Notes from Andy Tillison........New album

“NEW MUSIC CD!

Thank you to everyone who liked and commented on Sally's recent posting regarding my status. I have been through a rough time with my health over the past 6 months but thanks to the devotion and skill of the NHS I now have bionic arteries which have started to push the blood back into the "you need to make some music" part of my brain. The heart attack was naturally a shock.. (not expected for a less than 70kg - 56 year old - vegetarian wholefoods eating – non-drinker - who gave up smoking 2 years ago) - and with the shock came a lot of depression, loss of interest in music, conversation and just about everything I was previously interested in. I've recently been allowed to return to work at my College, all I need to do now is convince the College to let me do something when I'm there - I feel at present that I'm running a career restricted by a Risk Assessment that someone has done.

Strangely, coming THROUGH all this, back into the daylight at the other side of the tunnel, I've found quite a lot of music that I have utterly no memory of writing. Scattered about on a few hard drives are a load of unfinished bits and bobs, and in a few cases fully fledged songs, one of which seems to be called "The Man Who Couldn't Lead Us Because He Didn't Want To Blow Up Other People On Our Behalf". I have NO IDEA what that one is about… I'll probably have to think of a better title.

NEW MUSIC

I'm pleased to announce the third in my solo ambient/electronica/anything else series - "Machte Es Durch". This is the German phrase for "Made It Through" and "Through" is what I hope I am. The album follows my 2007 album "Fog" and the 2010 "Murk". The album will feature instrumental music very much inspired by the music of Berlin School Electronica acts like T Dream, Redshift and Michael Hoenig and in fact a centrepiece of the album is a fully developed version of "Transient Loss" a piece written in honour of Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream who died in 2015. As with the two previous albums the music does deviate quite widely from the central style, extending from time to time into Tangent style territory as well as Jazz and other genres.

Durch is nearing compositional completion now and is should be (emphasis on "should") available on CD by the end of March. Pre-orders are available at www.thetangent.org now!! As usual. pre-orders will allow early listening to some of the pieces in various stages of development although this will begin in FEBRUARY as I don't have mixes I'm happy enough to play you right away. I utterly HATE having to say that your buying this album is crucially important to getting other projects up and running - as my half year of illness has very seriously emptied the coffers here at Tangent Towers, your support would be most welcome - because...
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The release of Durch is the first of FOUR ongoing musical projects that I have been working on during the past few months. The others include (naturally) the 9th studio album by The Tangent - although I should say that that is some way off official commencement. More further down..

The second album by MULTIPLEX is however, a lot further advanced and this time will include more musicians than just myself. I have asked Luke Machin and Theo Travis to help me with this album and Steve Roberts (formerly of Godsticks and well known for his work with Magenta) is also in line for the drum stool on the album. For those of you who don't know about Multiplex, it is a Tangent side project far more focussed on Jazz Rock instrumental work and the first album was released to some nice response early in 2015. We will open pre-orders on that album quite soon in order to finance the recording.

Another album that is currently being recorded is altogether less predictable. It is a COVER VERSION of a concept album recorded originally in 1985 by another artist altogether. The original album was not recorded by a Prog related artist, however I always believed that it would make a terrific album in my chosen genre and I spent a lot of the long break that I've been forced to have, working out how to make this genius, predominantly acoustic album work as a full on symphonic Prog Rock concept album. The original album is not very well known - in fact REALLY obscure, although the various people who made it went on to global success with a career lasting 30 years. There's something to keep you guessing. At present my version of the album is fairly well advanced - however I haven't actually decided whether it's going to be a "one off" Tangent album or something that's a different project altogether. Depends who ends up working on it... and there is a good chance that some people originally involved will reprise their roles. The release is likely to be 2 separate CDs, released around a year apart

To return though to THE TANGENT - after 13 years working with that project, Jonas, myself, Theo and Luke have decided we'd like to do something a bit different. The album "A Spark In The Aether" was for us a bookend to the band's career so far. During these years the band has managed to maintain a position among the most popular current era Prog Rock bands. Of course, within that time many other artists have moved into the same arena and flourished - entirely deserved in many cases incidentally - so now we feel that we'd like to work on something a bit more risky, built more for our own sense of adventure than on poll topping. The aim will be to still create a narrative based musical landscape with a broader still range of influences ( I think I can claim that ours were already pretty broad) - this time the emphasis will NOT be on what people insist on calling "Retro Prog" but looking around us NOW at what we'd like to fuse into our music in the same ways as our ancestors were doing in 1969. Prog? of course! Rules? Out of the window!

Also In the pipeline is the forthcoming album by Karmakanic, on which I have played some organ (including on the epic track we played on tour in 2014) and I can also happily announce on a new track "Steer By The Stars" which Jonas Reingold and I wrote together - our first joint composition and hopefully the first of many for BOTH projects.

May I be seriously late in wishing everyone A HAPPY NEW YEAR, I hope to be a little more present on the Facebook page this next few months. Best wishes to all. ~ Andy”