Tag: The Tangent For One

Progradar’s Best of 2024!

2024, well the second half, has been a tough year for me and I took my eye off the reviewing ball from August onwards due to changes in my life. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t been listening to amazing music though!

As my friend John Wenlock-Smith has already said, 2024 was an amazing year for music, progressive rock in particular, and here are the highlights for me. They are not in any order, just the albums that I have enjoyed listening to!

2025 will see me attempt to revive my reviewing mojo and it may mean a change of format so watch this space! In the meantime, enjoy my selection of some gems from last year…

Emerald City Council – ‘Motion Carries’

Emerald City Council have entered the progressive rock scene with a massive bang. ‘Motion Carries’ is a superb album, utterly immersive and uplifting with incredible musicianship, soaring melodies and a real sense of fun. This is music that touches the mind and lifts the soul and I haven’t stopped smiling yet. Trust me, you need this album in your life!

Albion – ‘Lakesongs of Elbid’

With ‘Lakesongs Of Elbid’, Albion have created an immersive, almost hypnotic collection of songs that is like listening to the stories of old, sung by travelling bards as they travelled the lands. Allow yourself to be drawn into its embrace and you will enjoy seventy minutes of wonder and music that will not only take your breath away but your heart and mind too…

Big Big Train – ‘The Likes Of Us’

What an emotional rollercoaster, I have spent the last four weeks listening to ‘The Likes Of Us’ at every opportunity. In the best tradition of Big Big Train albums of the past, it is not merely a collection of songs, it is a musical masterpiece that becomes part of your life and, for me, that means this album stands tall with the likes of ‘The Underfall Yard’ and English Electric’ 1 & 2. I know it is early in the year but it is going to take something incredibly special to topple this off the top of album of the year list and, for a long time fan of the band, that fills me with joy and makes me very happy indeed!

Cosmograf – ‘Live At The 1865 (Official Bootleg)’

A new Cosmograf studio album is on the way but, ever one to give back to his audience, Robin has sated the craving for new music by releasing what I am sure will become a seminal live album in the progressive rock scene. Close your eyes and you could almost be there, basking in the glorious music and that is what makes ‘Live At The 1865’ an essential purchase.

Jo Beth Young – ‘Broken Spells’

After four years Jo Beth Young has returned with an immaculately created and conceived album of pure wonder and musical genius. A piece of music of, and for, the ages and possibly the best album that Kate Bush never released.

HFMC – ‘Eternal Snapshots’

Music is written to connect with people, to move you on an emotional, spiritual and intellectual level. If it is done right then it leaves you in a much better place than when you listened to the first note and, with ‘Eternal Snapshots’, Hasse Fröberg & Musical Companion have delivered one of the most superlative musical events of the year so far.

Blue Rose Code – ‘Bright Circumstance’

Music can reflect life and accompany us on our very personal journeys and we should be honoured that Ross Wilson has invited us to join him on his own poignant and introspective pilgrimage through his faith. What he has given us is one of the most intense and intimate records released this year, with faith and devotion as its central themes. ‘Bright Circumstance’ is an utterly captivating triumph and should propel Blue Rose Code onto further and better things, it really doesn’t get any better than this.

Amarok – ‘Hope’

An utterly stunning collection of songs that bears Amarok’s impressive hallmarks throughout, ‘Hope’ is one of those albums that hits you at a base level in a totally emotive way. It is music for the mind and the soul and in a world collapsing around our very feet, we all need some of that, don’t we?

Age Of Distraction – ‘A Game Of Whispers’

2024 has already been a bumper year for superb releases and Age of Distraction have just added another fine album to the mix. ‘A Game Of Whispers’ is a collection of mighty fine songs that define the contemporary progressive rock and melodic metal genre and is a dramatic and profound listen from beginning to end. My recommendation is you just go out and buy it!

The Tangent For One – ‘To Follow Polaris’

‘To Follow Polaris’ is intended to be thought of as a regular Tangent album – but not as the future of the band. It’s everyone’s intention to make the FOURTEENTH album as The Tangent. For Five. However, taken in isolation, what you have is a wonderfully inventive and amazingly performed collection of songs that stay true to the core of Andy and the band’s beliefs. Witty and acerbic throughout but with some moments of pure musical bliss, it is yet another highlight in this storied musician’s stellar career.

Nordic Giants – ‘Origins’

‘Origins’ is a wondrous journey through all that is great about Nordic Giants. A collection of songs that have been fine tuned from the original to deliver an almost spiritual and addictive listening experience and one that will not just appeal to long term fans of this utterly compelling band but also to those lucky enough to be discovering them for the very first time.

Gallowstreet – ‘A Trip Worth making’

With ‘A Trip Worth Making’, Gallowstreet have leaped straight into my musical affections,. It is such an infectious, upbeat and addictive experience that you forget just how technically impressive these musicians are because you are just enjoying the joyful brilliance that they bring to each of these compositions, the energy just free flowing and imbuing in you a fabulous joie de vivre.

Nine Stones Close – ‘Diurnal’

‘Diurnal’ has to be one of the most imposing and impressive releases I’ve heard this year. Nine Stones Close have returned with a new line-up and firing on all cylinders and have created what, to me, is their finest album yet. A wonderfully direct, dynamic and energetic listen from beginning to end and one that will be on many best of the year lists come December 2024, I highly recommend it.

Airbag – ‘The Century Of The Self’

‘Century of the Self’ is a mesmerising and involving odyssey that elevates you to a musical nirvana that not many artists can create. Airbag are one of those bands that just seem to get better with age and this new release just might be their best album yet, and that’s saying something!

Returned To The Earth – ‘Stalagmite Steeple’

Robin Peachey and Returned To The Earth may not be well known to most people out there but, with the utterly magnificent, transcendental brilliance of ‘Stalagmite Steeple’ they deserve to be up there in the higher pantheon of progressive rock. You will not hear many better albums of any genre this year and I implore you to seek it out and add it to your own music collection, you will never ever regret doing so!

Orion – ‘The Lightbringers’

The best music can take you on a wondrous, fantastical journey where, for a short while, you can forget about the trials and tribulations of this planet that we inhabit and with his latest superb Orion album, ‘The Lightbringers’, Ben Jones does just that. It is a highlight of another fantastic musical year and one that I feel will be on many people’s end of year lists and it deserves to be.

Long Earth – ‘An Ordinary Life’

All great albums are the product of an intensive creative process and, in ‘An Ordinary Life’, Long Earth have given us the highly impressive fruits of their artistic labours. A wonderfully immersive musical journey that will have you coming back for more, it is a highlight of what is becoming an extraordinarily outstanding year for new music.

Meer – ‘Wheels Within Wheels’

I have to say that repeated listens to this album have allowed me to appreciate it more fully and I can certainly appreciate the crafting that has gone into making the album sound as good as it does here. ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ is a most worthy album and one that will hopefully win Meer many new fans.

Frost* – ‘Life In The Wires’

I’ll let my good friend Kevin Thompson, who reviewed the album for Progradar, give his conclusion as I couldn’t agree more!

“Milliontown is one of the most successful prog rock albums of the last 20 years and rightly held in high regard, lauded by fans and critics alike. Life In The Wires may not surpass it but damn! it runs it close. One of the best concept albums I’ve heard for sometime and one of the best albums of the year so far.”

Nick Fletcher – ‘A Longing For Home’

Not just one of the best instrumental albums of 2024 but on of THE best albums full stop! With his classical music background and undoubted skill on the electric guitar, Nick Fletcher has to be one the greatest living guitarists, he’s also a fellow Yorkshireman so what more could you ask for! Joking apart, Nick is one of the finest musicians this country has produced in recent years so do yourselves a favour and check this album out!

John Greenwood – ‘The Boy’

John describes this album as, “A vicariously autobiographical concept album describing the life, ambition, sacrifices and ultimate regret of the eponymous Boy. The album is a single piece, with 6 parts punctuated by narrated snippets of the story by actor, Mark Addy.”

To me, it is just stunning, a beautiful piece of work and even better than John’s previous release, ‘Dark Blue’ in my opinion. It’s more of a story than just a musical concept which makes it utterly engrossing, touching, sentimental and one of the best albums of the year.

So, there you have it, 2024 in twenty-one albums. There are lost more wonderful releases out there and I will have missed some but, within this selection, you have some of the best music you could ever wish to here.

Look out 2025, I am coming for you refreshed and ready to review!

Review – The Tangent For One – To Follow Polaris

When is a solo album not a solo album? There’s a conundrum for you. Well, there’s a story behind this latest release from The Tangent universe, ‘To Follow Polaris’ by The Tangent For One. The ‘One’ in the artist name is, as I’m sure you can guess, Andy Tillison and let’s discover why this new collection of impressive progressive rock is not Andy’s latest solo creation…

‘To Follow Polaris’ is a new ‘full on’ Progressive Rock album by The Tangent, set to be released on the 10th May 2024 (InsideOutMusic). That’s not necessarily a surprise, that’s what the band are known for. But at the same time, it’s something else too. As Andy jokes, playing on the Jaws strapline, he says “well this time it’s actually no personnel”.

In a year when members of The Tangent could be seen onstage all over the world and on recordings by many greats of the prog world, it became clear that there was not going to be time to get together for anything more than one gig in April 2023.

So the band agreed that the band’s leader/main writer Andy Tillison would keep the material coming and would make an album by The Tangent entirely alone. It would still be The Tangent. Just for one.

“Besides Which” Andy says, “I’ve always wanted to do this, use what I have learned from Luke, Jonas, Steve, Theo and many other alumni and take it to final production. Now was the time!”

What transpired over the following year is in one sense an ‘absolutist’ solo album and is entirely the work of one person in all aspects including artwork, layout, design, lyrics, composition, performance, recording, production, mixing, mastering and authoring. But in another sense it’s totally Tangent. “I could not have begun to make this record without having had the experiences of working with the band. So although the different instruments are not attempted to be played in the actual style of the normal lineup, they are inspired by the kind of things these guys do”

So there you go, it’s an album by The Tangent, but not all of them and yet it does sound like it’s by all of them, still following? Let’s have a listen and see for ourselves, shall we?

For anyone who is a fan of Andy and The Tangent you will know immediately that this is an album by The Tangent, he has created a very distinctive sound over the years and one that I can’t get enough of. Created from Andy’s love of artists such as Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator, Porcupine Tree, Groove Armada, Earth Wind & Fire, Roger Waters and his bands, Return To Forever, Deep Purple, Gentle Giant, Steely Dan and any band featuring the keyboard player Dave Stewart, but neither a homage to those artists or a pastiche of their sounds. Andy’s instantly recognisable music is unique to him and The Tangent and is based mostly around his stellar keyboard playing.

The North Sky opens the album with style and panache and is indicative of The Tangent with the elegant keyboard flourishes, dynamic guitar playing and ever funky bass that has a wonderful jazz vibe to it (and is the first time you will hear Andy playing bass on any of his recordings). This song is a hopefully joyous celebration of life under the sky, there is a fluency to this vibrant piece of music, an urgency and joie de vivre that is as addictive as it is palatable, Andy’s stick driven (electronic) drums providing the drive and electronic wind controller the high notes and polish. The wistful, dreamlike section in the middle of the piece is an oasis of calm that gives you a moment to catch your breath and adds to what is a simply stunning start to the album, there could even be a musical nod to Close Encounters in there but that could just be me! Andy’s singular vocal is as acerbic as ever, love it or hate it (and I love it), to me it is much part of what makes The Tangent tick as anything else and his laconic storytelling adds a classic patina to everything the band do. Andy likens it to “sort of channelling the feeling you get contemplating the wonders of the seemingly infinite universe while riding a Harley Davidson”, exactly… A Like In The Darkness takes a more measured approach with a hushed vocal adding to the moody, thoughtful atmosphere. Imagine a smoke filled, whisky soaked venue with the lights down low and an attentive audience hanging on every word and every note, rapt in attention to the musician in front of them who is holding everyone’s attention with his charismatic persona. A beautifully observed slice of jazz/prog fusion, idiosyncratic in delivery and design, it’s a brilliant piece of music with its roots most definitely in the 1970’s and that era of creative, sometimes mind boggling, music that crossed so many genres that it became obfuscated but was always highly entertaining. For Andy it is a personal look into the world of being an obscure artist in the 2000’s, a world where legalised piracy starves musicians and the rationale for that has actually somehow succeeded in replacing payment with “likes” on social media as a sign of “success”. 

“A song about “Constant Bad News – something I have heard nearly everyone I know speak about regardless of their age or background.” That’s Andy’s short precis of The Fine Line, a song that, despite its subject matter, has a real cool and elegant feel to it. Imagine Gentle Giant turning up to a 70’s disco party dressed as Earth, Wind & Fire and you’re some way to getting the vibe of this gloriously funky piece of music. An acerbic social commentator he may be (or that could just be the Yorkshireman in him!) but Andy is just a lover of music and a lover of creating music at heart and that can be sensed through every word and note of this track and please just check out his fantastic, laid back bass playing! Andy says it owes a lot to ‘Aja’ period Steely Dan and is also a nod to Petula Clarke’s Downtown and, let’s be honest, it doesn’t get more prog than that! While Andy and The Tangent may be known for their brilliantly creative prog epics, it’s songs like this that define the true nature of the man and his music for me and I love it. Talking of lengthy prog epics, no true album by The Tangent could be classed as complete without twenty plus minutes of prog largesse and pomp and circumstance, all with a bit of true Yorkshire caustic diatribe thrown in for good measure and that’s what you get with The Anachronism. The song posits that all forms of government are manifestly unfit for purpose, unless the purpose actually is to create division, argument, suffering, war, poverty, racism. It centres on elections in so called democratic nations in which the amount of “say” a person actually has in this democracy is so vanishingly small that in two major Western Nations only four manifestos will even be actually considered in 2024. The longer song is a format that Andy likes to work in and he has loved this format since hearing Close To The Edge by Yes and you can tell, all of the longer tracks by The Tangent can be considered classic songs by the band and this is no exception. A track driven by purpose and calculation and a piece of music with a lot to say and which is delivered eloquently and in a direct manner. The music is as stylish as ever and travels across many genres seamlessly, almost a who’s who of 70’s prog styles and embellishments but all delivered in Andy’s witty and self-effacing style.

The Single (Taken From A Re-Opened Time Capsule) is a re-recorded version of a track Andy wrote more than 25 years ago for his band Po90. As it never reached that many ears he thought he would update it. “It comes from an album called ‘The Time Capsule’ which I did say that one day I might revisit… because that was implied by the title.” Andy continues, “It is a song that in many ways was the place The Tangent actually began.  in and among all the dark Po90 stuff, here was this little ditty that was almost a blueprint for songs like “GPS Culture” , “Spark In the Aether” and even “The North Sky”. Now Spark In The Aether is my favourite all time shorter track from the band so it means that The Single had a lot to live up to and, while it may not replace Spark in my affections, it is definitely up there. Lyrically it’s very focussed (As Fine Line) on News Media/Music Business and the contemporaneous attitudes towards Progressive Rock Music itself. It’s a marvellous piece of The Tangent history updated for a new audience and you can see the evolution of the band and Andy’s songwriting in its six minute running time.

The album closes out with a Radio Edit of The North Sky which intensifies and concentrates the inspirational feel of the original and, if you get the limited edition CD Mediabook or 2LP Vinyl, the bonus track Tea At Bettys, seventeen polished minutes of delightfully 70’s feeling easy jazz music, interjected with some frenetic and intentionally chaotic interludes, dedicated to the iconic Harrogate Tearooms that I have been lucky enough to frequent on several occasions.

‘To Follow Polaris’ is intended to be thought of as a regular Tangent album – but not as the future of the band. It’s everyone’s intention to make the FOURTEENTH album as The Tangent. For Five. However, taken in isolation, what you have is a wonderfully inventive and amazingly performed collection of songs that stay true to the core of Andy and the band’s beliefs. Witty and acerbic throughout but with some moments of pure musical bliss, it is yet another highlight in this storied musician’s stellar career.

Released 10th May, 2024.

Order the album here:

Direct from the band: The Tangent : Official Website – Home

or here: To Follow Polaris (lnk.to)