Precious Revolutions

As I mention from time to time, I rediscovered my love of progressive rock a few years ago when I picked up Marillion's album This Strange Engine. Since then, I've gone fairly nuts buying modern progressive rock albums. By "modern" I mainly mean albums issued since 1990, although this includes albums by neo-progressive bands who were around in the 80s (Marillion, IQ, Pallas, et. al.).

As you might expect, I buy a lot of albums which I find lukewarm, not to my tastes, or even bland or downright bad. The majority of them are intriguing, enjoyable or otherwise worthwhile. And then every once in a while I buy an album which I think is so wonderful that it spends days getting played over and over in my car. I've been fortunate to have picked up two such albums in the last couple of months. So:

While browsing the catalog at The Laser's Edge (where I buy most of my prog these days), they strongly recommended the album The Cold Light of Darkness by a new band named Tr3nity, which the Edge proprietor had loved. I had trouble getting into the album: The subject matter of the lyrics is rather depressing, and the music matches it. Singer Chris Campbell's voice had a plaintive edge to it which I found more annoying than delicate or emotional.

What did pique my interest was the final track, the last of four tracks comprising "The Exposure Suite" which was titled "Can't You See?". The vocals seemed more confident, the lyrics had a clever, flowing, rhyming cadence to them, and the music was more upbeat and far livelier than most of the album, with a bit of a gospel feel to it. So on the strength of this I was just engaged enough to be interested in hearing their next effort.

Precious Seconds was released earlier this year. And wow is it ever good.

With five tracks totalling over 67 minutes (you do the math), Precious Seconds has a neo-progressive sound but their sounds seems very much of a piece with recent IQ albums. Tr3nity, however, prefers sparse lyrics and lengthy instrumental passages whereas IQ's music is packed with Peter Nicholls' complex lyrics. Precious Seconds also puts the pieces strewn about Cold Light together into a fuller package: Campbell's voice seems more confident and enjoyable, the melodies are at times wistful or sad without being depressing, and the rest of the band meshes as an effective unit. The band, by the way, consist of Rob Davenport (guitar, bass), Paul Gath (keyboards), Graham Lane (bass) and Rolf Smith (drums).

Lyrically, this is a concept album about a man who thinks he has it all, realizes that in fact he's become complacent and is squandering his life. (There are also religious overtones, which as you might guess atheistic-old-me chooses to ignore). Now, by and large lyrics are far from my central interest in music. Melody and harmony are my thing, telling the story through the emotions and structure of the music. That's the case here, as I found the lyrics to be a bit too abstract or metaphorical for my tastes, but I thought they added some valuable color to the music, which is frankly about as far as most lyrics go for me, so that's not a black mark on the album's record.

"Livin' a Lie" (written by Campbell/Davenport/Gath; all other tracks by Davenport/Gath) starts the album with a strong rocker which fades in from a lengthy atmospheric introduction building to the main guitar riff on top of an ominous organ harmony. "Run Before You Walk" opens with an upbeat piano melody, but I felt that it was the weak link in the album, not holding together as a cohesive piece. "From Afar" I thought was more effective, with a delicate melody laid out by Campbell's vocals, and a flowing guitar melody in the middle, ending with a triumphant reprise of the vocals.

But for me the first three tracks are just prelude to the terrific final two. "More Than I Deserve" is built around a melancholy piano melody and the lyric "Have faith in me, keep your faith in me." Here Campbell firmly dispels all of the doubts I had about him as a vocalist when I heard Cold Light. The track then segues into a long exploration of the central melody, which very slowly evolves in a milieu of sound provided by the rest of the band. Tr3nity nails the feat by bringing the sequence to a close with a dramatic shift to a great guitar solo which echoes the vocal part, which returns to the melancholy premise suggested by the title.

The album closes with the 20-minute track "The Last Great Climb", which like "Livin' a Lie" opens with an ominous fade-in which develops into a portentous vocal sequence which for me evoked images of late 19th/early 20th century explorers fighting the uncaring elements. As the lyric story progresses, the music is punctuated by moments of exhilaration and shifts to a sequence built around a chord progression on the keyboards. Mid-way through the track it reaches a point of transcendence and segues into a great instrumental part built around the drums (Smith really plays his heart out hitting the cymbals, with backing by a synth melody before the vocals come in again). The track winds up with a very proggy instrumental bit driven by the guitar and synth, reminiscent of 80s Marillion, before winding down to a decisive close.

The last 32 minutes of Precious Seconds are a terrific musical journey for anyone looking for a change from radio fare. While not "accessible" in the traditional pop sense, it's crunchy-good music packed with emotion. If Tr3nity progressed this far from their first album to their second, what's their third going to be like?

I don't remember where I first heard of the band Magenta. Possibly through The Laser's Edge, or some prog review site (see sidebar). But most of what I read sounded positive, and suggested that they were rooted in the tradition of a lot of the 70s prog I'd loved in college (college for me being the late 80s, but that's neither here nor there). Despite being a double album, I picked up their first album Revolutions, and once again Oh. My. God. What a great album!

Magenta is primarily the brainchild of Rob Reed, who writes the music and plays bass, keyboards and guitar. Steve Reed (his brother, I guess) writes the lyrics, and the mononymous Christina is the vocalist. Several folks (Chris Fry, Martin Shellard, Andy Edwards) provide lead guitar, while Tim Robinson is the drummer. The liner notes include a comment by Rob Reed that Revolutions is a self-conscious effort to recreate the magic of progressive rock of an earlier age. "Any similarities or coincidence with any bands past or present is entirely intentional!" he says.

The influences are clear: Christina's vocals often hearken back to Annie Haslam's performances for Renaissance, though at times Christina also displays some R&B or even soul influences in her styling (something often missing in the progressive genre). The album consists of seven tracks, four of which are suites which are 19 minutes or longer. The arrangements feel like A-list Yes or Renaissance, with maybe some Peter Gabriel-era Genesis influence, waving between a neo-prog sound and full-on symphonic rock.

Steve Reed's lyrics are in a decidedly philosophical vein: The theme of the album is "faith", and the five vocal tracks chronicle the role of faith through recorded history, first through specific (though fictional) events, and then through the rapid development of technology in the modern era and how it affects all of us. This sort of thing is likely to drive some listeners nuts, but I found it an enjoyable characteristic of the album.

"Children of the Sun" concerns a prehistoric village of sun-worshippers who place their faith in their god to see them through an attack by a rival tribe. With arrangements evoking a medieval or renaissance sound, "Children" throws down the gauntlet that whatever else they might be, Magenta are deadly-serious about their music: Heavy use of synthesizers, multiple vocal tracks overdubbed onto the final work, and the seamless progression from melody to melody through the four parts of the suite. The only weak part of the suite (and, really, the weakest part of the album overall) is when Rob Reed takes over the lead vocals, as he lacks the power and range of Christina's pipes. While a male counterpoint to Christina might be welcome, Reed would do better to look elsewhere to fill that role.

"Opus 1" is a short acoustic recapitulation of the main musical themes of "Children", and the first disk then concludes with "The White Witch", about a village hit with plague which is forced to make a leap of faith and turn to a "witch" and her rudimentary medical knowledge to help them survive. This track has the strongest neo-prog stylings of the disk, often feeling like it could be on an early Marillion album. (Notice how Marillion keeps popping up in this entry? It's a sign of how wide their influence has been on the genre - or at least on the slice of the genre which I enjoy.) "Witch" also makes the widest use of vocal harmonies through overdubbing on the album.

The second disk kicks off with the album's best piece, "Man and the Machine", and the faith humanity places in its own creations, and the risks we run that they may endanger or overtake us as they develop ever-greater sophistication. At times evoking the melodic themes of "Children", it effectively moves the styling from the vaguely retro-sound of the first disk to something more modern, often using a synthesizer backing as Pete Townshend often did with The Who, as a part of the rhythm section rather than as a lead instrument. At nearly 25 minutes long, "Machine" also illustrates one of the things that sets Magenta apart from other prog bands who write lengthy suites: Rather than bridging the sections of the track with awkward shifts or with fades to a quiet background noise before the next section begins, most of the music in each track on Revolutions doesn't let up but naturally flows from melody to melody - a tremendous feat given the length of the album.

After "Opus 2" (recapitulating the melodies of "Machine") comes "Genetesis", concerning mankind reinventing itself through genetic manipulation until we evolve into something other than human, and the question of what such superhuman "gods" might put their faith in. I think this track is the weak point in the album, although it gets some points for using acoustic guitar (acoustic instruments are often absent in this and other progressive rock, other than "progressive folk-rock" such as Iona). But after "Machine" it felt like Reed was trying to take the music past a modern feel to a futuristic sort of progressive sound, and I don't think it quite worked. While it doesn't sound "electronic" (far from it), I felt it had a repetition of theme which suggested like ideas were running short (which, after over an hour's worth of music is perfectly understandable). To be fair, though, the last couple of minutes of the suite signal an abrupt change in the piece's progression and offer a satisfying musical ending.

The album closes with "The Warning", a low-key song full of portentous music and a guitar solo which builds to the album's conclusion. It doesn't quite work as a denouement to the album, since "genetesis" I felt fell flat as a climax, but it's still an effective conclusion.

Overall, Revolutions is largely the Rob-Reed-and-Christina show. Christina is a stunning vocalist, and Reed has an uncannily deep understanding of the roots of progressive rock and how to bring out the best in the genre. The musical performances are excellent, particularly Reed's keyboards. The various guitarists are also very good - I think the best parts are by Reed and Chris Fry. But overall the performances are an ensemble effort in the service of the greater vision, and it ends up being one hell of a work.

You can buy Revolutions from The Laser's Edge, or from ProgRock.co.uk. (Amazon doesn't seem to carry it.)

I've been listening to - and reviewing, in various forums - music for over 15 years now. Unfortunately, I have no formal training in music, and so my understanding of what the composers and musicians are doing is often limited. I can recognize and categorize what I like, but my vocabulary is sadly limited. So I always feel terribly self-conscious when I write journal entries like this, since I often feel like I'm repeating myself, or using banal words or just not adequately expressing what I think of a piece of music, or how it makes me feel. It's some of the hardest writing I ever attempt.

But every so often I find an album which I really just want to share and make people aware of. I hope this entry persuades a few readers to try these two albums. They're worth it.