard on the first performance of it."
The song "Sanctuary In Music" featured a 30 second silence as part of the music and was described by many people as "the loudest part of the festival".
Tangekanic will release a powerful (non-perfomance) lyric video of the song, on at at 3.00pm GMT/UTC on Friday 23 Feb
The lineup of the band is:
Jonas Reingold - Bass Guitar
Andy Tillison - Keyboards & Vocals
Luke Machin - Guitars & Backing Vocals
Steve Roberts - Drums
Goran Edman - Vocals.
The album is available to pre-order from www.reingoldrecords.se and www.thetangent.org and will be shipping in early March.
The Tangent Gain Recognition!
Great news for the Tangent in this year's Prog Magazine readers' poll!
The Tangent were named in several of the categories including the Best Album where "The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery" came in at number 5. Jonas Reingold was named as #5 bass player and similarly Luke Machin came in at 5 in the guitarist category, up two from last year's number 7 position!
To put the cherry on the cake, band leader Andy Tillison took the top slot as #1 keyboards player - so a fairly resounding success for the band and its music this year!
We want to express our gratitude to everyone who was involved in that poll result and thank our wonderful drummer Steve Roberts and Tangekanic's singer extraoridinaire Goran Edman who are both number one in our books anyway.
The Kalman Filter
A new CD composed by Andy Tillison Diskdrive (The Tangent) and the birth of a new "band"
Andy Tillison has occasionally released solo albums of an electronic nature over the years. "Fog", "Murk" & "Durch" have been popular additions to the catalogue with their crossover of Berlin School electronica and ambient Jazz atmospheres.
The Kalman Filter is a new name under which Andy now wishes to work in this field in order to build a separate thread from The Tangent - but a thread which can perform live and in the future add new participants on its route to becoming a fully fledged band.
The first product from The Kalman Filter is "Drink Of The Wilderness" - a series of compositions that are inspired by the wild hills and reservoirs of the Upper Nidd Valley in North Yorkshire, England, and Andy has spent much time there taking in the ambience, recording the naturally occuring sounds and investigating the history of the construction of the dams there.
"It has been a great association to build with a location" says Andy. "The history and feel of this place is absorbing, the stories of the navvies who built the dams, the engineering required, the wilderness in which it all happened and the stark beauty of the place is just overwhelming - yet the whole area exudes this amazing tranquility despite a past that was anything BUT tranquil. I wanted to build some soundscapes that were brought to mind as Sally and I listened to the surrounding birdsong and gentle lapping of water, yet all the while aware of the turbulence of a massive construction project on a hardly believable scale at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th - in that very same place. "
"Drink Of The Wilderness" will feature long format compositions and improvisations based around Andy's synthesisers (including his new Arturia Matrixbrute). Lovers of early Tangerine Dream (Both Pink and Virgin eras) will find much familiarity here, but there will be forays into ECM Jazz territories as well as more modern DJ style techniques.
The album is now in "Pre-pre order" phase... there are an assortment of pricings now available. Purchase now allows access to early recordings almost immediately - and there will be a LOT of stuff made available now that will never see the CD itself as work on a project like this is liquid and continually shifting. Those wishing to support Andy's new venture can take advantage of these premium offers, but remember that this will be available as a standard price CD in the future if that is what you would like to buy.
"Drink Of The Wilderness" will be released on CD in the early months of 2018. At present there are no plans for a vinyl release.
The New Album - Slow Rust...
The new album by the Tangent is called "The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery". Released on July 21 2017 this is the bands 9th studio album for Insideout. The album is a long format single CD (79 minutes) and a Double Vinyl Album. The album features only 5 pieces and therefore it follows that most of these pieces are long and involved.
It's one of the more complex and ambitious pieces the band have done, having many similarities in format to the "Sacre Du Travail" album of 2013, yet it's a different kind of beast altogether. Less classically influenced, the album is a massive fusion of styles from straight Prog Rock through Jazz Fusion, calling at Punk , Electronic Dance and even something that could almost be thought of as Rap.
Lyrically the album is bold, politically motivated - "Progressive In Politics as well as in Music" and pulls no puches in its critique of current political movements to the right and the gutter press' all too easy embrace of such nonsense. Largely focussed on a basic theme of "division" the album explores this through everything from the breakdown of personal friendships to spurious independence movements and "Our Country First" attitudes that the band see as the oncoming of "bad things".
Nonetheless, the album is chock full of Tangent Treasure... some stellar musical performances, Jonas Reingold (bass), Luke Machin (Guitar), Theo Travis (Sax & Flute) and Andy Tillison (Keyboards and vocals) are joined by new member Marie Eve de Gaultier (vocals) and they don't waste a minute in getting down to some of the most exciting musical fireworks you are likely to hear this year from any band in any genre.
Artwork for the album is provided by DC/Marvel artist Mark Buckingham and his work for the record is hugely important to the overall concept of the package. This has to be seen to be believed and the front cover is just a starter!
You can buy the album HERE and get to see the band play live this year by visiting the LIVE page.
Every Story Tells a Picture...
Nearly everyone in Progressive Rock Music, musicians and audience alike, are hugely aware of the symbiotic nature of the artwork and the music. After the first few albums, we never got to see the typical "Group Shot" of Yes again. With Genesis, Pink Floyd, Greenslade, and ELP.. the same rarity of such things was pronounced. There were exceptions, usually Live recordings or compilations etc... and of course "Love Beach". By and large, the history of Progressive Rock albums is as much about Paul Whitehead, Roger Dean, Patrick Woodroffe and Storm Thorgerson - even H R Giger as it is about the bands they helped to develop.
Mark Buckingham's staggering artwork for our new album is the latest chapter in our band's story. The Tangent have been very lucky to get some astonishing artwork on board for our 9 studio albums and various live products. We have to start with the remarkable force that is Ed Unitsky...
Ed designed our first ever sleeve, for "The Music That Died Alone". Although he'd done various things before (including fan releases for The Flower Kings) this as his first official and commercially available release. There can be no doubting just how much that sleeve helped the band find its feet... how it totally represented the contents of the CD itself and how it registered in the minds of the people who had loved this kind of music back in the 1970s.
Of course, nobody, not me, not you, not Ed could look at it without thinking of Roger Dean in some way. But Ed's work through the various albums he has made for us and others has its own character. It's deeper in detail than Dean.. the picture has more distance, more background. And of course it's technologically driven - yet somehow totally organic too.
We decided on the Unitsky pic for our debut because we were aware that many artists at the time were still nervously biting their nails when it came to admitting they were "prog". There were many Hipgnosis style affairs around at the time (Sky Moves Sideways" anyone?). But what we released in 2003 had people running to their record store as much for the cover as anything else. Ed was and IS a vital part of the band's make up, story and outlook.
Ed designed the first THREE Tangent studio albums - plus a DVD and a live fan CD. All of them were amazing, intriguing, stare-into images that gave the experience that many of us had had when we were younger. On Our Fourth album we decided to have a break.
While living in France I became aware of a whole culture of art there that doesn't figure as largely here in the UK. The French and Belgian "Bande Dessiné" artists are massively varied, highly evocative and individual. I was fortunate enough to meet Antoine Ettori who was a student just finishing his courses at his art school. His work was really interesting and I approached him to see if he'd like to do something for the band and was delighted that he accepted. His work totally complemented the music and the story that this album tells (along with a novel) .
After "Down & Out" - and album which just used photos form Sally & My collection, Ed reurned to do the COMM album - superbly and this was our first outing on Vinyl.. the chance to see his work in this format was astonishing.
For "Le Sacre Du Travail" - in keeping with many classical albums, we used a piece of already painted abstract expressionist fine art by Martin Stephen. It was a perfect combination I felt and inside the cover much work was supplied by Brian Watson, a very good friend of the band who was at the time just finding a new outlet for his personal creativity after a lifetime in a job not normally associated with art!!
Of course Ed did "A Spark In The Aether" our sequel to our debut album... once again working in the rich light blues where we had begun 12 years earlier.
And so we come to our new album "The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery" And this means we come to Mark Buckingham. It is an amazing thing when an artist finds out that another artist is a fan... and to find out that Mark had been listening to my music since Po90 days was a big surprise. A very nice surprise bearing in mind the popularity of his work, his work for DC and Marvel - it seemed faintly impossible that someone like that would be "into us".
I'd always known that this album would require something really specific.. and with it being so "news related" the idea of comic strip had surfaced. Mark had offered his services and I told him about the ideas of the album and he said he'd send some ideas over.
I'm not a great art critic and as such will happily use the phrase "gobsmacked" as my reaction to the first piece he did. This was a black & white collage for our Internet release of "A Few Steps Down The Wrong Road" which was as ascerbic and cutting as the song was. And as the ideas for the album trickled through, something unusual happened. Something unusual and very special.......
I started to change the music. Because of the art. There were things in there that made me think of better ways to say things, things to highlight more, stuff to leave out. The pieces he was drawing were as inspirational to the music as the original subject matter had been, and so here I was experiencing a lifelong dream, doing an album symbiotically attached to the artwork it came with. Like with ED, Mark became a creative force WITHIN the band, and like Ed has frequently done, he is credited with a photo as if IN the band on the sleeve.
The full impact of the sleeve is something that should be really affecting.; The art was inspired by the music. The music is inspired by the art. The chicken and the egg. There is no real answer to the "Which Came First" Other than, in our case, "The telephone call".
Ed, Antoine, Martin and now Mark have all played a vital part in our continuation of the Progressive Rock tradition. And who knows where we will go next. And fear not. Ed will be back!!
Drums! Drums in the Deep!
The Tangent AND Karmakanic are pleased to announce that the drummer on the forthcoming tour will be Steve Roberts. Steve will be well known to many Tangent supporters as he has drummed frequently with our friends Magenta, also with his band Godsticks. He's been a busy fella over the years having a pretty full CV.. MAGENTA (2 live albums/dvd)(dr), JOHN SLOMAN (dr), NODDYS PUNCTURE ELP tribute (live album feat. K Emerson) (dr), GODSTICKS (3 albums/1 EP) (dr/kb), CYAN (dr), BILLY PEZZACK TRIO (dr), DOLENNU (1 album) (dr), KENNY DRISCOLL BAND (dr), BILLY THOMPSON/PETER LEMER QUARTET (dr), AMLEDD (1 album)(dr), HEAVY QUARTET (3 albums)(dr), MONKJACK FUNK (kb), THEY WALK AMONG US (2 albums)(dr), THE DOSTOYEVSKYS (1 album)(dr).
Yes... you read it right, he's even played with Keith Emerson when KE guested with his own tribute band. Steve also plays the keyboards which, in the Tangent, is bound to come in useful for something. All of us bid him welcome and look forward to sharing the experience with you which you can do at ANY OF OUR GIGS.
We Do Things Differently Here
The Tangent are a Progressive Rock Band with a strong and long pedigree. Formed in 2002 by Andy Tillison (at that time leader of the largely unknown Parallel Or 90 Degrees) the band has spent the past 15 years involved in the creation of nine studio albums and a couple of live DVD outings. Over the years a pool of musicians have helped the central core on their way, members of King Crimson, the Flower Kings, Gong, Chumbawamba, Porcupine Tree and Soft Machine have contributed and the band has a distinctive and highly varied style.
Covering over 40 different lyrical topics as diverse as The Death of Margaret Thatcher, The Social Networking Explosiion, Treatment of War Veterans, Ageing Bikers, Stockbrokers and their lives, The daily grind of Work, and full-on progressive political commentary, the Tangent have made a name for themselves as an outspoken yet friendly and approachable modern band with a very down to earth attitude to making and performing music.
A million miles from the innaccurate yet commonly held belief that Prog Rock is based on the world of Tolkien-like fantasy, the Tangent make their music in the real world of now. Although their influences can be heard and almost touched, they have resisted becoming a sound-alike band - eschewing any legacy relationship with bands such as Genesis and just as likely to use punk, techno and funk in their music as a Mellotron.
"At the time of 2017" says Andy, "politicians are queuing up to cite themselves as 'Progressive'. That's something I like and can relate to. I have always believed that the name chosen for our genre had more meaning to it than simply a manifesto of 'being more complex and clever than other rock music'. To me - true Progressive Rock is more about exploring ideas, both lyrical and musical, than simply being clever. But I also like trying to be clever - even if that means failing."
Jazz Fusion plays a larger role in the band's sound than many other bands in the genre - "The second wave of Prog bands in the 80s seemed to forget the Jazz element that had been so manifest in the original bands of the 70s - in their haste to get onto the big bass pedal and Mellotron chords. Thats was something we wanted to counterbalance when we made the blueprints for this band. We're as much influenced by Return to Forever and Weather Report as we are by Pink Floyd and Yes. And of course we have an openly declared love of the Canterbury fusion bands like the Hatfields and Egg"
This Year The Tangent release their ninth studio album "The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery" One of their most challenging albums yet, 80 minutes of dense, complex socially aware music. Set against a backdrop of growing right wing influence on the world of political mainstream, the album asks some highly pertinent questions and expects some pretty hostile answers. That's the nature of the beast these days.
"Ha ha!" Tillison laughs - "people say I'll never get recognition while I do all this political stuff. But I think my choice of genre put paid to any future commercial success back in the 80s. If that was what I was after I'd have been a long way from this area by now!"
If you're looking for true Progressive Rock music that is in tune with today's other musics and political ideaologies as opposed to another band who sound like Genesis or Pink Floyd, you came to the right place. Welcome to the website. Welcome to The Tangent. We do things differently here.