Its most famous member is Dave Gregory, formerly the lead guitarist for XTC. Like every member of the band, Gregory is an extraordinary musician pursuing a high art. He is also, I’m happy to note, a true gentleman and, like everyone in the band, a perfectionist. From the beginning of its existence, BBT has honed its complex song structures, riveting melodies, and gorgeous historical, poetic, and mythic lyrics. Almost all of the band’s songs celebrate excellence, innovation, and struggle. Typical themes include World War I and II ace fighters, beekeepers, medieval saints, architects, and survivors of trauma. Lyrically, the band is levels above almost anything being written in popular culture today, and, in the rock-pop world, certainly well beyond Elvis, Madonna, and Lady Gaga.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/an-ode-to-progressive-rock/
Category Archives: Music
The Latest Edda: Bjorn Riis’s A Storm is Coming
Bjorn Riis’s A STORM IS COMING (Karisma, 2019).
The sheer amount of creativity that comes out of northern Europe never fails to astound or move me. From the moment the Scandinavians became Scandinavians, some 1,200 plus years ago, they seem to have existed to hunt, to farm, and to create. Even the very word “edda”—so properly associated with northern mythology—is not native to Norse, but is a word that seems to have sprung out of the moment rather than out a specific culture. We remember edda as a story, but it more properly means a divine outburst of creativity. From the creation of the AllThing (the world’s first congress) to Sigrid Undset, the Scandinavians keep shocking into life a western culture that wants to die but won’t. What is it? Is it the cold? The bleak winters? The harrowing landscapes? The daring raids? I don’t know, but I do know I thank the good Lord for their existence.
When a small package recently arrived from Norway—labeled Karisma—I was thrilled. Nothing I ever receive from that small but mighty label is unimportant. Indeed, it has to rank as one of the most important labels in the rock world, equal to Kscope, Insideout, and Sound Resources. That I found the new Bjorn Riis solo album in that package made the arrival even better. Frankly, it made it perfect. From the moment I first encountered Riis’s band, Airbag, roughly ten years ago—thanks to the recommendation of my English friend, Richard Thresh—I liked the band. Granted, their first album sounded like a sequel to Pink Floyd’s ANIMALS, but it was gorgeous, nonetheless, and it had the very James Marsh/Talk Talk-esque cover, of the eyeball crying blood. What a combination of excellent things. Since 2009, Riis has proven his genius time and time again through Airbag (IDENTITY; ALL RIGHTS REMOVED; GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH; and DISCONNECTED), each more lyrically existential and more musically creative than the last.
As much as I fell for Airbag, I fell even more in love with this solo work. LULLABIES IN A CAR CRASH; COMING HOME; and FOREVER COMES TO AN END. If you put Mark Hollis, Roger Waters, and Steven Wilson into the same room, you might come out with something close to Bjorn Riis, but still not quite there. Riis takes the best from each, but his music is very much his own.
Riis’s latest, A Storm is Coming, is more volatile and less longingly melodic than previous albums. It’s still brilliant, though. It can move from silence to a wall of sound and back to delicate piano line in a matter of moments. The title fits. The storm is coming, and Riis offers an album that looks not into the storm, but out from it. Let me revise what I just said a bit—there’s loving melody all over this album, but it feels less sustained (intentionally) than on previous albums. Honestly, I couldn’t really listen to track five, “This House,” without noting that it is melodic—in a David Gilmour fashion—to the nth degree.
I’m seeing several websites label this as an EP, but it’s 52 minutes long, so I can’t imagine what one of Riis’s LPs might look like. Yes, this is a full-fledged album. No doubt about it.
And, it’s a thing of eddaic glory. Enjoy.
Giancarlo Erra’s Adagio
Crazily enough, Apple’s iTunes gave me the choice to categorize Giancarlo Erra’s latest album, ENDS, as either “new age” or classical. I had no idea that “new age” was still a category or a genre or a label or anything less than a slur when still employed. The whole process of choosing this reminded me of how much I despise labels—for people or for music.
There’s really only one proper description for Erra’s album, ENDS: art. Best known for his rather ethereal and spacy art rock band (oh, those labels again!), Nosound, ENDS is Erra’s first solo album. Eight songs long, the album feels most like a wordless song-cycle, a meandering and a deepening and a widening of several achingly gorgeous melodies. There’s certainly nothing resembling rock—of any variety—on this album, but the various keyboards and deeper strings bring the listener very close to the music of the spheres, with elements of Henryk Gorecki and Mark Hollis informing but not shaping Erra’s creation.
Even the very titles of the eight songs–III, II, I, VII, V, IV, VI, Coda—seemingly offer us nothing in the way of personality.
And, yet, ENDS is nothing but personality, beautiful and wide and deep—we are shown the very soul the artist. Not in an egotistical way, but in a perfectly humane way.
Above, I mentioned Gorecki and Hollis, but the more I listen to this glorious album, I feel as though I’m dwelling one of Bach’s adagios.
Forthcoming: Angelico Book on Christian Humanism
I’m very excited to announce that I have a forthcoming book (sometime this fall) from Angelico Press.
BEYOND TENEBRAE: Christian Humanism IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE WEST.
(initial) table of contents if you’re interested:
PrefaceIntroduction: Beyond Tenebrae
Section I: Conserving Christian Humanism• Humanism: A Primer• Humanism: The Corruption of a Word• The Conservative Mind• Burke and Tocqueville• What to Conserve?• Conserving Humanism
Section II: Personalities and Groups• T.E. Hulme: First Conservative of the Twentieth Century• Irving Babbitt’s Longings• Irving Babbitt and the Buddha• The Christian Humanism of Paul Elmer More• The Order Men• Willa Cather• Canon B.I. Bell• The Conversion of Christopher Dawson• Christopher Dawson and the Liberal Arts• The Gray Eminence of Christopher Dawson• Nicholas Berdyaev’s Unorthodoxy• Theodor Haecker: Man of the West• The Inklings• Two Tolkiens, Not One• Sister Madeleva Wolff• Peacenik Prophet: Russell Kirk• St Russell of Mecosta• Eric Voegelin• Eric Voegelin’s Gnosticism• Eric Voegelin’s Order• Flannery O’Connor• Clyde Kilby• Friedrich Hayek’s Intellectual Lineage• Ray Bradbury at His End• Shirley Jackson’s Haunting• Wendelin E Basgall• Julitta Kuhn Basgall• Ronald Reagan’s Ten Words• The Optimism of Ronald Reagan• Walter Miller’s Augustinian Wasteland• Alexander Solzhenitsyn as Prophet• The Ferocity of Marvin O’Connell• The Good Humor of Ralph McInerny• The Beautiful Mess that is Margaret Atwood; Conclusion: Confusions and Hope
Music and Motorcycling
ears ago, an engineering schoolmate brought up the topic of life goals. My response was immediate — “owning a wall of music CDs and a high-displacement motorcycle”. His reaction was even quicker — “that’s it?” — and it wasn’t exactly devoid of a patronizing tone. That was indeed my objective at that time. Later, I realized the wall of music and motorcycle wasn’t the literal goal – it was symbolic of a more ambitious exploration.
People tend toward one of two orientations: those with specific agendas and those with abstract motivations. Specific goals can be anything, but they are measurable and well-defined – like retiring by the age of 45, or making 200 million dollars, or filing 20 patents, etc. Abstract goals are less defined and more subjective — for example, pursuing an interesting career or seeking knowledge.
Meticulously working towards some objective requires long-term planning and calculated trade-offs. These goals can often conflict with abstract goals, especially in the long run. For instance, you cannot expect to be a millionaire or retire by 45 if you are only going to take “interesting” jobs. Since abstract pursuits prioritize discovering the path, the destination itself becomes secondary. Such expansion of the boundaries requires identifying the current margins and pushing beyond them. Specific goals operate within a defined space, while abstract goals will expand it.
A general approach to life tends to reflect across domains. So, whether it’s discovering music or exploring the great outdoors on a motorcycle, these can be approached as destination-driven or exploration-driven. For example, instead of targeting sub-genres, it can be about discovering broad qualities like rich layering, structural progression, and dynamics of influences. Similarly, riding can also vary from destination-driven to exploration-driven. It could be about discovering the diverse terrains — experiencing landscapes spanning altitudes and micro-climates.
Without targeting destinations, motorcycling could just be about looking at a map to identify winding roads. This often leads to unexpected unpaved miles, rustic routes cutting through state parks or bordering the coast or high-altitude lakes. You will inevitably get a bit lost or run into restricted access roads or run low on fuel. It will involve long stretches of solitude — until you cross paths with another solo rider traveling the same path, coming from the opposite direction. In short, the journey never goes according to plan, but there is no plan when exploration itself is the goal. In hindsight, the wall of music and high-displacement engine represented a depth of exploration far more demanding than it originally conveyed.
Republished at ridersmodel.com
Music Podcast Roundup
If you aren’t subscribed to Anthony Rowsick’s ProgWatch podcast, you should do it right now! He consistently has informative interviews with all kinds of artists in the progrock arena, as well as featuring the best songs from new and classic prog albums.
Tony’s latest episode is Part One of a two-part interview featuring Glass Hammer’s co-founder and bassist Steve Babb. There are lots of great Glass Hammer songs as well as interesting anecdotes from the early days of this seminal group. You can listen to it the entire show by clicking here.
Meanwhile, over at Roie Avin’s excellent Prog Report, the second part of his Neal Morse Band profile is up. It is an in-depth history of Neal Morse’s career, and definitely worth hearing if you are a fan of Spock’s Beard, Neal Morse, Transatlantic, and Flying Colors (Phew, Neal really gets around!). Click here to listen.
Finally, in case you missed it, the boys at Political Beats, Scott Bertram and Jeff Blehar, discuss the entire Electric Light Orchestra discography with guest Jack Butler in exhaustive detail. And when I say exhaustive detail, I mean 2 hours and 46 minutes’ worth. You can download the episode by clicking here.
I’m interested in hearing from our Spirit Of Cecilia readers if any of you listen to any other music-related podcasts, and how you access them. I still use an iPod nano with iTunes for a lot of my podcast listening, but I also use Castbox on my phone. Are there any podcasting apps that you are especially fond of, like Stitcher or Podbean? Let us know in comments. Happy listening!
Jacques Barzun and Hector Berlioz ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Even Berlioz’s own countrymen have been loathe to champion him as one of their own, perhaps because his music is not conventionally “French,” but cosmopolitan in both its style and content. Claude Debussy famously called his compatriot a “monster.” Berlioz, it is true, drew inspiration for his dramatic works—his symphonies and operas—not from French sources, but from Goethe, Byron, Virgil, and Shakespeare. His seeming betrayal of his inheritance of French culture provided the background for a debate in the early 2000s, as the bicentenary of his birth loomed, about whether the composer’s remains should be moved to the Pantheon in Paris, the burial site of many of France’s cultural heroes. (President Jacques Chirac decided that they should not.)
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/02/jacques-barzun-hector-berlioz-stephen-klugewicz.html
Mark Hollis, Rest Your Head ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Despite the gravitas of the music and the lyrics, The Colour of Spring sold well enough that EMI gave Hollis and Friese-Greene free reign on the fourth album, Spirit of Eden. Along with famed audio engineer, Phill Brown, the two men went fully mystical. Renting an abandoned church for fourteen months, Talk Talk did everything possible to create timelessness in the sacred space. Relying on the lighting of the stained glass and lava lamps, the band spent over a year trying to capture specific sounds, piecing them together as a whole. Side one of the album became one eighteen minute track, begging the Lord to rage against injustice. Over its nearly twenty-minute length, the song moves from the sound of sea scapes to an utterly cacophonous passion, finally resolving with a recognition that a man is inherently flawed and, thus, unable to perfect all things. The album concludes with “Wealth,” a lyrical rewrite of the famous prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/02/mark-hollis-rest-your-head-bradley-birzer.html
Spreading the Good Word of Prog
Tony Rowsick, the host of my favorite music podcast, Prog-Watch, invited me to be a “Guest DJ” on the latest episode (#603). I had a really hard time narrowing my choices down to four songs, but I eventually settled on ones by U.K., Big Big Train (of course!), Sanguine Hum, and Glass Hammer.
You can stream the episode here, or catch it via iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, etc. ( Just search for Prog-Watch)
If you are a lover of prog rock, then you need to subscribe to Prog-Watch. I have discovered more great artists through Tony’s show than any other source. He is also an excellent interviewer of prog’s biggest stars as well as up and coming ones. It comes out weekly, and it is well worth the time spent listening. As Tony would say, “Until next time, be good to each other, and Prog On, my brothers and sisters!”
Ghost Rider
“Parking my motorcycle in front of a motel at the end of a long day on the road could certainly be sweet, like finally exhaling after holding my breath all day, but best of all was setting out in the morning. Whatever torments the night had brought; whatever weather the new day threw at me, when I loaded up the bike and swung my leg over the saddle, my whole perspective changed. Focus tightened into the mechanics and mentality of operating the machine, and awareness contracted to that demanding paradigm. As I let in the clutch and turned the throttle, my world-view expanded as i moved into a whole new paradigm of landscapes, highways and wildlife. Infinite possibilities” p42, Ghost Rider
Not just the perspective, Neil Peart manages to express the very exact thoughts, emotions and even words any long distance motorcyclist would have endured. Brought back very distinct memories, even though my own experiences are from a totally different part of the globe.
Album from the archives — circa 2008-2010.
Spirit of Cecilia 
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