Spock’s Beard – X (2010)
A career that began in 1992, a journey in the wake of locomotives from progressive like Dream Theater or the Flower Kings and a Genesis-like destiny or almost. Ten years after its debut, Spock’s Beard is coming to a standstill. Its leader and composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Neal Morse, decides to leave his comrades after six albums.
It’s 2002 and Californians decide not to give up. Nick D’Virgilio is promoted to singer. The drummer had already had the opportunity to take the microphone and like Phil Collins, he now takes center stage. There remains an unknown, but it is significant: how can we compensate for the contribution of Neal Morse as a songwriter?
From 2003, the quartet provided answers. The writing becomes more collegial, the register a bit more rock given D’Virgilio’s vocal range. Feel Euphoria, Octane et Spock’s Beard contain some great proposals but we have to wait Xin 2010, to see the Americans bring out the heavy artillery.
To say that we pulled out all the stops for them to achieve this would be false. The group has, in fact, resorted to the participation of its fans to ensure financing (a collector’s edition will be dedicated to them). As with Marillion, a pioneer in this type of approach, the initiative allowed Spock’s Beard to free itself from some constraints and give free rein to a very fertile imagination at the turn of the decade.
The combo’s tenth album (hence its name) is indeed full of first-rate ideas, both melodically and in terms of song structures. Each member composed in their own corner but the result is indeed served together and everyone sits down at the table. Even Neal Morse contributes on The Emperor’s Clotheswritten by Alan, his guitarist brother, and which Lenny Kravitz and the Red Hot Chili Peppers could have argued about before Extreme signaled the end of the bickering by claiming that he mastered this kind of register better than anyone else. The piece ends up digressing towards progressive regions that Spock’s Beard never loses sight of in this disc. We think of Kamikazesigned by keyboardist Ryo Okumoto, which begins as a pure exercise in style progressive metal before taking off on a nice flight in its second part. No doubt, the group wanted to remind us of its DNA, even if it had accustomed its audience not to be confined to a precise style.
The album thus starts with the effective Edge of the In-Between which, in many ways, is eyeing Californian excellence, with Toto in the lead. Light West Coast hints that we find, further away, on The Quiet Houseanother work by bassist Dave Meroes, masterful from start to finish of the record, like his colleagues. Spock’s Beard may well be made up of big names, but each member puts himself at the service of the others. On Xthe quartet does not perform a score, it coaxes it, including in the heaviest moments.
Whether behind his drums or on the microphone, Nick D’Virgilio is brilliant and it took a great singer to magnify such an album in which hide not one but two colossi of Rhodes: From the Darkness et Jaws of Heaven. Two epic pieces lasting more than a quarter of an hour, in which the group’s influences collide. From the Beatles to Dream Theater, via Queen, Genesis or (again) Extreme period III Sides To Every Story.
With this tenth exercise, Spock’s Beard had finally managed to begin a truly new chapter. Without turning their back on the past, the quartet managed to offer a perfect record, with no downtime (a feat for a album exceeding 70 minutes). This state of grace will even be the subject of a live performance, The X Tourin 2012, but this enchanted parenthesis will close with the departure of Nick D’Virgilio.
Once again amputated of an essential limb, the group will still continue its journey. There still remains, fifteen years later, an unanswered question: how he would have managed the aftermath Xa masterpiece of modern prog, little known if not unknown, with the same line-up?
Mogwai – The ghosts (2013)
In 2012, the past decided to resurface. Literally and figuratively. The series The ghostswith an intriguing synopsis and a promising first season, remobilized its troops, a few months after its broadcast, for the release of its original soundtrack.
A few words about the plot: on the same day, in a town dominated by a dam (the filming took place in the Annecy region, editor’s note), several people of different ages are trying to return home. They don’t know that they have been dead, sometimes for several decades, that they have not aged and, above all, that no one is waiting for them.
This return is, however, not without consequences since over the course of the episodes, it causes a series of disturbances that are disturbing to say the least, starting with the drop in the water level of the region’s dam.
To stick to the oppressive nature of the story, effectively served by appropriate photography, the director Fabrice Gobert had to pay particular attention to the soundtrack. By entrusting the music of Returned to the Scots of Mogwaithe latter could hardly have been better.
A big player in the post rock scene, the group has seven studio albums to its credit. Approached through production with the sole instruction of being inspired by the worlds of Twin Peaks and others Shiningthe musicians started by offering some demos after watching the first two episodes. Stuart Braithwaite and his colleagues were able to meet the specifications naturally imposed by sets of icy beauty, both attractive and unhealthy. Except for the resumption of the traditional What Are They Doing In Heaven Today ?the fourteen pieces of the original soundtrack form a whole that is as compact as it is hypnotic.
If we had to image these approximately fifty minutes, we could speak of a vaporous layer standing above the dam and the nameless city. A cloud which would distill, here and there, its willingly austere score and would pour out its musical notes like so many drops of rain.
The whole thing has a singular charm because it is disturbing. (The Huts, This Messiah Needs Watching, Kill Jester). The xylophone of Hungry Facewhich became to the great surprise of the group, who only saw it as an anecdotal piece, the theme song of the series, plunges the listener into the same uneasiness that one can feel when one hears a music box in a film. horror and the contrast between childish melody and dramatic plot becomes disturbing (Portugal). Clearly, the Scots would not have done it any better if they had wanted to illustrate the very ambiguous character of little Victor, one of the key characters in the series.
Behind their apparent simplicity, the different compositions of the soundtrack, essentially instrumental, are rather difficult to understand. Too dark, too monotonous. At least, at first glance. After a few listens, we perceive a little light with Relative Hysteria and above all Special N which a group like Anathema would not have denied. Without falling into a noisy register, the musicians seem to have sacrificed instruments like the guitar, relatively discreet, to give pride of place to the piano (Whisky Time) and climates (Modern). The group admits, on this subject, to having wanted to avoid any aggressiveness, musically speaking. It’s a successful bet, but it’s better to be armed with morale of steel to keep listening to this ode to neurasthenia from which it’s difficult to emerge unscathed but which contains its share of hidden nuggets.
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